Ottawa wants to pay class action lawyers roughly half the amount they're requesting in legal fees for a multi-billion dollar First Nations child welfare compensation case — the largest settlement agreement in Canadian history.

The federal government argued before Federal Court this past week that it should pay the class action lawyers between $40 million and $50 million, rather than the $80 million they've requested.

Federal Court Justice Mandy Aylen, who reserved her decision on Thursday, said the court must take into consideration the size of the settlement agreement and the fact that the case was based on more than 10 years of litigation at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT).

"This motion arises in what I would say are very unique circumstances," Aylen said.

"One is that this settlement of this type has been characterized as what we call a mega settlement ... Second, and importantly, this settlement piggybacks on the tribunal proceeding."

Paul Vickery, senior general counsel for the federal Department of Justice, called the $80 million sum unreasonable. He said there is strong public interest in cutting the bill down.

"Counsel fees are going to be closely scrutinized here, both by the claimant community and the broader Canadian public," Vickery said.

But class action lawyers said they're justified in asking for $80 million because the deal they helped to negotiate is unprecedented, and they took it on with the understanding that they would be paid only if they succeeded.

Ottawa agreed to pay legal fees for the five law firms that launched the class action lawsuits that led to the $23 billion-plus settlement agreement approved last Tuesday by the Federal Court.

The compensation will be distributed among more than 300,000 First Nations children and families who experienced discrimination because the government underfunded on-reserve child welfare systems and other family services. 

The CHRT said the government's actions created an incentive for foster care systems to remove children from their homes. Dubbed the "millennium scoop," the practice meant more Indigenous children ended up in foster care than were sent to residential schools at the height of the residential school system.

The legal bill will not be paid out from the $23 billion in federal cash set aside for compensation. It also won't come from the other $20 billion earmarked by Ottawa for long-term reform of First Nations child and family services. Class action lawyers will be paid through additional public funds.

The fees will go to five firms: Sotos LLP, Kugler Kandestin LLP, Miller Titerle + Co., Nahwegahbow, Corbiere and Fasken Martineau Dumoulin.

Judge questions risk taken in case

The government said it takes issue with some lawyers billing at the upper end of their hourly rate scales.

The government argues that if the $80 million legal bill is approved, it would result in some lawyers being compensated at $4,580 per hour.

Ottawa says a legal bill of $40 million to $50 million is more consistent with other recent, large settlements, according to court filings.

Vickery said the government acknowledges a premium should be paid to class action lawyers as an incentive for picking up such cases.

But he argued these lawyers took only a moderate risk by pursuing this case because the federal government already had stated publicly that it would compensate First Nations people affected by its discrimination.

"We say that the amount awarded should recognize that," Vickery said.

Aylen also questioned the amount of risk the settlement lawyers took on, pointing out that it was distributed across multiple firms and none of them submitted evidence to suggest they were hurting financially.

"I'm struggling with the suggestion of risk," Aylen said.

Aylen also said the settlement piggybacked on more than 10 years of proceedings before the CHRT.

The case stems from a 2016 tribunal ruling that found Canada engaged in wilful and reckless discrimination against First Nations children and families by failing to provide them with the same level of child welfare and other family services provided elsewhere.

The class actions also came on the heels of the tribunal's 2019 ruling, which ordered Canada to pay the maximum human rights penalty of $40,000 per First Nations child and family member.

"There is at least a portion of this proceeding that is a deliberate duplicate of the pre-existing proceedings before the tribunal," Aylen said.

Fasken lawyer Geoffrey Cowper acknowledged the tribunal laid the foundation for the class actions, but argued that the settlement agreement reached with Canada made the tribunal's orders enforceable.

Cowper also said the settlement agreement went beyond the tribunal's orders.

Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu said legal fees must be kept within a reasonable space.

The settlement covers children and families on-reserve or in the Yukon who were discriminated against from 1991 on — a period 15 years longer than the one covered by the tribunal.

Under the agreement, every First Nations child who was forcibly removed from their home and put into the on-reserve child welfare system would get a minimum of $40,000 — or more, depending on the severity of harms they experienced.

Class action lawyers agreed to cap their fees at $80 million — a move they said was highly unusual — because the Assembly of First Nations raised concerns about lawyers in previous class actions taking advantage of Indigenous Peoples.

The lawyers also said the capped fee is much lower than what they could have sought under contingency fee retainer agreements, which could have resulted in a $2.35 billion bill.

"We say it's fair and reasonable," Cowper said.

Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu made the case for lowering the legal bill at a press conference on Thursday in Ottawa. 

