Are Metis harvesting rights the same as Indian harvesting rights?
In general, yes. Metis and Indians are to get the same priority allocations to the harvest. However, 1 some places Indian harvesting rights have been extinguished or are now set out in a treaty. In such cases, Metis may have harvesting rights that are different. On the Prairie Provinces, Indians may have two layers of constitutional protection – s. 35 rights and the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement (NRTA). Metis in Manitoba and likely Metis in Saskatchewan and Alberta, as a result of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Blais, cannot claim the additional protection of the NRTA. This does not mean that Metis do not have constitutional protection for their harvesting rights in the Prairies, it simply means that Metis harvesting on the Prairies has only one layer of constitutional protection – s. 35.
