Statement of Claim

The Plaintiffs Claim

CAD$4.4T

Four trillion four hundred billion dollars in lawful money of Canada

$4,400,000,000,000.00

Plaintiffs

Every Canadian citizen, permanent resident, ratepayer, registered title holder, mortgagor, mortgagee, municipal bondholder, title insurer, and descendant of settlers who built the country in good faith on Crown representations now said to be defective, in their own right and as representatives of a national class.

— and —

Crown Defendants

His Majesty the King in Right of Canada; His Majesty the King in Right of each of the Provinces and Territories; His Majesty King Charles III, in His personal capacity and as successor to the Imperial Crown.

Indigenous Defendants

The Cowichan Tribes, the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, the Musqueam Indian Band, the Squamish Nation, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the Tsilhqot'in Nation, the Haida Nation, the Wet'suwet'en, the Gitxsan, the Mi'kmaq Nation, the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Nation, the Peskotomuhkati Nation, the Mohawks of Kanesatake, Kahnawake, and Akwesasne, the Algonquin Nation, the Huron-Wendat Nation, and every other Indigenous nation asserting Aboriginal title to lands over which the Plaintiff class holds registered fee simple.

Particulars of Claim

Defendants	Cause of Action	Quantum (CAD)
Crown Defendants federal, provincial, territorial, Imperial	Negligent misrepresentation; breach of fiduciary duty; breach of the honour of the Crown; breach of constitutional convention and oath of office; misfeasance in public office (in the alternative).	$1,700,000,000,000
Indigenous Defendants	Unjust enrichment for services, transfers, and benefits rendered under the contrary assumption across 150+ years.	$700,000,000,000
Indigenous Defendants	Restitution for improvements, betterment, and quantum meruit — appreciation attributable to settler labour, Crown infrastructure, and taxpayer investment.	$2,000,000,000,000
	Aggregate Quantum	$4,400,000,000,000

Counter-liability exposure of the Plaintiff class: NIL. Citizens are not infringers and cannot properly be named as defendants in the Indigenous Defendants' cross-action for infringement, which lies, if at all, only against the Crown.

Download the Pleading (PDF)

39 articles. Each on its own page.

The Argument

The Crown represented, for one hundred and sixty years, that registered fee simple title was indefeasible. The Crown's own courts now hold those representations defective in respect of any land subject to a declaration of Aboriginal title. The Crown proposes to resolve the consequences bilaterally with Indigenous claimants, with the cost absorbed silently by title-holders and taxpayers who are not parties to the negotiation.

This is the position the Plaintiffs reject.

Either the Plaintiffs are at the table, or the table breaks.

The legal doctrines that produced Cowichan Tribes v Canada, 2025 BCSC 1490 — negligent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, the honour of the Crown, unjust enrichment, approbation and reprobation, restitution for improvements — apply uniformly. When applied to the Plaintiff class, they produce the claim particularized in this pleading. The Cowichan court accepted these doctrines on the Indigenous side. The Plaintiffs ask that they be applied with the same intellectual honesty on the citizen side.

The numbers are order-of-magnitude estimates derived from current Aboriginal title doctrine extended uniformly across unceded Canadian territory. They are not pulled from the air. They are what the doctrine produces when you apply it on its own terms.

The doctrine has produced this exposure. The doctrine must therefore answer for it.