"This has been an astronomical legal effort, and we acknowledge that and respect that, while also having a responsibility to keep fees in a reasonable space," she said.

A 61-year-old man has died after a vessel capsized near Vancouver's Wreck Beach on Monday afternoon, according to emergency responders.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) in Victoria said they received a distress call around 1:30 p.m. PT near the beach, which is close to the University of British Columbia's Point Grey campus.

Vancouver Fire Rescue Services told CBC News that they responded to the capsizing near Trail 3, at the 6100-block of Northwest Marine Drive, and found a man who was floating on the water after his vessel overturned. In a Tuesday statement, the vessel was identified as a tugboat.

"Our crews went down to the water and the Coast Guard had already brought an ... unidentified male up on shore," Assistant Fire Chief Keith Stewart said.

"Crews did CPR the best they could. Unfortunately, the unidentified male had succumbed to his injuries."

Firefighters, along with JRCC first responders, scoured the shoreline with boats and helicopters for hours afterwards to see if anyone else was missing.

The search was called off at around 6:20 p.m. when it was confirmed there was only one person on board the vessel when it capsized, the JRCC said.

"The [Canadian Coast Guard] dive team on board the hovercraft Siyay was able to locate the vessel and clear it," said JRCC spokesperson Lt. Michelle Scott, who added that RCMP are now leading the investigation.

The Canadian Coast Guard was searching the waters around Wreck Beach for hours after the man was found dead.

The capsizing comes as a high wind warning was issued for the Howe Sound region north of Vancouver on Monday. An Arctic air mass is bringing cooler weather and high winds to the South Coast and Vancouver Island at the start of the week.

In a statement on Tuesday, University RCMP said that while the exact cause of the capsizing is not known, "exceptionally strong winds and turbulent waters" are likely to be factors.

"Tragically, despite an excellent coordinated effort by multiple responding agencies, the lone [boat] operator could not be revived," said Staff Sgt. Kris Clark.

Clark added that, along with the RCMP, the death will also be investigated by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and WorkSafeBC.

A British Canadian money manager who's been at odds with the Canada Revenue Agency for more than a decade wants a judge to toss out a nearly $5 million bill for back taxes, saying the CRA never sent it to him and now it's too late.

Whether Charles Shaker, 44, has to pay up may hinge on the proficiency of the CRA's mail department.

An auditor concluded in March 2017 that the former Ottawa-area resident owed $3.8 million in extra taxes for 2008 and 2009, according to court records, based on calculations that he had derived millions of dollars in undeclared personal benefits like car and condo fee payments from a financial planning and consulting company he owned. With penalties and interest, the amount has grown to $4.8 million.

But in addition to disputing those numbers, Shaker alleges the CRA omitted a basic step: It never properly sent him notice that it had reassessed him, or any indication of the amount it wanted him to pay. He's contesting the bill in Tax Court, asking a judge to set it aside.

"The CRA has proffered no evidence that it gave Mr. Shaker any notice whatsoever of the alleged tax debt," his lawyers wrote in a separate but related proceeding last year.

"The CRA is legally required to provide the debtor with proper notice…. Accordingly, there is not, and never has been, any valid tax debt owed by Mr. Shaker."

The CRA wouldn't comment directly on its dispute with Shaker, citing the ongoing court case and taxpayer privacy. It hasn't yet filed its response in Tax Court and has obtained three extensions to the normal deadline.  

It's been one year since Paddy Munro held her son as he shivered, emaciated, in a hospital waiting room. A full year since he slipped out of the observation room and back to a dilapidated hotel on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. One year since the worst day of her life — when she got a phone call saying her son was dead.

Sean Munro fought to vanquish his intrusive thoughts for more than 20 years, his family says. He struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder, body dysmorphia, alcoholism and more. At the root of it all, his mother says, was what happened in a small office at a Vancouver private school in the 1980s — with a teacher who they believe never should have been there.

"I want to go back and I want to do more," Paddy says. "I wish I could have done more."

Sean Munro went to Vancouver College in Grade 8. It was a long bus ride, about an hour each way, but he passed the time with his twin brother, Aaron. The men in their family were Vancouver College alumni, Irish Catholic to the core, and their parents felt it was the best move for their education.

Sean and Aaron had been inseparable up to that point, indistinguishable even to their own aunts. Grade 8 was the first time they'd been split apart and put in different homeroom classes. Their mother was happy about the chance for them to grow individually, to meet new people and have new experiences.

About a month into the school year, however, Sean stopped coming home on time.

"We found out that Sean had detentions," Paddy says. "He was with Joe Burke."

