Thesis (LL.M.)--University of Toronto (Canada), 2015
This thesis argues that there is a fiduciary duty on the Government of Canada to provide extended health benefits to Aboriginal peoples. These benefits are the legal remedy for the Crown's multiple breaches of its fiduciary duty to Aboriginal peoples. The duty is rooted in the status of Aboriginal peoples as original inhabitants of Canada and who never ceded their sovereignty, which included a right to maintain traditional ways of life. The Crown acknowledged this duty in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, whose protective language is evocative of fiduciary obligations. The Crown breached its obligation through sharp practice in the negotiation of and failure to implement treaties, introduction of the Indian Act, and in the establishment of the residential schools system. These acts of omission or commission led to a dispossession of Aboriginal peoples from traditional lands and to the appalling levels of health in Aboriginal communities today
