THIS TALK HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE
presents
Mary Eberts
Acts of Attrition
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (room FA2) – Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
The Supreme Court of Canada has expressed its preference for negotiation as the principal way of realizing the Aboriginal rights in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, including that of self-governance. Yet, there is little or no oversight of these negotiations, which are left to proceed at a pace largely determined directly or indirectly by government. That pace is a very slow one. Meanwhile, parallel developments, in political life as well as jurisprudence, are putting in peril the potential for self-government to be realized. Three of these will be canvassed in this paper: the continuing struggle to achieve equity in registration under the Indian Act, the limitations placed on the emergent duty to consult, and the neo-conservative campaign to create fee simple interests in reserve land. By disappearing the registered Indian population entitled to reserve land (Indian Act registration), or reserve land itself (if experience with other fee simple schemes is any predictor) or making traditional lands involved in negotiations irrevocably unsuitable for its traditional purposes and thus undermining the claim, any or all of these developments could well render the right of self-government under section 35 hollow indeed. I argue that it is necessary to attend to these threats, and adjust both government policy and Court response accordingly, if we are to prevent the loss of self-government through acts of attrition.
Mary Eberts has a national practice in constitutional and Aboriginal Law, froma base in Toronto, and has been litigation counsel for the Native Women's Association of Canada for 18 years. She is currently an SJD student at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.
For more workshop information, please contact Professor Lorraine Weinrib at l.weinrib@utoronto.ca or Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
