Mr. Speaker, the Campbell River Indian Band filed a land claim in 1985. Seventeen years later this case was decided at the Supreme Court. The Campbell River band lost.
Five months after the decision, the government revealed that the Supreme Court judge who wrote the decision was previously a senior federal bureaucrat and had discussed legal strategies with federal counsel on the case at the time. The Supreme Court may now be faced with reopening the case. The justice department predictably is arguing that since the judge had no recollection of prior involvement and that since the involvement was long ago in 1986, no bias affected the judgment of the court.
The Campbell River Indian Band feels cheated. It is not satisfactory to find out, after spending 17 years and millions of dollars on litigation, what should have been known before.