October 24, 2007
A New Wave of Exploitation
Canada, Alberta defy UN, sell off rights to disputed Lubicon land
by Kevin Thomas
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Elder Reinie Jobin examines Lubicon land razed by oil companies. The Lubicon were not consulted or notified. Photo: Friends of the Lubicon
United Nations officials were visibly perturbed when the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights met in a conference room in Geneva last year to consider the long-standing land rights dispute between the Lubicon Lake Indian Nation and the governments of Canada and Alberta.
Just seven months earlier, the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) had re-affirmed a 1990 ruling that found Canada was violating the Lubicon people's human rights and told the Canadian government to negotiate a land rights settlement with the northern Alberta based First Nation. The Committee had also ruled that Canada "should consult with the Band before granting licences for economic exploitation of the disputed land, and ensure that in no case such exploitation jeopardizes the rights recognized under the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]."
In the seven months following the October 2005 UNHRC decision, the Alberta government ignored the ruling entirely. Without so much as a courtesy call to the Lubicon Nation, Alberta sold conventional oil and gas leases and exploration licences to over 65,000 hectares of Lubicon Traditional Territory, approved 50 new oil and gas wells and approved almost 50 new pipelines on Lubicon lands.
Then, as UN officials gathered in May 2006 to review the Lubicon case, Alberta announced over 50,000 hectares of Lubicon territory would be put on the auction block for new tar sands exploitation without notifying or consulting the Lubicon people.
Upon wrapping up the hearings, the UN officials issued a sharply-worded ruling again, pushing Canada to resolve the dispute and consult with the Lubicon people before issuing new leases or licenses on their lands.
The Canadian and Albertan governments have done neither.
The Lubicon Lake people are an Indigenous Nation of approximately 500 people living near Peace River in northern Alberta, Canada. They have never surrendered their rights to their Traditional Territory in any legally or historically recognized way. When a treaty was negotiated with other Indigenous peoples in the region in 1899, treaty negotiators never travelled inland to Lubicon territory and they were therefore left out of the treaty process. Even by its own Constitutionally-enshrined process, Canada has never secured rights to the lands in dispute.
Despite the unresolved land rights
