Andrew Coyne: To recognize aboriginal title is not to abolish property rights, but to uphold them

Is that the end of property rights? Or is it the extension of it, to a group that had previously had their rights denied? The basis of the Cowichan claim, established through more than 500 days of testimony and thousands of pages of evidence, was the same as in previous cases: prior occupancy – prior, that is, to the assertion of Crown sovereignty in 1846 – along with the tests of sufficiency, continuity and exclusivity set out in Delgamuukw and refined in Tsilqot’in…