Duty to Consult

Bill C-38, Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, and Bill C-45, Jobs and Growth Act, both passed in 2012, contain numerous amendments that could affect established and potential Aboriginal rights across Canada. This unilateral action by the Government of Canada came as a great surprise to many Aboriginal people, who indicated that they were not consulted in advance of the legislation’s introduction.

However, this then begs the question: What is Canada’s ‘duty to consult’? What is the content of this ‘duty’? Does this ‘duty’ even exist? If it does, is there a discrepancy between the established ‘duty to consult’ and the legislative amendments included in Bill C-38 and Bill C-45?

The purpose of this article is to attempt to answer all of these questions. To do this, we will begin by examining contemporary Canadian jurisprudence on the issue, including reviewing the relevant case law in order to gain an insight into the procedural substance of the ‘duty to consult’. Following this, in an attempt to enrich and deepen the discussion concerning the recent developments in Canada, we will outline the emergence of consultation norms at the international level, and highlight recent jurisprudence that takes into consideration consultation duties at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The article will conclude by juxtaposing the emergence of the international and regional norms regarding consultation duties with current events in Canada, in order to confirm the discrepancy between the recent legislative amendments and domestic jurisprudence, international law, international human rights law, and regional human rights law.

Our hope is that this article will not only inform readers of current events in Canada but also enrich the current discourse on the participatory rights of indigenous peoples in the context of land and natural resource development.

In this study, the authors present evidence that the National Energy Board (NEB) does not evaluate whether the duty to consult has been met by applicants or the Crown for the purposes of regulatory approval. While NEB panels do draw conclusions about the sufficiency of consultation, they are not premised on the legal requirements established by the Supreme Court of Canada or subsequent case law. On the contrary, the authors discover that the NEB has approved nearly 100 per cent of the applications in which consultation remains an issue but it relies on three types of justifications for still recommending approval: (i) that it lacks the jurisdiction to consider the consultation at issue; (ii) that outstanding consultation can be addressed through ongoing consultation; and/or (iii) that there are no impacts on rights. Based on these findings, the authors argue that courts should attend to differences over legality and institutional rationality in guiding tribunal authority. In doing so, courts will be in a better position to identify the effect of these differences on tribunal findings, to understand how courts and governments already rely on these findings irrespective of their quality, and to compel transparency for their generation and use.

There is existing tension within many Aboriginal communities between economic development and preservation of traditional lands for the continued practice of traditional activities. The "duty to consult" doctrine has has become an important mechanism by which these concerns were identified and addressed (when possible) prior to development. This is a legal requirement that is rooted in the Constitution Act (1982) and subsequent legal case law that has further defined and outlined requirements under this obligation. This article describes the process that was carried out to advance the proposed Kabinakagami River Hydro Project Class Environmental Assessment in Northern Ontario, Canada with an emphasis on the approach to Aboriginal consultation. This project is unique because the co-proponent of the project is an Aboriginal community, with several neighbouring Aboriginal communities potentially affected by the project.  This project raises questions about the approach to carrying out the duty to consult in an effective way. An evaluative framework was developed to examine timeline, information, means, and flexibility and transparency of the process to highlight shortcomings in the process and make recommendations for improvement.