By The Canadian Press

Vancouver Island First Nation awarded $13.9 million over historic logging rights

Dec 14, 2016 | 9:36 AM

BAMFIELD, B.C. – A Vancouver Island First Nation has been awarded $13.9 million after a tribunal ruled Canada “failed completely” in its duty to consult over a logging licence.

The compensation was awarded by the specific claims tribunal, a panel that decides First Nations’ claims, after in ruled in 2014 that Canada breached its fiduciary duty to the Huu-ay-aht First Nation.

The ruling says that in 1938 the Huu-ay-aht surrendered all its marketable timber on its largest reserve on the West Coast of Vancouver Island to Canada, to be sold on terms “most conducive” to its welfare.

The federal government issued a logging licence to a company called BSW Ltd. in 1942 with a special condition that allowed it a 21-year term that could be renewed.

When the Huu-ay-aht learned of the licence in 1948, the nation petitioned the government to cancel it, in part because under the Indian Act licences can only be granted for one year.

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Canada allowed BSW to continue logging until 1969, and Judge Larry Whalen ruled in 2014 the government had committed multiple breaches of fiduciary duty.

The Canadian Press