The Supreme Court of BC has granted the Canadian government until April 2026 to change the Indian law to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms after a successful legal challenge by the descendants of people who resigned from their condition under the law.
The Court ruled that the provisions of the law that denied the status to people with “family history of consumption vision”, where their parents or grandparents renounced their status and the benefits that it entails, infringed in the rights of the plaintiffs.
The ruling says that the Canadian government agreed with the plaintiffs that the registration provisions of the law perpetuated “disadvantages, stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination” linked to the derivation by denying people the benefits of the Indian State due to their family history.
The lawyer Ryan Beaton says that the ruling occurs eight years after he met one of the plaintiffs, Sharon Nicholas, whose grandfather renounced his condition in 1944 to prevent his children from going to residential schools.
Beaton says that when people like Nicholas’s grandfather were signed, his children also lost their status, and Nicholas had been working for decades on the subject before challenging him in court.
Beaton says that a related collective lawsuit filed this month in the Federal Court is seeking damage to the Canadian government for the lost benefits related to the denial of the State under the law, and it is estimated that the class includes between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
He says the ruling has been “incredibly gratifying” for Nicholas.
“So, for her it has been, you know, a 40 -year trip to get to this point. He is an incredible person,” said Beaton.
“He entered with a lot of investigation. He taught me much not only about the history of his family, but of the way in which the registration provisions of Indian law have affected his family.”
He says that the case was something unusual because the Canadian government admitted that the law, as written, was not in line with the letter, saving the plaintiffs a trial after they originally filed their lawsuit in 2021.
Beaton says that there were many reasons why people renounced their status, but the law meant that their descendants lost benefits, such as treaty settlement funds, members of the first nations were divided.
“In those days, if it were an Indian, he could not vote, he could not possess certain forms of property, his children had to go to the residential school,” he said.
“Then, to get out of those disadvantages, some people chose to give up their Indian state.”
He says that Parliament had tried to fix the law in the past, but was not successful. The plaintiffs have to “obtain the change through the courts if it is not going through Parliament,” he said.
With the deadline of April 2026 of the Court to comply with the law of the Charter, Beaton says that it could be a “legislative solution” that will be applied throughout the country instead of only BC.
