Case information

Aboriginal law — Treaty rights — Aboriginal title — Limitation of actions — Lower courts finding claims asserted by First Nations were not exempt from limitations defence — Whether, in action for judicial recognition of s. 35 Aboriginal or treaty rights, application of limitation statutes is contrary to or incompatible with principles set down in Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44, [2014] 2 S.C.R. 257, to the effect that consequential remedial relief will flow once a declaration is obtained and that s. 35 rights are subject to test of justification, not limitations — Whether policy rationales of statutory limitation periods apply to Aboriginal and treaty rights claims to preclude every species of relief, except for declarations, notwithstanding constitutional principle of honour of the Crown, the special and enduring relationship between Aboriginal peoples and Crown entrenched in treaties, reconciliation, access to justice, equality of treatment for the constitutionalized rights of Aboriginal peoples across geographical locations and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — Whether limitation statutes are unconstitutional, inoperative and of no effect to extent that they apply to bar remedial relief for Aboriginal peoples in respect to their collective, constitutionalized Aboriginal and treaty rights and claims — Constitution Act, 1982, s. 35(1).

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This case concerns the application of limitation periods to claims alleging breaches of treaty, unextinguished Aboriginal title, and other Aboriginal rights. The applicants argued that limitation periods are constitutionally inapplicable to their claims by virtue of s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. In the alternative that the limitation periods did apply, the parties disagreed on whether the applicants claim remedial orders, thereby engaging the limitations statute, or whether the relief claimed is merely declaratory.

The case management judge held that the Limitations Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. L 15, does not offend s. 35, and therefore the claims asserted by the applicants were not exempt from a limitations defence. However, while some of the claims were barred by the passage of time, claims for declaratory relief could proceed.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals.