Miner sues Canada’s province of Ontario for $110 million

This is such an important matter for mining and other industry across the country

I hope you investigate and stimulate debate.

“The reckless Crown sovereignty giveaway behavior of Ontario’s political leaders and senior bureaucrats and the anti-‘law and order’ behavior of the Ontario Crown
and the OPP in the Caledonia, Frontenac Ventures and Platinex cases, and
in their stupefying passivity in the face of the many recent illegal
“Idle No More” roadblocks and rail blockages, is inexplicable and
intensely worrisome. Our elites acted like weak, reactive followers, not
leaders. Their harmful conduct in this regard is the main reason why
Indian leaders…can so casually (and, shamefully but so typically,
without any comment or criticism from our political leaders) expressly
threaten “blockades and even acts of mischief” in relation to the ‘Ring
of Fire’ project, and why Manitoba Chief Nepinak can so casually and
arrogantly threaten the use of “warriors” to advance his political and
economic goals.

“No less worrisome is the too-silent and servile acceptance by our
political leaders, top law enforcement officials and senior civil
servants of these harmful Court decisions generally.

“They should be lawfully and loudly pushing back against them with
everything they’ve got! They should be trying to restrict them to the
narrowest possible application. They should be loudly complaining about
them, making the citizenry and the higher courts aware by all the usual
political and legal methods that they believe the higher courts are
being too activist — that they’re going way too far in legal theory and
policy — that profound, devolutionary constitutional change is the
primary business of the legislatures, not the courts.

“Instead of pushing back like this, these senior people — who are
trustees and guardians of our overall general welfare — are adopting an
overly-passive and deferential, almost forelock-tugging response to
every new “aboriginal law” jurisprudential excess foisted on Canadians.
Sometimes even worse, as exemplified by the activities of the Ontario
government in the ‘Solid Gold Resources’ situation, they have, on their
own volition, out of a completely misplaced sense of public duty — by
extending ‘Haida Nation’ far beyond its intended scope — gone way ahead
of the courts in their wrong-headed, devolutionary zeal to act
“honourably” towards Canada’s Indians…

“At their best, our elites, like the Ontario politicians and
bureaucrats responsible for the legal messes described in these cases,
are acting like mere order-takers — like the proverbial “head waiters”
of Canadian constitutional lore — except this time, the sole diner
giving orders is the Supreme Court of Canada. At their worst, as
exemplified by all of the above, our elites are active and enabling
participants in the destruction of our resource-based economy and in the
dangerous erosion and emasculation of necessary and legitimate Crown
sovereignty.

“It’s as if our “best and brightest” no longer believe in value of a
strong state or in the worth of what they do, or in what they represent.
It’s as if they don’t believe in the value of a strong and unified
province or country, with the Crown representing and embodying that
unity and strength and best able to preserve and advance the general
welfare.

“It’s as if they don’t believe with any passion in the core Western
value-principle that the rule of law must be maintained and upheld above
all — that without the rule of law, as people have known and written
about for centuries, there is chaos, danger and disorder.

“It’s as if mature, responsible, principled adults — those
increasingly rare adults who are unafraid to say “no”– are no longer in
charge…
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“Haida Nation jurisprudence and our political and bureaucratic
elite’s weak and confused response to it represents a full frontal
assault by our ruling classes on the century-old “settled customs” of
the Canadian people and to their will as expressed in our laws, history
and practices.

“These settled customs — near-absolute Crown sovereignty subject
only to a competing set of individual rights, property rights and the
rule of law — should be inviolable. To diminish Crown sovereignty —
the fount and guardian of property rights and the rule of law,
themselves the basis of a superior economic system which has provided so
well for us — as Haida Nation jurisprudence has diminished Crown
sovereignty, is to diminish our culture, our very civilization itself.
Ordinary Canadians know or at least sense that. Unfortunately our
“ruling classes” — our elites — seem not to know that any more.

“Why don’t our leaders — our “best and brightest” — seem to
appreciate the need to fight against the Haida Nation-inspired
diminution and fragmentation of sole Crown sovereignty and control over
the ultimate welfare of all Canadians?…

“Why don’t our political leaders in general all jump all over chief
Nepinak’s threat to, with “warriors”… bring the Canadian economy to its
knees.”?…

“Perhaps it’s partly a consequence of the divide between urban and
rural/wilderness Canada. Most Canadian people, most of our politicians,
judges, bureaucrats and most of the rest of our governing classes,
regardless of where they spent their formative years, live and work in
our big cities, and eventually come to exhibit a totally urban outlook.
The reality of life in rural communities and on Indian reservations is
likely something they have little real or personal knowledge of —
something they may have an overly romantic view of, or a limited or
faulty intellectual appreciation of…

“It’s partly a failure of imagination on their part. It’s partly the
natural indifference of urban-based elites in any political power centre
to the problems of “lowly provincials” living in the hinterlands — the
outer reaches of their imagined imperiums.

