People affected by one of Canada's largest food-safety crises are finally getting their compensation — but the amount on cheques that start arriving this week will be less than expected.

The settlement is a bittersweet victory for those who survived and the families of those who didn't.

Karen Clark is one of those hoping to move on from the fateful day in the summer of 2008 when her mother ate a sandwich that contained tainted meat from a Maple Leaf Foods processing plant. Like many of the at least 23 people who died, Francis Clark was a senior living in a nursing home.

"I'm glad it's over," Clark said Saturday from her home near Belleville, Ont., after learning she’ll be receiving a settlement in the death of her mother. "You don’t have to have that hanging over your head every day. We can start moving on."

About a year after the crisis, Maple Leaf Foods set aside $27 million to be shared among the claimants.

However, the payout process took longer than expected because many of the provinces demanded medical expenses for the patients who got sick.

Steve Brown spent three weeks in Kingston General Hospital after eating a sandwich made with the listeria-tainted meat. The ensuing brain infection inflicted neurological damage that may be permanent.

"It took me a long time to realize the damage that had been done," Brown said, sitting in the sun-filled dining room of his home near Haliburton, Ont.

After extensive rehabilitation, he relearned how to walk. His short-term memory is still shaky and he has trouble keeping his balance when he walks. So the independent contractor gave up his contracting business and hopes to make a go of it building deck furniture.

By law, the Ontario government had the right to claim the expenses of Brown and the others in the province who got sick. Other provinces, including British Columbia and Quebec, filed similar claims for compensation.

Laura Bruneau, the Ottawa-based lawyer whose firm acted as the court-appointed claims administrator, says her office fielded many calls from frustrated people asking about their money. And while she can understand the frustration over the delays, Bruneau said, there’s nothing her office could have done to expedite the process.

"You have to wait until all the claims are settled," she told CBC News.

"And then you do the math. You look at how many claims are approved, what are they worth. You take that number and you lay it over what’s in the settlement fund, and then you see how much there is. And in order to satisfy all the claims, there was not enough money to pay everyone a hundred cents on the dollar."

The provinces got 85 cents for every dollar they claimed. People who got sick and family members of the individuals who died received 93 cents for every dollar claimed.

"In a manner of speaking, everyone’s not getting a hundred cents on the dollar," Bruneau said, adding when the pot of money is a fixed amount, it’s normal for the final payment to be less than people anticipated.

The seven per cent reduction means Brown will receive about $200,000. And while he’s grateful for the money, he said had been counting on receiving the full amount to pay off his mortgage.

Because he was so ill for so long, Brown’s wife, Helen, handled all the paperwork for the claim. She says she can understand that Ontario needed to recoup its medical expenses, but feels the courts "should have gone directly back to Maple Leaf … and not cut into what we had already been promised."

For her part, Clark is happy with the reduced amount of between $130,000 and $140,000. "I’d just like to put it back into my homestead. It’s 97 years old," she said.

As for laying blame, Clark says she’s not pointing any fingers at Maple Leaf Foods: "It could happen to any other company."

Instead, she said, she would rather advocate for a safer food system. With a federal budget on the horizon, the union representing federal inspectors is warning about possible cuts.

"They [the Canadian Food Inspection Agency) need more funding," Clark said. "In my own way, I’ll still be campaigning for that."