Burke was, by all accounts, a towering figure at Vancouver College. A burly man with red, curly hair, he was a former star of the school football team. He joined the ranks of the Christian Brothers after graduation and returned as a teacher in the early 1980s. 

The Christian Brothers weren't ordained as priests, but they wore collars and robes, and took an oath of celibacy. They ran schools and orphanages around the world, and often left a trail of broken boys, wounded faith and court cases in their wake.

Vancouver was no different. More than 60 men are now part of a class-action lawsuit alleging they were abused at Vancouver College and nearby St. Thomas More Collegiate by six Christian Brothers between 1975 and 2009.

All six men were transferred to Vancouver from the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's — a place that later became synonymous with institutional child abuse. 

Burke is one of those six. CBC News has tried to contact Burke by email and letter. He has not responded. The schools have not denied abuse happened, and have said they want the allegations to be "investigated and resolved."

Family helped in Burke's defence

The Munro family had no inclination anything was going on. Their first clue came two years after the boys graduated, when Vancouver College sent letters to alumni letting them know Burke was facing criminal charges in Newfoundland related to his time at Mount Cashel. The school was asking former students and parents to support Burke in his defence. 

Paddy and her husband, John, separately questioned Sean about his detentions with Burke. 

"Sean denied and denied," she says. "[He said] nothing ever happened to him."

After their inquiries came up empty, the Munro family made a decision that still bothers them to this day. They chose to support Burke, Paddy says, donating air travel points to help him fly back and forth to Newfoundland for his trial. 

"Looking back on it, it's just awful," Paddy says with a sigh. 

In 1991, Burke was convicted on three counts of indecent assault and one count of assault causing bodily harm for his conduct at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's. His convictions were upheld by the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeals, before most of the charges were overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. In the end, he was given a conditional discharge for one count of assault causing bodily harm.

"It would obviously be in the public interest for a person of his calibre to return to the teaching profession," wrote James Gushue, Newfoundland and Labrador's former chief justice, in his sentencing decision.

Burke returned to Vancouver with no criminal record and continued teaching.

"There was a lot of support because Vancouver College was pushing it," Paddy says. "It didn't dawn on us, this coming home late, because Sean said everything was fine. There was nothing. It was no big issue."

Around the same time, Sean's life took a sharp turn. He was drinking heavily, and it was interfering with his ability to hold down a job. His behaviour went from concerning to shocking in short order.

"One morning we woke up and we looked in the backyard and there was a noose there," Paddy says. "That was Sean's cry for help."

Aaron Munro remembers feeling a divide growing between him and his brother after they finished high school.

"Up until that point, Sean and I were extremely close, but always very similar with ambitions, goals and things. But that all went away," Aaron says. "It's all a product of what happened in Grade 8."

Aaron went on to become a real estate agent, while Sean delved deeper into addiction. His drinking was complicated by diabetes, and his body dysmorphia took over. At one point he stood six feet tall and weighed 130 pounds.

This whole journey here, 20 years of chasing my brother around Vancouver to try and bring him back to life… it's him trying to escape this pattern of not being good enough.

Over his last 23 years, Sean Munro went to treatment facilities 20 times. CBC News has reviewed his medical records — thousands of pages of written notes from psychiatrists and psychologists outlining each of his attempts to get better. While the notes show he tackled his substance abuse head on, there are several references to childhood trauma, about which Sean refused to go into detail. 

"He reports that he has been ingesting alcohol to assist with underlying mental health struggles," one note reads. "Particularly ongoing ruminative thoughts of previous tried experiences dating back to his childhood. He reports that he was raised in a 'Roman Catholic school' and did not go into further detail but reports that he was exposed to traumatic events."

"His OCD started in Grade 8," another note reads. "He has had anorexia and bulimia due to his body dysmorphia. He estimates he has been hospitalized psychiatrically under 10 times for suicidal threats."

"Patient states he is now ready to address his trauma which he was not in the past," reads one of the latest reports, from July 5, 2021. 

A shocking admission

Paddy Munro says her son carried his secret until about four years ago. She was driving him to rehab when he asked her to pull over, she says.

"He said, 'Mom, when I was in school, Joe pulled my pants down and he was spanking me bare.' And then he stopped. And I said, 'Sean, you can tell me. I'm your mom, I can hear this.' And he said, 'No, that's all.'"

He also opened up to his sister, Terri, while he was detoxing at her house last year, she said. According to her, he told her Burke stripped him from the waist down and beat him with his bare hands. 

