Christie Blatchford finds the timing of the settlement to be “arguably suspicious”:
The last page of the Caledonia class action settlement is the one that tells the shameful truth of what happened five years ago in that lovely small southwestern Ontario town.
The settlement was the result of a lawsuit against the government and the Ontario Provincial Police filed by 440 residents, 400 businesses and a handful of sub-contractors affected by the native occupation there five years ago.
The deal has been repeatedly portrayed purely as a “compensation” package since it was formally announced by the Ontario government last Friday.
The government’s brief press release used carefully neutral language: The settlement is called an “agreement” which “provides compensation” for those who suffered “direct losses” during the course of “the protest.”
It is, in a word, bunk.
