Survivors of the St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., will have to wait until March to find out if the courts will even proceed with their abuse compensation case.

Edmund Metatawabin and a woman known only as K-10106 attended the notorious St. Anne’s, a church-run, federally funded school when they were young children. They say they were victims of horrific abuse, including being shocked by an electrified chair and having to eat their own vomit.

Metatawabin and the female survivor have led a court challenge, arguing they should receive proper compensation for the abuse they suffered.

The two survivors want the Superior Court to order a full-scale inquiry into why records of a criminal investigation and prosecutions that took place as a result of abuse allegations were only disclosed under court orders in 2014. This secrecy and delay meant other survivors missed out on compensation granted under settlement of a class action related to the residential school system, they say.

More than 700 other former students, told the Ontario Provincial Police what happened to them but their testimony has not been included in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission archives held at the University of Manitoba, a lawyer familiar with the case said.

Survivors say Canada has failed to publicly disclose all the abuse it knows about and now the federal government is fighting the St. Anne’s survivors.

But, Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell told a packed Osgoode Hall courtroom on Wednesday that he is not sure whether he has jurisdiction to hear the case due to the amount of issues involved. Many survivors and members of the Fort Albany community on the James Bay coast made their way to Toronto for Wednesday’s brief hearing. Return flights from Fort Albany First Nation to Toronto cost about $2,000.

Perell added that in order to decide the jurisdiction question, he is also waiting for a written decision from the Court of Appeal, which last week agreed with Ottawa in another residential school abuse case.

The St. Anne’s survivors also asked the court on Wednesday to ensure they will not be forced to pay for the federal government’s legal bills if they lose their case. Perell agreed to give the survivors temporary cost immunity.

On the question of jurisdiction, Metatawabin said that perhaps the case should be heard on the international courts level.

“His (Perell’s) own people have committed atrocities,” said Metatawabin, referring to the Canadian government’s role in residential schools. For more than 100 years, 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in residential institutions aimed at “schooling the Indian out of them,” and “civilizing” them to fit into Canadian society.

“Now he says he can’t begin to resolve the situation. Well, who can? That is what we have to consider. If not this court, we will have to look elsewhere. Our survivors are dying,” said Metatawabin, who was a finalist for a Governor General’s Award for his non-fiction book Up Ghost River, written with Alexandra Shimo. The book was a personal account of the physical and sexual abuse he suffered at St. Anne’s in the 1960s.

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This case doesn’t belong in Canada, agreed Mike Metatawabin, Edmund’s brother. He attended St. Anne’s from age 5 to 10. “There is a whole allegiance to the Crown here — the police, the judge, the courts — so how can a society take itself to court?” he asked.