Credit to @JeffBooth for the link, and for "I double checked with lawyers".
Cassius writes:
We will tell you the punchline upfront: you are probably going to be told by courts in British Columbia, and potentially across Canada, that you do not own your own home or land. You probably think that there is some government solution that will result in the preservation of your interest in your property. But if there is, it will be extremely costly. And it may destroy Canada.
This is madness.
The private fee-simple owners inside the Cowichan Title Lands do not own their properties. They are occupying land that belongs to the Cowichan Tribes without the Tribes’ consent. They are trespassers on someone else’s property.These private owners were told by the Crown, through the British Columbia Land Title Office, that the Crown (today His Majesty King Charles the Third in Right of Canada) had the underlying title necessary to grant them valid fee-simple ownership. The Land Title Office issued certificates of indefeasible title that were presumed accurate and conclusive.[13] Lenders relied on those certificates, and purchasers paid market value in good faith.But the Supreme Court of British Columbia has now ruled that the Crown never had the underlying title it purported to convey. The Crown lacked the capacity to grant valid fee-simple interests in the Cowichan Title Lands because those lands were already subject to Aboriginal title. Every certificate of title issued by the Land Title Office for property inside the Cowichan Title Lands was issued in error. The purchasers bought nothing of legal substance, and the lenders secured nothing of legal substance.Where the Government of British Columbia, acting for the Crown through the Land Title Office, told private owners and their lenders that they owned the land, the Court has declared that representation false.[14]Now, the Cowichan Tribes have publicly stated that private owners cannot sell their properties without Cowichan consent,[15] and lenders are refusing to renew mortgages because the collateral is now legally defective.[16] In short, if a court concludes that your property is subject to Aboriginal title, the land is not yours. It never was. Your paper claim to title is worthless, except as it relates to a claim against the Province.
As I read, I was thinking that the federal government is just going to have to legislate around it, but the author covers that in detail and makes a strong case for why that is not legally feasible. Underlying that is the basic fact that there is no evidence of the political will to do so, and in fact, most Canadians and their representatives are of the opposite view, that in the name of "reconciliation", the land must be given to the descendants of its original inhabitants.
In short: no joy. There is no legislative fix, no Notwithstanding Clause escape hatch, and, we expect, no constitutional amendment path that does not require the consent of the very rights-holders whose title is defeating your fee-simple interest. The final point is uncertain, and we could be wrong. But there are strong legal precedents against there being a constitutional amendment that could take away these First Nations rights, even if there was sufficient political will to effect such a change. ... If you have read this far, your hope is dwindling or has already been extinguished. You likely now acknowledge that this is the reality we now face.In British Columbia, approximately 95% of land has been claimed at least once (the vast majority of the province is “unceded” in the sense that no treaty ever surrendered Aboriginal title).[40]If you are in a major urban centre, it is almost certainly the case that your land is subject to one or more claims. ... You have probably heard that there are ways around this. You may believe that your government has a solution. Neither of these assertions is true. The outlook is dire.
At what point does righteous become insane?