BIRCH ISLAND—In 2019, Whitefish River First Nation (WRFN) launched a lawsuit against CPKC (a railroad company that resulted from the merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Limited), the federal government (and any other companies that hold interest) over the land beneath the rail line that served Manitoulin up until 1980, when the service ended.
The tracks leading to Manitoulin were ripped up and the land eventually sold to another company (although CPKC still holds title). At the time of decommissioning the rail line, the land was offered to the municipalities of Espanola and Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands for the cost of the steel in the line, but both declined the offer.
At the time, Northeast Town Mayor Ken Ferguson noted in his council’s decision that “we are not in the real estate business.”
The band contends that the federal government had a fiduciary duty to ensure that the land was remediated and returned to WRFN once the railway no longer had any use for it.
“Canada is at least in part, if not wholly, on the hook for the failures to have done that already and needs to ensure that it gets done now,” the band’s lawyer Kate Kempton, senior counsel at Woodward and Company, who specializes in Indigenous rights, told the media.
An environmental assessment of the rail line bed has been completed, and the band is formulating a clean-up plan that they intend to be part of the negotiated settlement.
A statement from CPKC said the company is committed to working toward a resolution with the band and that they have been in communication with WRFN.
All other parties in the suit are remaining close about the negotiations, citing that those proceedings are part of ongoing legal matters.
WRFN’s concerns about the decommissioned rail line are echoed in many First Nation and Indigenous communities across Canada—also including power lines, highways and even canals.
Ms. Kempton noted that the deals negotiated with those communities when those corridors were established were not in their best interests and that a number of them have turned to the courts for redress.
