Thomas Bell

The applicants, members of the Grassy Meadows First Nation, brought an application for judicial review challenging the Minister of Natural Resources' authority to approve forest licences and management plans that allegedly infringed their Treaty 3 hunting and fishing rights.

The Minister and the licensee, Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., brought motions to quash the application.

The Divisional Court held that a single judge has jurisdiction to quash an application for judicial review.

The court quashed the application on the basis that much of the relief sought, which involved constitutional challenges and declarations against a private company, fell outside the court's judicial review jurisdiction.

Furthermore, the court exercised its inherent jurisdiction to quash the application because the complex factual and constitutional issues, including aboriginal treaty rights, required a full trial rather than a summary application.

The application was quashed with leave to commence an action.

The provincial government cancelled the Niagara Tender Fruit Lands Program and breached a contract to purchase a restrictive covenant from the respondent landowners.

The arbitrator awarded the landowners the full purchase price of the covenant plus consequential damages.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that awarding the full purchase price amounted to double recovery, as the landowners retained their unencumbered land and regained the freedom to sell it.

The award for the purchase price was deleted, but the award for consequential interest costs was upheld and increased.