A Commentary On The Restoule Case As It Comes Before The Supreme Court Of Canada

Peter Best is a retired lawyer living in Sudbury, Ontario. He is the author of the book, There Is No Difference- An Argument for the Abolition of the Indian Reserve System and Special Race-based Laws and Entitlements for Canada’s Indians. (thereisnodifferfence.ca). An expanded version of this important article can be read at thereisnodifference.ca.

Best’s piece, posted below with his permission, deals perhaps the most important indigenous grievance case ever to come before the Supreme Court of Canada, a case if won by the aboriginal side would mean the overturning of land and sovereignty surrenders, the key issue in nearly every post-1850 treaty signed between Canada and various indigenous bands and tribes.

According to Best:

On November 7th and 8th , 2023, several important legal and fiscal issues will be argued before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Crown-Indigenous rights case: Restoule vs. Ontario and Canada.

The main issue is whether the 19th century treaties that Great Britain and Canada entered with Indigenous peoples were land surrender or land sharing agreements.

First Nations bands have argued that their people were, and remain, autonomous, self-governing “nations,” each with its own “legal order,” “governance practices,” and “jurisdiction” over their “exclusive territory,” that they “shared with,” but did not surrender to, the Crown. They argue that the treaties they signed with the Crown give rise to permanent “nation to nation treaty relationships.”

If the Supreme Court accepts the notion of land sharing and nation-to-nation treaty relationships, rights never granted in any of the treaties, this will transform Canada into a nation of self-governing 634 so-called First Nations, a balkanizing recipe that would surely force most of we “settler-colonialists” to consider going back to our ancestral homelands.

Don’t miss reading this important piece.