On Thursday, a B.C. superior court judge gave at least half a billion dollars’ worth of government land in an 800-acre zone in southeast Richmond to the Cowichan First Nation, and lit a fuse that could lead to the obliteration of private landowners’ legal title in the area.
This case of “land back” in action (Cowichan Tribes v. Canada) casts a shadow over the country’s property system. It jeopardizes the default means of owning land in Canada — the estate in fee simple, where owners have exclusive rights to sell land — wherever Aboriginal title is found to exist.
