Regina lawyer Tony Merchant says he can't understand why Ottawa would reject application forms for Indian residential school payments and is accusing the government of foot-dragging.

However, according to the Indian Residential School Resolution Department, the problem is the Merchant Law Group distributed "unofficial" versions of the application forms that it can't accept.

Lawyer Tony Merchant's Regina firm has handled thousands of residential school cases.
(CBC)

"This was done without the permission of the official court administrator or the government of Canada," a background document on the department's website says.

Former residential school students who are in line for compensation under a multibillion-dollar deal that was ratified last week are supposed to wait for official applications to come on or shortly after Sept. 19. 

Thousands of former students say they suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse at the schools, which were typically run by church groups under the supervision of Ottawa.

All of the more than 70,000 surviving former students will receive a "common experience" payment, averaging about $28,000 each.

The government says any unofficial forms that are sent in will be returned in the mail.

Merchant says if people are ready with the information, it doesn't make sense to make them wait another month. Many of the former students are elderly and have been seeking compensation for more than a decade.

"They [the government] should have been ready to go and they ought to move forward, there's no reason for this delay," he said. "It's part of the unconscionable delay."

Merchant said he was given a copy of the final form and he sent it to people who wanted to be ready.

Some of them completed the unofficial document only to learn that Ottawa will not accept any paperwork until after Sept. 20.

"What could possibly cause the government when they have the form, to take a form and send it back and inconvenience people to send it again?" he asked.

Edmonton lawyer Steven Cooper said people should wait for the official forms rather than risk further delays with the draft form.

"People have been filling out forms for the last five or six years and I'm sure they're sick of it," Cooper said. "The last thing that anybody wants to see happen is another form gets filled out only to have it sit on a desk for a couple of weeks or a month and then get rejected."