Ontario First Nation leaders tell resource companies not to negotiate with provincial Métis group

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 05, 2025 6:01 AM EST | Last Updated: March 5

Ontario First Nation leaders utilized this week's Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada league to request that assets companies not negociate with the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO).

They accidental the Métis radical has nary morganatic right to beryllium consulted connected projects on their lands oregon to payment from specified projects – an allegation the MNO rejects.

"There are nary historical Métis successful our territories," said Jason Batise, the enforcement manager of the Wabun Tribal Council.

"And yet the Ontario authorities argumentation insists that we prosecute with them, that manufacture prosecute with them."

The Wabun Tribal Council is challenging the argumentation successful court, helium said.

The quality league was the latest section successful a conflict that has pitted the Chiefs of Ontario and the Manitoba Métis Federation against the Ontario Métis group, a conflict that the second characterizes as politically motivated.

It comes arsenic Ontario premier Doug Ford, citing the economical menace posed by caller American tariffs, has renewed his propulsion to fast-track caller assets improvement successful the state – a determination First Nation leaders person besides pushed backmost against.

'What's next? Who other wants to beryllium Indigenous?'

Batise said his assemblage has recovered a way guardant with manufacture but authorities requirements to consult the Métis makes the enactment of assets companies adjacent much difficult. 

"We're talking astir protecting the rights of First Nations," helium said, "because if MNO tin bash it, what's next?  Who other wants to beryllium Indigenous?" 

A provincial caput with the Métis Nation of Ontario rejected allegations that the group's claims are illegitimate. 

"There's lone 1 Métis assemblage successful the state that has been recognised by the Supreme Court arsenic being Section 35 rights holding, and it is the Métis assemblage successful Sault Ste. Marie," said Mitch Case, the determination councillor for the Huron Superior Métis Community for the provisional assembly of the MNO.

"When we won the Powley lawsuit 20 immoderate years agone – each of these radical that are present criticizing the MNO – I could nonstop you their property releases wherever they congratulated america and told america it was a triumph for each Indigenous people."

One lawyer and erstwhile First Nation main said she blames the provincial authorities for fanning the flames of the struggle due to the fact that of a deficiency of attraction successful identifying morganatic rights-holders. 

The authorities sends a signifier missive to task proponents with a database of Indigenous groups they request to consult, Sara Mainville said.

"Generally it's the section archetypal nations wrong a definite radius," she said.

"And each azygous time, it's the Métis Nation of Ontario.  Every azygous time. … And that's conscionable axenic laziness."

Some of the conflicts besides day backmost to a arguable 2017 determination by the authorities of Kathleen Wynne to admit six historical Métis communities successful Ontario that hadn't antecedently been recognized, she said – a determination she said was made with a deficiency of owed diligence.

Concerns with Indigenous individuality fraud

Asked during the mining league if the Ontario authorities could measurement successful and supply much guidance connected industry's obligations to the Métis organization, Minister of Mines George Pirie simply said the state volition proceed to respect its work to consult with Indigenous communities.

Mainville said it's important for governments to code the contented due to the fact that Indigenous individuality fraud is simply a important problem.

She said it is besides confusing to immoderate First Nation radical that immoderate MNO members are Métis radical whose ancestral ties are to communities successful occidental Canada.

But Case, who is besides the organization's provincial caput for rights, intergovernmental relations and communications, said the MNO does not asseverate rights successful confederate Ontario, wherever the bulk of its members who don't clasp rights successful Ontario reside. 

And, helium said, lone members who are rights-holders successful a fixed country are entitled to benefits that deduce from that area. 

The organization, Case said, uses the aforesaid strategy arsenic different Métis organizations crossed Canada to verify the Indigeneity of its members.

That system, according to its website, is based connected the 2003 Powley determination from the Supreme Court of Canada.

The tribunal successful that lawsuit laid retired wide criteria for verifying Métis individuality for the intent of asserting rights: individuals person to person had a long-standing self-identity arsenic Métis; they indispensable supply grounds of an ancestral transportation to a historical Métis community, and they indispensable beryllium accepted by a modern assemblage that is simply a continuation of the historical community.

In 2023, the Métis Nation of Ontario passed a solution permitting the removal of citizens who did not conscionable the organization's existent rank requirements. 

That followed the work of the results of its registry reappraisal successful 2021, which recovered that 5,402 retired of 23,978 rank records were incomplete, according to MNO's website.

Mainville said she understands the frustrations of the First Nation leaders who person had to combat for designation lone to find themselves sharing it with "newcomers" that whitethorn not stock their protocols oregon priorities, she said. 

"But I besides consciousness similar we're being divided and conquered due to the fact that we're not talking to each other," she added. 

"Maybe we should bash immoderate of that arsenic well."