R. v. Powley is a Supreme Court of Canada case defining Métis Aboriginal rights under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982.
Contents
Facts and Procedural History
A Sault Ste. Marie father and son, Steve and Roddy Powley, were charged in 1993 with possession of a moose they had shot out of season and without a licence. The pair pleaded not guilty on the grounds that, as Métis, they had an Aboriginal right to hunt that was unjustly infringed by Ontario game laws. The Ontario Court of Justice agreed and dismissed the charges. The Ontario Attorney General appealed that decision to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which upheld the acquittals and denied the appeal. The Ontario Attorney General then appealed that decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal which also upheld the acquittals and denied the appeal. Finally, the decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where a unanimous court upheld the decisions of the lower courts and defined a ten-step test for Métis rights based on modified tests from the previous Indian Aboriginal rights decisions in R. v. Sparrow and R. v. Van der Peet.
Aftermath
In order for this ruling to apply to specific Métis people, they have to show that the practice in question relates to the practice of a rights-bearing Métis community prior to European political and legal control, and that they are members of the corresponding modern Métis community.
This means that as long as a Métis group of people established a rights-bearing community that was distinctive from any Indian or Inuit Aboriginal groups they descended from, then the practices that community exercised prior to European control may be Section 35(1) rights.