The Definition of Métis Peoples in Section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Supreme Court of Canada has finally resolved a number of outstanding issues regarding the definition of 'Metis peoples' in s.35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 and the legal principles that must be applied to such communities when asserting Aboriginal rights. On September 19, 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Powley, in a unanimous decision, upheld the rights of members of the Metis community of Sault Ste. Marie to hunt for food. This case is the most important for the Metis since the trial of Louis Riel. The Metis have waited a very long time to have their existence as separate distinct Aboriginal peoples recognized and validated. The court in no uncertain terms defined 'Metis peoples' as possessing 'full status as distinctive rights-bearing peoples whose own integral practices are entitled to constitutional protection under s.35(1)'. It is a decision of great vindication for the Metis, as many years of struggle and pain have finally paid off.The primary purpose of this article is to examine the definition of 'Metis peoples' in s.35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982. In undertaking this examination, I am not so concerned with who, as an individual, qualifies as a member of a Metis community; but rather, how the courts have defined the term 'Metis peoples' and the criteria needed to establish that a Metis collective will be recognized as a 'Metis people' under s.35(2). In addition, I examine how the Powley test would apply to Metis communities in the prairies, and in particular explore the possibility of making claims from the level of the Metis nation as a whole.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".