However, Geoff Plant urged the B.C. Supreme Court to consider how a declaration recognizing the Nuchatlaht First Nation’s rights and title would affect third parties, including Western Forest Products, which is named as a defendant in the case.
Western Forest Products has provincially approved logging tenures in the area and Plant told today’s hearing that the lawsuit, as it’s structured, is “incapable of fully addressing the rights of third parties and the public interest.”Article content The Nuchatlaht claim the B.C. and federal governments have denied their rights by approving logging and “effectively dispossessing” them of the land.
Jack Woodward, a lawyer for the nation, told Justice Elliott Myers on Monday that the claim meets the test for Aboriginal title set out in the Supreme Court of Canada’s precedent-setting Tsilhqot’in decision in 2014. That case recognized the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s rights and title over a swath of its traditional territory in B.C.’s central Interior, not only to historic village sites.Article content