Alexander von Gernet

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) brought two actions against the Crown and several municipalities.

In the Aboriginal Title Claim, SON sought a novel declaration of Aboriginal title to a large portion of the submerged lands in Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

The court dismissed this claim, finding that while SON had a spiritual connection to the water and relied on fishing, they did not establish sufficient and exclusive physical occupation of the claimed submerged lands at the time of British sovereignty in 1763.

In the Treaty Claim, SON alleged that the Crown breached Treaty 45½ (1836) by failing to protect the Bruce Peninsula from settler encroachments, and breached duties during the negotiation of Treaty 72 (1854).

The court found that the Crown breached the honour of the Crown by failing to diligently fulfill its promise to protect the Peninsula from squatters, and by inappropriate conduct during the August 1854 treaty negotiations.

However, the court dismissed the claims for breach of fiduciary duty.

The court also declared that Treaty 72 did not extinguish SON's harvesting rights, which continue on unsold lands and on sold lands where the use is not incompatible with harvesting.

Property-specific remedies and defences were deferred to a second phase of the trial.

The plaintiff First Nation brought an action against Canada and Ontario for failing to set aside a reserve for them under Treaty No. 9 in 1906.

The parties agreed that a reserve should have been set aside.

The threshold issue at trial was determining the 'crystallization date'—the point in time at which the band's population should be assessed to calculate the size of the reserve.

The plaintiffs argued the population should be determined as of the date the reserve is actually set aside or the date of the court's declaration.

The Crown argued the population should be determined as of the date the treaty was made.

The court held that the common intention of the parties, based on the text of the treaty and its historical context, was that reserves were to be set aside and sized according to the population at the time the treaty was made.

The Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation sought judicial review of several Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) decisions.

The OLRB had certified a union for employees at a casino located on the First Nation's reserve.

The First Nation subsequently passed its own Labour Relations Code and argued that it superseded the provincial Labour Relations Act, 1995, based on aboriginal and treaty rights under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, upholding the OLRB's findings that it had jurisdiction to decide the constitutional question and that the First Nation failed to establish an aboriginal or treaty right to regulate labour relations.

The court also found that the OLRB's procedural rulings were not patently unreasonable.