CLAIMS THAT A B.C. REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT WILL DESTROY ABORIGINAL RELIGIOUS RIGHTS CANNOT BE ACCEPTED BY THE COURTS.

rigour of the appellate verdict in British Columbia, delivered by Justice Richard Goepel, which is now coming before the Supreme Court.

Between 2006 and 2009, an accommodation and benefits agreement was pursued between the Ktunaxa and the province. In 2007, the draft master plan was approved by the government and after further very extensive discussion, the B.C. government approved the Master Development Agreement in 2012. The Ktunaxa leaders first cited the fundamental religious intolerability of the project in September 2008, but the government determined that a full and reasonable consultation process had occurred and that most objections were “interestbased,” and that the project could proceed.

In the course of these first 21 years of incubation of the project, it had been reduced in acreage by 60 per cent, all residential and parking areas were put in the logged area around a former saw- speak up for the “spirit of the Grizzly Bear.” Luke did not share this Damascene bolt of divine insight with anyone for five years.

It then emerged that, in the words of Justice Goepel for the B.C. Court of Appeal, with which his two fellow justices concurred, “the construction of permanent structures would desecrate the area and destroy its spiritual value.” The Ktunaxa authorities said: the “Grizzly Bear Spirit will leave that area, the Ktunaxa will no longer have access to it or the gifts it provides to them … and religious rituals involving Grizzly Bear Spirit will become meaningless.” The fact that religious observances in reference to the Grizzly Bear Spirit almost never occurred in the contested area was claimed to be irrelevant — discommoding the bears in the slightest would banish the revered spirit, and render worshipful acts, wherever conducted, futile. The authority for this theological insight was Luke’s long-withheld