CBC News has interviewed two other men — one a former Mount Cashel resident, the other a former Vancouver College student — who both told similar accounts of being bare-bottom spanked by Burke. The Vancouver College student, Colin Wilson, said he was kept after school for detentions and repeatedly spanked while naked over the course of his Grade 9 year. Both men said the alleged abuse left a lifelong impact.

Burke's lone conviction from Mount Cashel was for beating a child on the bare buttocks so hard he couldn't sit for days.

Sean Munro's family says his suffering was unending but he had a Herculean will to get better. He'd get out of a treatment centre with goals and promises, before relapsing within a few weeks. His alcoholism and mental health issues often brought him to the homeless hotels and streets of Vancouver, where his family would find him and convince him to go back to treatment again.

"He resolved to drinking hand sanitizer and poison because he couldn't be with his thoughts," Terri says. "This whole journey here, 20 years of chasing my brother around Vancouver to try and bring him back to life… it's him trying to escape this pattern of not being good enough."

His last day

It came to a head last October. Sean was out of contact for two weeks, staying at a single-room occupancy hotel on the Downtown Eastside. He'd spent nine months waiting for a room in a treatment centre, with his addiction and diabetes worsening by the day. On Oct. 16, 2022, his twin brother found him on the street. 

Aaron barely recognized his identical twin looking back at him. He bought him a sandwich and bought his mother some time to get there and intervene. She came to his room to find blood smeared on the dirty walls and a shell of her son sitting on the bed.

"I had to lean down and put my hands on his shoulders and say, 'Sean, it's your mom. It's your mom here.' He was just looking through me. He wasn't recognizing me."

Paddy convinced her son to go to the hospital. Sitting in the front seat of the car, Sean turned to her partner in the back seat and thanked him for being there for his mother.

"He always had the grace and the love to say something like that," Paddy sobs.

Paddy Munro had two sets of twins, with Sean and Aaron being the oldest. (Submitted by Paddy Munro)

She sat with her son in the waiting room. He told the triage nurse he was suicidal and planned to jump off a bridge if they didn't keep him there. Paddy still regrets leaving when she thought he was being admitted to the hospital. Within 30 minutes, she got a call from the hotel where Sean was staying, letting her know he'd come back. 

Paddy spent the night calling every agency she knew that could intervene and help Sean get immediate treatment. Nobody came through, she says.

Sean was found dead in the morning, a month shy of his 47th birthday.

"He always wanted help," Paddy says. "He never wanted to leave us. He wanted to be with us."

Family doesn't get to join lawsuit

Sean Munro didn't leave a will. He didn't have an estate. That means he doesn't get to partake in the class-action lawsuit against Vancouver College, which has been winding its way through British Columbia's Supreme Court since 2021. His family, however, fully support the men who have stepped forward with claims against their alma mater and former teachers. 

Vancouver College declined an interview request but has indicated it would like to settle the case through mediation, rather than endure a trial that would likely take years to reach a resolution.

Joe Fiorante, a lawyer for the students, says that process would have to involve the school telling the truth about what it knew of the alleged abuse. Did the administrators know those six teachers had abused boys at Mount Cashel before coming to Vancouver? Did they welcome them anyway?

"All it's done is take me further away from my church," Paddy says. "I believe in God but I feel hate every time the Catholic church comes up."

The Munro family wants to see accountability in whatever form it may take. One year later, their grief is still as present as their love for Sean. His siblings say the anger is, too.

"Every time I think of him, it's there," Aaron says.

"He's lost. He's just lost," Terri adds. "And wanting to get better, and struggling and losing, and not knowing how [to change], and saying, 'Sorry I can't get better.'"

His mother does her best to see past the anger and guilt, and to remember her son for his shining qualities. 

"When I look at Sean, I don't think of Joe Burke," she says. "I just see a soul, and a beautiful young son who wanted help and always wanted to do better."

When Cameron Ortis approached the head of a company that was being probed by law enforcement, he allegedly told him that he had access to some highly "valuable" information and mentioned a "business proposition."

"You do not know me. I have information that I am confident you will find very valuable," reads an email to Vincent Ramos, the Canadian CEO of Phantom Secure. The email was entered into evidence at the start of Ortis's trial.

"I assure you that this is a business proposition. Nothing more. It is not risk free, of course, but the risk to reward ratio will prove to be more than acceptable."

That email and others are part of an astonishing tranche of documents that make up the agreed statement of facts between the Crown and the defence in Ortis's criminal trial.

The Crown presented the emails to jury members Tuesday. They argue the messages show Ortis was communicating intelligence to police targets. The defence has not commented on the emails in open court.

The former RCMP intelligence official faces six charges, including four counts of violating the Security of Information Act. 

