Tsilhqot'in Nation v. BC: Reconfiguring Aboriginal Title in the Name of Reconciliation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the text that follows, I start by explaining how Canada's behaviour in the Tsilhqot'in litigation undercuts, rather than fosters, the potential for a relationship of trust, which is foundational for reconciliation. In particular, I argue that Canada's behaviour suggests federal disregard for the state roles and responsibilities that the Supreme Court of Canada has found are mandated by the recognition and affirmation of Aboriginal and treaty rights in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. I then focus on the judgment of the Court of Appeal. As discussed below, the Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's decision, but offered different reasons in support of its conclusions. After identifying how some aspects of the decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal align with the Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on section 35 and reconciliation, I then consider other aspects that illustrate an increasingly impoverished judicial interpretation of how reconciliation may articulate with Aboriginal title, where it appears that reconciliation is being cast as requiring a pre-emptive diminution of Aboriginal-title rights. The Court of Appeal also suggests a role for the courts that may be overreaching. Through this analysis, I show why the Court of Appeal's proposed jurisprudential shifts have the potential to undermine any faith that Indigenous peoples may have in the judiciary enabling an honourable reconciliation between the Crown's de facto sovereignty and their rights. These conclusions, coupled with Canada's behaviour, paint a stark picture.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
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".