Posted By Sue Yanagisawa
Oct 10, 2007
Kingston Whig Standard
A disappointed delegation from Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and some of their non-native neighbours returned to the steps of the Frontenac County Court House yesterday to announce that the deal they thought they had struck on Friday was wiped out by a few strokes of a pen over the weekend.
Lawyers for the Ardoch Algonquin and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations, together with community leaders from both groups, spent half the day Friday closeted with Superior Court Justice Robert Scott, a senior member of the attorney general's Aboriginal Law Team and lawyers for prospecting company Frontenac Ventures Corp. hammering out a process to resolve the dispute over uranium exploration in an area north of Sharbot Lake.
It was agreed that lawyers for the Algonquins would get instruction from their clients and notify the court of their position on the deal no later than 10 a.m. yesterday.
Robert Lovelace, a former chief and currently a spokesman for Ardoch First Nation, said he had thought he would announce, until Monday evening, good news.
Then he learned the attorney general's office had altered the parameters of future discussions by changing one word, restricting talks between government and the Algonquins to "unstaked" lands in the area rather than the 30,000 disputed acres claimed by Frontenac Ventures. That, according to Lovelace, "undermines the spirit of the agreement."
The two Algonquin groups, their chiefs, several community leaders and two non-Native supporters are currently before the court facing contempt charges over their occupation of access to Frontenac Ventures' claim area despite an injunction ordering them to leave.
Their trial began in front of Justice Douglas Cunningham on Friday and adjourned indefinitely in the hope that talks between the two levels of government and the parties could resolve the dispute outside the courtroom.
With the occupation continuing, however, the trial can resume with five days' notice. Frontenac Ventures has asked that the protesters be jailed, fined $5,000 a day for the occupation - which began June 28 - and ordered to pay the company $50,000 in punitive damages.
Lovelace said the occupation won't end under the terms set out in the amended agreement and observed "we worked our butts off to get something that was acceptable."
He couldn't understand why the change was made at the 11th hour.
"If what we discussed on Friday was unacceptable," he said, "[The lawyer for the Attorney General] should have said it was unacceptable and we should have discussed it further."