We own Parliament Hill, Algonquin band claims

OTTAWA — An Algonquin band in western Quebec is suing the federal government, saying it owns Parliament Hill.

The Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, an Algonquin band based in Maniwaki, filed suit Wednesday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking an order that it is the titleholder to what it calls the Kichi Sibi Lands, land that includes the Parliament buildings and the Supreme Court.

Kitigan Zibi’s chief and council filed the suit in frustration at the slow pace of negotiations with the federal government over what even Liberal government ministers in the House of Commons frequently acknowledge is Algonquin territory.

“There have been ongoing discussions with the National Capital Commission but they’re going nowhere,” said Kitigan Zibi Chief Jean Guy Whiteduck. The National Capital Commission (NCC) is the federal organization responsible for administering the lands and buildings where federal institutions in the capital are located.

The NCC, the federal government and the government of Ontario are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Kitigan Zibi is part of an Algonquin group that claims the entire Ottawa Valley, but Whiteduck said the lawsuit his band filed this week is “site-specific” in the hope that it gets the attention of Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett.

“We’re not against development but we want to be an equal partner,” Whiteduck said. “We have to be benefactors of that land.”

The parcel of land identified in the lawsuit as the Kichi Sibi Lands includes the LeBreton Flats, an area west of Parliament Hill on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River, that is home to, among other things, the Canadian War Museum, and could be the future home of a new arena for the NHL’s Ottawa Senators.

But the LeBreton Flats are also the site of a condominium development known as Zibi. Zibi is the creation of Ottawa-based developers Windmill Development Group and Dream Unlimited Corp. Their development plan would see 1,200 condominium apartments along with new office and retail space built on a 37-acre piece of land that spans the Ontario-Quebec border two kilometres west of Parliament Hill.

The development would reclaim and cleanup some polluted industrial land.

But those 37 acres are on what Algonquin bands, including Kitigan Zibi, say is sacred land. In fact, nine of 10 federally recognized Algonquin First Nations are opposed to the development.

The lawsuit claims that the federal and Ontario governments have “economically benefited from the Kichi Sibi Lands … or has permitted others to do so, without transferring those benefits to the Algonquin Anishnabe Nation.”

Whiteduck’s Kitigan Zibi band, which has about 1,500 registered members, claims in the lawsuit that title to these lands has never been surrendered and that it has also always controlled occupation of what is now Parliament Hill “through a variety of means which included arrangements for temporary possession, but also, in the absence of an arrangement, sanctions of increasing severity up to and including death to any invader.”

The federal and Ontario governments have 20 days to respond to the claim.