Case Commentary: Manitoba Métis Federation v. Canada and Manitoba

Abstract

Some 142 years after the adoption of the Manitoba Act, 1870, the Supreme Court of Canada came down with a decision in the Manitoba Métis Federation v. Canada and Manitoba, a case that revolved around the land clauses in the Act. When the District of Assiniboia-often known as the Red River Settlement-entered Confederation as the Province of Manitoba in 1870 under the terms of the Manitoba Act, sections 30 and 33 contained an anomaly relative to both earlier and later British colonies that were to form the provinces of Canada: 30. All ungranted or waste lands in the Province shall be, from and after the date of the said transfer, vested in the Crown, and administered by the Government of Canada for the purposes of the Dominion, subject to, and except and so far as the same may be affected by, the conditions and stipulations contained in the agreement for the surrender of Rupert's Land by the Hudson's Bay Company to Her Majesty. 33. The Governor General in Council shall from time to time settle and appoint the mode and form of Grants of Land from the Crown, and any Order in Council for that purpose when published in the Canada Gazette, shall have the same force and effect as if it were a portion of this Act. Contrary to sections 92(5), 109, and 117, as well as the Third Schedule of the Constitution Act, 1867, s. 30 of the Manitoba Act provided that "All ungranted or waste lands" fell under the Crown in the right of Canada, and not of Manitoba. This anomaly was not to be resolved until the Constitution Act, 1930. Meanwhile, by way of compensation, the Manitoba Act contained two further clauses that concerned two types of land claims: the Indigenous title of the Métis and the quieting of existing titles. 31. And whereas, it is expedient, towards the extinguishment of the Indian Title to the lands in the Province, to appropriate a portion of such ungranted lands, to the extent of one million four hundred thousand acres thereof, for the benefit of the families of the half-breed residents, it is hereby enacted, that, under regulations to be from time to time made by the Governor General in Council, the Lieutenant-Governor shall select such lots or tracts in such parts of the Province as he may deem expedient, to the extent aforesaid, and divide the same among the children of the half-breed heads of families residing in the Province at the time of the said transfer to Canada, and the same shall be granted to the said children respectively, in such mode and on such conditions as to settlement and otherwise, as the Governor General in Council may from time to time determine.

Rebuilding Indigenous nations through constitutional development: a case study of the Métis in Canada

“…The recognition of title to land has been a key demand made by Métis leaders since the nineteenth century (Chartrand ). Despite Canada's long‐standing position that Métis land rights were extinguished in the late nineteenth century through the scrip process, the Métis dispute this claim, and insist that they still hold title to their historic homeland (see discussion in O'Toole ). The MNC (: 11) describes the general boundaries of the Historic Métis Nation Homeland as

the traditional territory upon which the Métis people have historically lived and relied upon within west central North America.

…”

Her Majesty's Justice Be Done: Métis Legal Mobilization and the Pitfalls to Indigenous Political Movement Building

“…7–9). At the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 2010, Chief Justice Scott writing for a unanimous court upheld the trial findings while making several changes to the legal reasoning and logics deployed by the trial judge (see O'Toole, 2014). The Supreme Court ultimately held in 2013 that the Crown did not fulfil its responsibility to act honourably in distributing the land owed to the Métis after 1870 ( MMF v. Canada , 2013: para.…”