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In the third episode of The True Canadians, host David Wylynko talks with Métis lawyer Jason Madden, who practices Aboriginal law with a focus on Indigenous rights litigation and negotiations, including the negotiation and implementation of self-government agreements, modern day treaties, and reconciliation-based agreements.
A graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University and called to the bar in Ontario, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, Jason is a partner at the law firm Aird & Berlis LLP and Co-Leader of the firm’s Indigenous Practice Group.
Jason was born and raised in northern Ontario and his large Métis family—the Calders—are a part of the Northwest Ontario Métis community, which collectively adhered to Treaty No 3 in 1875 as the ‘Halfbreeds of Rainy Lake and River.’ Over the last 20 years, Jason has been legal counsel to Métis communities and governments in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, including acting as counsel in Métis harvesting rights case and appearing in all the cases dealing with Métis rights before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Jason undertakes a wide-ranging discussion about inherent Métis rights and self-government, which have become particularly topical in the mainstream media in recent weeks due to major developments in federal legislation currently before Parliament about Métis self-government known as Bill C-53 and a major Supreme Court decision over an existing federal law about Indigenous child and family services, both of great importance to the Métis. Jason talks about how these pieces of legislation will help extract the Métis from the “legal lacuna” (legal gap) they have experienced for generations, and how they will lead to ending the pattern of governments making promises and overtures to the Métis only to pull away the proverbial football as Lucy so famously always did to Charlie Brown in the cartoon “Peanuts.”
