The head of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation says he is not overly concerned with a judge’s decision last week in an ongoing court case between the First Nation and SaskPower.
In his decision, Court of Queen’s Bench Judge Shawn Smith gives the provincial electrical utility the green light to argue reserve land near Southend may in fact never have been properly designated as a reserve.
If this point were to be proven in a court of law, it would have a large impact on PBCN’s court case against the province and SaskPower.
In the lawsuit, the First Nation is seeking extensive damages as a result of alleged “continuous trespass” due to flooding by the Whitesand Dam.
However, PBCN Chief Peter Beatty says the province is contradicting itself as it recognized the area as reserve land under the Treaty Land Entitlement framework of the early 1990’s.
“So they added up all of the reserve acres in all of the PBCN reserves and they included Southend in that as being reserve land, under that agreement (TLE framework),” he says.
As part of a new defence in the case, the province and SaskPower are now arguing the 600 acres of land was actually transferred to the province from the federal government as part of the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement in 1930.
Beatty adds faced with paying significant damages, the province is simply trying to buy more time.
“These are lawyers and they’ll grasp at anything they can to gain some semblance of hope, I guess.”
The court case has been going on for the last 14 years.