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Of Provinces And S.35 Rights, Kerry Wilkins

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is now well established that federal law and regulatory activity may interfere with the exercise of aboriginal peoples' existing treaty and aboriginal rights, despite s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, whenever the federal government can justify the interference. It is not yet clear, though, what power, if any, Canada's provinces have to regulate, even in justified ways, such rights and their exercise. This article argues that the provinces, as a general rule, have no such authority. Except in certain very specific and isolated circumstances, they have no power, even apart from s. 35, to regulate the exercise of …