
First Nations launch legal challenge against Ontario, federal bills 5 and C-5
TORONTO — Nine First Nations in Ontario are asking a court to declare a pair of federal and provincial laws meant to fast-track infrastructure projects unconstitutional and are seeking an injunction that would prevent the governments from using some of the most contentious aspects.
The Indigenous communities say in the legal challenge filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that the federal law known as Bill C-5 and the Ontario law known as Bill 5 both represent a “clear and present danger” to the First Nations’ self-determination rights to ways of life on their territories.
“While the laws do leave open or commit that there will be some First Nation consultation at the very first stage…involvement in that decision alone is a smoke and mirrors trick, deflecting attention from all the other ways the laws necessarily diminish the ability of First Nations to engage on the regimes’ broader consequences,” they write in the court challenge.
Bill C-5 allows cabinet to quickly grant federal approvals for big projects deemed to be in the national interest such as mines, ports and pipelines by sidestepping existing laws, while Ontario’s bill allows its cabinet to suspend provincial and municipal laws through the creation of so-called “special economic zones.”