Powley Case
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Mar. 17, 2003. 01:00 AM
Toronto Star
Métis rights on hunting challenged in top court
Ontario man seeks parity with full-status Indians Opponents
cite concerns over conservation
TONDA MACCHARLES
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA-Steve Powley, born and raised as a white man in Sault Ste. Marie, is an unlikely trailblazer for Métis rights.
But a trailblazer the now wheelchair-bound man may turn out to be if the Supreme Court of Canada upholds three lower Ontario court rulings that found he and his son Roddy had a constitutional right to hunt and kill the young Bull Moose they took in October 1993.
"I was a white man right up until a few years ago," Powley, 54, said in an interview. "My mother would not admit she was native. I had red hair just like him," he says, nodding toward his son Roddy, 29. "She said we had just a tiny bit of native blood."
Then, 12 years ago, long after his mother's death, Powley learned through a cousin that his mother was a full Ojibway who married a white man.
Now, he's laying high-profile claim to his native ancestry, arguing Métis, those of mixed native and European ancestry, should have the same hunting rights as full status Indians.
Today and tomorrow, nine judges of the high court will hear arguments on that claim and what it means.
The Ontario government has appealed an Ontario Court of Appeal finding in Powley's favour - one that directed the province to negotiate a new hunting regime that recognizes the Métis aboriginal rights.
Seven other provincial attorneys-generals and the federal government back Ontario's argument that Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution never envisaged special Métis access to natural resources.
The Supreme Court of Canada will also hear arguments in a Manitoba case, in which Ernest Blais - unlike Powley - was found guilty of illegal hunting in February 1994, and his Métis claim dismissed.
Much is at stake, says Jean Teillet, Powley's lawyer.
While the claims are specifically about hunting rights, they "will set the stage for recognition of Métis people in future," Teillet said in an interview.
"In 1982 we took a big step in this country and we put Métis into the Constitution," he said, adding it wasn't "new recognition" but an acknowledgment of "200 years of recognition."
"To date, it has meant nothing for Métis people because governments are simply not honouring it. That's why we're here. We need the court to say: `Government, you have to recognize that Métis people are here, that they're a people and that they have rights.'"
The pair of cases has attracted arguments from 17 interveners, including the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, which opposes the Métis' claims, and it will have broad implications for the 292,310 people across Canada who identified themselves in the last census as Métis.
Powley himself hopes that recognition could lead to the broadening of fishing, logging and mining rights, tax exempt status, land claims.
"I think it's going to open up a whole can of worms," adding he admittedly finds the whole thing a bit overwhelming.
Still, 10 years after he set out to test the Métis rights he thought were protected in the Constitution, he's determined to see it through to the end.
"We decided to do this. We didn't just do it out of the fun of it. We took six months to decide, should we go ahead and keep hiding our meat getting it home, or just not hide it anymore."
Tony Belcourt, president of the Métis Nation of Ontario, said for many Métis families hunting is an economic necessity, for others it's a connection to a traditional past.
He dismisses arguments by groups like the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters that Métis hunting poses a conservation concern, saying the Métis regulate hunting through a "harvesting policy."
"Our biggest hurdle is the test that will be set by the Supreme Court" that will define what is a Métis community, he said.
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