Fifty years ago in Quebec the care of children living in Roman Catholic run orphanages was paid by the provincial government, but those in mental institutions were financed by the Canadian government. In the 1940's and 50's, Quebec Minister Maurice Duplesiss entered into a scheme with the Catholic Church to defraud the government by relabeling children left in orphanages by unwed mothers as psychotic or mentally deficient to gain greater funding. The Church and the Quebec provincial government also relabeled orphanages as mental institutions as part of the plan.

When the mental institutions were closed in the 1990's, the profit scheme came to light and a scandal erupted. The survivors now adults began to tell about the horrors of the stories of being imprisoned in insane asylums from childhood---the profound abuse, treatment as slave labor, electro-shock treatments, sexual abuse, physical tortures, straitjackets, and medical experiments.

Confronted with the evidence the government chose to trivialize the impact and refused to punish the clergy responsible. Eventually in 2001 in an attempt to stop further inquiry into the scandal, the government offered $15,000 per orphan in damages. This settlement outraged the victims and they pressed for more damages, further investigation, and justice. How much did the Church benefit from the relabeling of orphans?

"It was definitely to the financial advantage of certain religious institutions to transfer these normal children to psychiatric hospitals, in order to profit from a higher daily subsidy for each child it was established that the religious communities involved were able to obtain, in 1999 dollars, an additional $70 million for the years between 1940 and 1960 (a mentally deficient child would provide greater subsidies than a normal child). According to the analysis, this amount represents a minimum amount since it does not take into account the unpaid labor which the children were forced into during their stays in these asylums. The financial advantages for the Quebec Government, though much more difficult to evaluate, are no less real. The meager sums spent by the Duplessis Government on orphanages and psychiatric institutions greatly contributed to the problems of these children. As well the Quebec Government encouraged the confinement of these children to psychiatric institutions, rather than invest in the welfare of these beneficiaries in order to themselves profit from more generous federal subsidies available for health care. Finally, in the case of the Mont-Providence hospital, the Quebec Government is directly responsible for its conversion to psychiatric facility as of 1954. This change led to the confinement of approximately 350 normal children in a psychiatric asylum. "

In 2006 the Canadian government finally agreed to pay out 26 million dollars to the 1,000 to 2,000 orphans still alive if they agreed not to sue the Catholic Church. The Church never apologized. The period of Maurice Duplessis' tenure which was known for conservative and church oriented politics is called "The Great Darkness" in Canada and the treatment of the orphans as the "Canadian Holocaust." Much of what was perpetrated has been hidden from history and still remains uninvestigated.