“Perhaps, in their Ottawa or provincial capital bubble, they don’t
see it as a real problem involving flesh and blood human beings. Perhaps
they only see it all in terms of legal or bureaucratic or “allocation
of resources” problems — problems to be the subject of mere meetings,
studies, reports and memoranda- abstract problems concerning faraway
small-town, rural or wilderness people — those people themselves more
abstract than real.

“Perhaps they see it as a problem revolving around mere disembodied
words and phrases like ‘aboriginal culture”, “aboriginal rights”,
“self-government”, “self-determination”, “consult and accommodate” —
“verbal problems”, as opposed to real problems like poverty, alcoholism,
drug abuse, incest, child abuse, violence, segregation, corruption,
anomie, despair and suicide. “The surest path to intellectual perdition
is the abandonment of real problems for the sake of verbal problems.”
(John Lukacs, quoting Karl Popper, in “At the End of an Age”)…

“Regardless of the causes, the consequences of Haida Nation for the
economy and daily life in the rural and more remote places where Indians
reside, and where many non-urban Canadians reside, and where many
important activities and undertakings relating to Canada’s
resource-based economy are based and taking place, are especially
important. The hinterlands, the outer fringes, places like Espanola,
areas like northern Ontario, rural Manitoba or Saskatchewan or the B.C.
interior, need more Crown sovereignty, not less. We pity and decry
“failed states”, characterized by weak government authority. Isn’t that
the direction in which Haida Nation and its devolutionary legal
successors is pushing Canada?

“Not only does the Haida Nation case and its legal descendants, a
vast construct of dream-castle words, phrases and harmful, impractical
and unworkable concepts and practices, set us all on the path to
intellectual perdition, it condemns Indians to remain in more entrenched
fashion than ever before in their seemingly never-ending state of
actual, social, political and economic perdition. Because, in the final
analysis, it is only the state, represented in Canada by our Crowns,
that can protect the rights and integrity of the individual — that can
protect our environment; that can be the overseer of our economic
development; that can protect our vulnerable citizenry, personal and corporate; that can protect the national welfare generally!

“The original framers of Canada’s constitution understood this.
Section 56 of the Constitution Act, 1867 permits the federal government
to disallow any law passed by any province. The obvious, sensible
thinking behind this is that parochial, local interests should never be
allowed to be put ahead of the national interest as a whole…

“…Freely-elected governments must be the repository of ultimate power and sovereignty.

“It’s also highly ironic because Canada’s constitutional history has
been so characterized by a constant, vigorous struggle between the
federal government and the provinces, in which each side has
aggressively defended their own turf — each side has essentially sought
maximum power and control at the expense of the other; each side has
sought to maintain and strengthen its sovereignty, it’s sovereign
powers, at the expense of the other.

“Yet when it comes to Canada’s Indians, each of these sides has
simply dropped their gloves, leaned back against the ropes of the
constitutional ring and played rope-a-dope — dumbly and passively
taking punch after legal punch — seemingly willing to surrender without
any kind of a fight at all more and more of their legal powers to them.

“It’s inexplicable on any rational basis…

“Our higher courts have created a new constitutional order in the area of aboriginal law.

“There is still of course only one law for all Canadians, but in the
area of Indian entitlement claims, you will be pleased to know that our
higher courts have made it new and improved — it is now, with respect
to our Indian citizenry only (well, we’re not exactly sure any more
about the “citizenry” part,) more comprehensive, highly textured and
nuanced. In this area, our “one law for all” now has two branches —
one for Indians and one for the rest of us.

“And unfortunately, you don’t get two branches for the price of one. You have to pay a little more…

We need to restore Canadian Crown sovereignty to the pre-eminent and
beneficial state it was in before the passage of section 35 of the
Constitution Act, 1982 and the harmful jurisprudence, legislation and
government policies that have emanated from it.”

–‘The Imperative of Sole Crown Authority’,
D. Peter Best

http://www.peterbestlawoffices.com/default.asp?id=2367