Québec (Procureur général) c. Vallée; Québec (Procureur général) c. Côté

The Québec Superior Court released two related decisions on October 9, 2014 in Québec (Procureur général) c. Valléeand Québec (Procureur général) c. Côté [both available in French only], granting motions to dismiss two notices of constitutional challenges against provisions from Québec's Act respecting the lands in the domain of the State (Loi sur les terres du domain de l'État) on the basis that the provisions violated the rights of the two respective defendants as Métis. More specifically, both defendants claimed that they had an "auxiliary right" to occupy a certain area where they claimed to be exercising Métis hunting, fishing, trapping and/or harvesting rights and it was this auxiliary right that was being unjustifiably infringed.

Both defendants raised their constitutional challenge in response to being served notice of the Province's intention to dispossess them of a hunting camp in the back country of the Gaspésie peninsula in eastern Québec. In dismissing both defendants' notices, the Court reviewed the criteria for asserting a section 35(1) Métis right as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Powley. As the defendants had not identified any distinct, contemporary Métis community living in the vicinity of the area in dispute whose members shared the same customs and traditions as a historical community, the Court found that the defendants had not provided the Province with sufficiently precise notice of their constitutional challenge as to allow the Province to determine what evidence and argument it needed to bring to defend the validity of the provisions in question and their application to the defendants.