From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Tom Flanagan

Ottawa’s refusal to test Indigenous claims in court is fuelling a billion-dollar wave of settlements and legal copycats

First Nations led the charge. Now the Métis are catching up. Ottawa’s legal surrender strategy could make payouts the new national policy.

Indigenous class-action litigation seeking compensation for historical grievances began in earnest with claims related to Indian Residential Schools. The federal government eventually chose negotiation over litigation, settling for about $5-billion with “survivors.” Then–prime minister Stephen Harper hoped this would close the chapter, but it opened the floodgates instead. Class actions have followed ever since.

By 2023, the federal government had paid or committed $69.6-billion in 2023 dollars to settle these claims. What began with residential schools expanded into day schools, boarding homes, the “Sixties Scoop,” unsafe drinking water, and foster-care settlements.

Most involved status Indians. Métis claims had generally been unsuccessful—until now.

Download the Essay. (4 pages)

Tom Flanagan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and a senior fellow of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

One of Canada’s top constitutional legal experts blasted the push by federal, provincial, and municipal officials for all-encompassing Indigenous “reconciliation,” noting that the reality is all Canadians are and should be equal under the law and no one alive today is responsible for proven historical wrongdoings. 

John Carpay, founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), noted in a recent commentary published in The Epoch Times that so-called reverse racism against non-Indigenous Canadians is still “racism.” 

“Well-intentioned racism, to achieve the vague objective of ‘equity,’ is still racism,” Carpay noted.

“The only sure path to reconciliation, social harmony, and equal opportunity in Canada is the principle of equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”

Carpay noted that “the fact that aboriginal ethnic groups arrived in Canada earlier than other ethnic groups should be completely irrelevant when it comes to the application of the law.”

“Nobody disputes that different aboriginal tribes lived in this land before the arrival of Europeans, Africans, and Asians. The question is: Why should this fact matter?” he noted. 

Carpay observed that when officials and courts apply the “law” differently to some “Canadians because of their race, ancestry, ethnicity, or descent,” the predictable and inevitable outcome “is strife, resentment, and fear.”

His comments came in light of a recent court ruling in British Columbia affecting property rights, Cowichan Tribes v. Canada (Attorney General), which saw the provincial Supreme Court rule that decades-long land grants by the government were not valid and violated a land title held by the tribes.

In essence, as noted by Carpay, the court “told the people (of various ethnicities) who live in some parts of Richmond, B.C., that the money they paid for their own properties does not guarantee them the right to own and enjoy their own homes.”

“The court ruled that the land titles system in B.C., which is built on the concept of indefeasible (indestructible) title, cannot be used or relied upon in the face of Cowichan claims. The Musqueam Indian Band and the Tsawwassen First Nation, claiming the same territory, also lost in court,” he stated. 

Carpay noted that such a court ruling will only cause more division among Canadians and Indigenous peoples.

“Does anyone seriously believe that this Cowichan court ruling will bring reconciliation between Canadians of aboriginal ancestry and Canadians whose ancestry is Chinese, East Indian, Filipino, Nigerian, German, or English?” he observed.

“Of course not. The only results will be inter-ethnic fear, strife and conflict.”

He then observed what is a fact with land claims, noting, “Is there even one Canadian alive today about whom it could honestly be said that she or he stole land away from aboriginals?”

“Of course not. The court’s legal reasoning is based on inter-generational guilt, whereby people must pay for the sins (real or alleged) of their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers. If one were to apply the court’s logic to today’s Germans and Japanese, these two ethnic groups would be forced to pay today for the atrocities that their ancestors committed during World War II,” he stated. 

“Every continent features a long history of military, linguistic, cultural, and economic conquests as between different people groups. Would it be a good idea to apply the principle of inter-generational guilt to all of the world’s ethnic groups and countries? If not, then why try it now in Canada?”

Despite the concerns raised by Carpay, some federal politicians want to make it a crime to “deny” still unproven mass grave residential indigenous schools deaths claims.

Carpay warned that defining legal rights based on a person’s “membership in an oppressor’ group or a ‘victim’ group is Marxist.”

“Marxism repudiates the dignity and value of the individual, replacing it with a fixation on groups that are perpetually at war with each other,” he noted.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, new private members’ Bill C-254, An Act To Amend The Criminal Code introduced by New Democrat MP Leah Gazan, looks to give jail time to people who engage in so-called “Denialism.” The bill would look to jail those question the media and government narrative surrounding Canada’s “Indian Residential School system” that there are mass graves despite no evidence to support this claim.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

Last year, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.