{"id":1192,"date":"2014-07-02T15:38:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T15:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thor.ca\/\/blog\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2014-07-02T15:38:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T15:38:36","slug":"supreme-court-of-canada-considers-existence-and-nature-of-aboriginal-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/supreme-court-of-canada-considers-existence-and-nature-of-aboriginal-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court of Canada considers existence and nature of Aboriginal title"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Tsilhqot\u2019in Nation v. British Columbia<\/em><\/a>, 2014 SCC 44, the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed that the doctrine of terra nullius<\/em> \u2013 no one owned the land prior to European assertion of sovereignty \u2013 never applied in Canada: the Royal Proclamation<\/em> (1763), R.S.C. 1985, App. II, No. 1 (paragraph 69).\u00a0 Where Aboriginal title can be established, such title confers overriding legal and beneficial ownership rights analogous to those associated with fee simple: essentially the right to use and control the land and to reap the benefits flowing from it (paragraphs 2 and 73).\u00a0 However, this right represents a collective<\/em> title held not only for the present Aboriginal generation but for all succeeding generations; this means the title cannot be alienated (except to the Crown) or encumbered in ways that would prevent future generations of the Aboriginal group from using and enjoying it (paragraph 74).\u00a0 The Crown can only infringe on Aboriginal title with the consent of the Aboriginal group or where the encumbrance is justified by a compelling and substantial public purpose that is not inconsistent with the Crown\u2019s fiduciary duty to the Aboriginal group (paragraphs 2 and 88).\u00a0 As a practical matter, in any proposed resource development where Aboriginal title is claimed, the Crown and project proponents will likely gain certainty only \u201c\u2026by obtaining the consent of the interested Aboriginal group\u201d (see paragraph 97).\u00a0 Short of such consent, any project rights secured might be reversed retroactively if they are later shown to unjustifiably infringe on Aboriginal title (paragraph 92).\u00a0 This case will likely have important implications on the tax characterization of certain project costs in many resource industries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Tsilhqot\u2019in Nation v. British Columbia<\/em><\/a>, 2014 SCC 44, the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed that the doctrine of terra nullius<\/em> \u2013 no one owned the land prior to European assertion of sovereignty \u2013 never applied in Canada: the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}