Federal Government Treason [Originally prepared as Appendix A in a letter from Dr. Bruce Clark to Scott Ritchie, QC (Ontario), titled: "Two Sacred Trusts: The Crown's to Protect Native Liberty, the Legal Profession's to Protect the Rule of Law".]

Click HERE to go to Appendix C, "Law as Respect".



FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TREASON: 1875 AND 1991

- by Dr. Bruce Clark

In 1875 the Canadian federal government committed the crime of treason. In 1991 it repeated the crime. Its objective on both occasions was nation building. On the premise that this laudable end justified its unconscionable means the federal government knowingly broke the imperial government's previously established constitutional law, which in 1763 had enacted that no Indian nation legally could be "molested or disturbed" pending a treaty voluntarily surrendering its tribal lands. That same constitutional law deemed its breach treasonable.

Canadian nation building in 1875 meant keeping non-native British Columbia part of the Canadian federation, specifically by refusing to disallow provincial government land legislation that treasonably ignored aboriginal rights. In 1875 the Privy Council of Canada by Order in Council adopted a report of the Minister and Deputy Minister of Justice of Canada. That report acknowledged the paramountcy in constitutional law of existing aboriginal rights over provincial government land legislation. It further acknowledged the constitutional trust obligation imposed upon the federal government by sections 91(24) and 129 of the 1867 Constitution Act. And it acknowledged the federal responsibility to crush such racist provincial government legislation, by exercising the federal disallowance function under section 90 of that same 1867 act.

Indeed, the reason the imperial government of Great Britain gave the federal government of Canada jurisdiction both to protect the Indians and to disallow offending provincial government legislation was not subsequently disallowed by the federal government. By this means the federal government made itself an accomplice. The ministers of the crown bear a personal legal responsibility to the criminal law, beyond their political accountability to the non-native electorate whose fraudulent land conversion they facilitated.

The fact that the federal government in 1875 committed treason does not affect the illegality of the said provincial land legislation. Federal acquiescence in unconstitutional provincial acts is incapable legally of legitimizing such provincial acts. Since the provincial land legislation was unconstitutional in 1875, all the the subsequent land legislation of British Columbia has been unconstitutional. The point of remarking the federal treason is not to comment upon the legality of the provincial legislation, but rather to explain the events of 1991 and the dilemma facing Canada in 1992.

In 1991 Canadian nation building meant keeping both non native British Columbia and French Quebec in the Canadian federation. In the summer of 1991 the Mohawks in Quebec by force of arms purported to exclude non-Mohawks from territory said to be their unsurrendered Indian territory. The natives' self-help solution was treated by the provincial government as illegal. The federal government of Canada politically supported that view and at Quebec's request sent in the Canadian army to disarm the natives. Subsequently, the Mohawks for reasons of their own decided not to raise the issue of their own sovereignty in the non-native courts prosecuting them for breaching the peace. Thus, the international and constitutional legality of the Mohawk uprising has never been addressed. Non-native Canadian society assumes that the Mohawks may have had a moral case, but not a legal one. Native society assumes that white courts know the natives are right at law, but are too racist ever to implement the law.

Also in the summer of 1991, the Lil'Wats in British Columbia made a stand. Unlike the Mohawks, the Lil'Wats eschewed arms. Instead, they used passive resistance to block logging road traffic through their ancestral homeland until a treaty should be made with them as required by the constitution of Canada. In response the provincial government and the logging companies obtained injunctions ordering the natives not to block traffic or to interfere with new road construction into the natives' sacred valley and old growth forest. The natives were imprisoned for disobeying the injunctions. The non-native courts granting and enforcing the injunctions unconscionably and inexcusably refused to listen to the law precluding their jurisdiction on unsurrendered Indian territory.

If the federal government of Canada had supported the Lil'Wats, even to the extent of trying to persuade the non-native courts at least to listen to the law, justice might have been served. But once again, as in 1875, political considerations induced the federal government to commit treason in preference to fulfilling its section 81(24) constitutional obligation. The federal government appeared in court to back up the logging companies and the provincial government. In the result the non-native courts corruptly all told the Lil'Wats that they could not refer to the constitution, and in the ensuing absence of evidence of any constitutional prohibition the natives were convicted of breaching the (unconstitutional) domestic land law of British Columbia and the ultra vires injunctions of the non-native courts. This situation is the logical conclusion to the regime of anti-law fostered by the federal government in British Columbia since 1875.

There are, in addition, modern political considerations which militate against the present federal government owning up to the fraud of previous administrations. Quebec for cultural reasons is threatening to quit the Canadian federation. The policy of the federal government is to persuade French Quebecers that cultural integrity and Canadian identity are not necessarily inconsistent goals. But the fact is that only one discrete region within Quebec is culturally French: that portion in the St Lawrence River valley settled prior to the 1763 by immigrants from France. The vastness that is the Quebec interior is culturally Indian, and has always been. Indeed, the present administrative boundaries of the provincial government were not completely extended into the interior until 1912. At that time the federal government legislatively gave Quebec a limited jurisdiction over territory that remained unsurrendered Indian territory subject to a constitutional trust to protect the Indians. The provincial government of Quebec (like the provincial government of British Columbia) willfully turned a blind eye to this breach of the rule of law.

Under section 42(1)(f) of the Constitution Act, 1982 the Canadian public legally can recall the vast portion of Quebec outside the St Lawrence River valley, and constitute it a culturally Indian province or provinces. The federal government knows this. Quebec knows this. The Canadian public does not. The legal treason historically perpetuated in 1875 and 1991 will be perfected in 1992 upon the basis of a political fraud.

The Indian nations are one victim of the crime and the fraud. The soul of the country is another. For Canada, as the Constitution Act, 1982 recites, is supposed to be founded upon respect for the "supremacy of God and the rule of law."

Justice according to natural law, international law and constitutional law must be made to triumph.

DATED AT HOMBURG (OHM), DEUTSCHLAND, THIS 5TH DAY OF DECEMBER, 1991.

Bruce Clark



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