Bodies of 2 Innu babies to be exhumed in first for Quebec's new law

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

The bodies of two Innu infants who died of whooping cough in a hospital in Baie-Comeau in 1970 are going to be exhumed, a first for Quebec's new law designed to help Indigenous families get answers about children who died alone in clinics or hospitals.

"It's quite incredible to believe that some families have been looking for answers for more than 40 years," Ian Lafrenière, the CAQ minister responsible for relations with First Nations and Inuit, told CBC in an interview Thursday.

Radio-Canada's program Enquête first brought to light in 2015 stories of several Indigenous families in Quebec who were prevented from accompanying sick children to health-care facilities where they died in the 1960s and '70s. 

In 2021, Lafrenière and the CAQ government passed a law with the support of all parties in the National Assembly.

That law set up a support team to help these Indigenous families obtain and interpret government documents that might offer them more answers about what happened to their children. 

The law also allows, in some cases, for bodies to be exhumed. Two court decisions last week have paved the way for the first two bodies to be exhumed under the new law.

The government covers all the costs for families going through the process.

"This is an important step and we'll do this together. Making sure that the families keep their dignity through this horrible moment, this is important for me," Lafrenière said.

The circumstances of the two cases are similar.

Both involve babies born in the Innu community of Pessamit on the North Shore.

One was four months old, and the other less than a month old when they were sent to hospital in Baie-Comeau in 1970.

"When both children got sick, governmental officials told the parents that they could not accompany them. So both mothers had to let their children go alone, and then both children died," Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, a lawyer who worked with the families, told CBC.

That was not the only injustice the families suffered.