B.C. land claim court ruling muddies reconciliation waters

This week, about 150 homeowners in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond received letters from the city’s mayor, Malcolm Broday, advising them that an August B.C. Supreme Court ruling “may compromise the status and validity of your ownership.”

That’s an understatement. The ruling, if it survives an appeal by the city and the province, could extinguish the homeowners’ titles to the properties they have owned and occupied for decades.

The ripple effects could also be felt across the country if this case eventually makes it up to the Supreme Court of Canada and if the country’s highest court upholds it.

Justice Barbara Young determined that because the Cowichan First Nations had used an 800-acre site along the Fraser River as a summer fishing village more than 150 years ago, it should now have