Commentary
The Cowichan Tribes versus Canada case, recently decided by the B.C. Supreme Court, has been continuing for 11 years, including 513 days of trial hearings, and is already probably the longest trial in Canadian history and one of the most complicated. It has already been appealed and will presumably end in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Immense controversy has been provoked by the court’s recognition of the superiority in some cases of aboriginal title over the fee simple ownership of subsequent parties. The facts are specialized, and so fears that the native peoples in general could make a successful claim for ownership of the entire country, with the approximately 95 percent of non-aboriginal owners mere tenants of the innumerable tribes, bands, and clans among the First Nations, are exaggerated….