Ortis, 51, is accused of three counts of sharing special operational information "intentionally and without authority" and one count of attempting to share special operational information. He also faces two Criminal Code charges: breach of trust and unauthorized use of a computer.

Ortis has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. His defence told reporters they believe they can prove he had the "authority to do everything he did."

According to the evidence presented to court so far, the RCMP was gathering information about Phantom Secure as part of an operation dubbed Project Saturation. Court has heard the RCMP believed Phantom Secure was providing encrypted phones at a price. The FBI arrested Ramos in Las Vegas in 2018.

The Crown says that, using the email handle 'See All Things,' Ortis reached out to Ramos on Feb. 5, 2015 and told him he had information about a multi-agency investigation targeting Phantom Secure.

Some of the emails shown to the court also used the handle "variablewinds."

Crown prosecutor Judy Kliewer told the jury that in one of Ortis's emails, the accused told Ramos certain "files detail this effort, intel about your associates and individuals using your network internationally."

At the time, Ortis was the director of operations research within RCMP National Security. He was later promoted to director general of the National Intelligence Coordination Centre in 2016.

Kliewer said Ortis urged Ramos to set up a secure email account and to contact him for more information.

Ortis said he had info on associate

Ramos replied, asking for more details.

"I am in the business of acquiring hard-to-get information that individuals in unique high-risk businesses find valuable. I sell that information to them," said the response.

"Through the course of my normal discovery ops (some call this hacking, others cracking) I came across a number of documents that pertain to your current efforts."

Screen grab from body cam video of Vincent Ramos when he was arrested by Bellingham Police on March 7, 2018.

When Ramos failed to loop back, Kliewer said, Ortis sent another email on March 21 suggesting he had information about Kapil Judge, Phantom Secure's technical manager.

"I thought I would check in and touch base. Did Judge arrive on the 8th as planned?" says one of the emails tabled in court Wednesday.

"Let me guess, he met someone 'friendly' while being secondaried by CBSA at the airport?"

Accused was asking for $20K, Crown says

Ramos replied that he was "a bit intrigued for sure" and promised to set up a secure account.

Kliewer told the jury Ortis followed up in late April by sending partial Canadian and international police agency intelligence on Phantom Secure. In that same message, she said, Ortis told Ramos he was "leaving enough remaining to allow you to assess whether or not you would be interested in acquiring the unembargoed full documents."

The documents included reports from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), a criminal intelligence assessment by the RCMP and a document summarizing other western intelligence and law enforcement information on the company.

That apparently convinced Ramos to set up a secure email account on Tutanota, an encrypted email service.

The jury heard that Ortis then asked for $20,000 in exchange for the unredacted documents.

But Ramos still had questions about how to interpret the documents and the identity of the person sending them to him. "Who are you??" he wrote.

Kliewer said Ortis then spelled it out for Ramos.

"For example, the FINTRAC intelligence would help you and your folks to explain transactions in advance. It will also allow you to avoid making the same mistakes. You will be able to see which transactions have 'blinked' on their radars and, more importantly, which have not," says an email presented to the court.

Ramos's arrest alerted RCMP to Ortis

Kliewer  said Ortis also told Ramos that police knew Phantom Secure's "most sensitive communication components were transiting through Canada, Panama, Japan and Hong Kong."

She told the jury that Ortis told Ramos law enforcement and intelligence agencies were co-operating to bring down Phantom Secure to get to his users and clients, including an unnamed drug cartel and Altaf Khanani, the Dubai-based head of an international money laundering network.

• Ex-RCMP intelligence official accused of leaking had 'authority to do everything he did': defence

• RCMP official accused of breaching Canada's secrecy law released on bail

Ramos is serving a nine-year prison sentence in the U.S. for racketeering conspiracy. His arrest kicked off the investigation into Ortis, leading up to the RCMP official's arrest in 2019.

The jury heard Wednesday from former RCMP staff sergeant Guy Belley, who was called in to review the contents of Ramos's computer in the U.S.

He said he was "totally shocked" to discover someone had sent him sensitive intelligence documents.

The hunt to find the leaker 

When the RCMP went searching for who could have sent those reports, the trail took them close to home.

According to the agreed statement of facts, Mounties determined that Ortis used the RCMP National Crime Data Bank in March 2015 and accessed an RCMP report outlining a plan to have an undercover police officer approach Judge at the Vancouver Airport.

Investigators also determined that, within a 15-minute window, Ortis queried the crime database for six names, including "Vincent Ramos," "Farzam," "Mehdizadeh," "Aria," "Phantom"and "Gemayel."