31420-12-1 SAWRIDGE, Indian vs. ROLAND, Twinn et al

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ultimately. And as such, we’re not going to let you shut them out effectively.
3 And we -- we state at paragraph 132 of our brief, there are numerous cases, sir, where
4 trusts have been upheld that have been established for the benefit of members of First
5 Nations. It’s never been an issue in respect of certainty of objects, even though I think
6 it’s fair to say that there are often membership disputes when dealing with First Nations.
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But that doesn’t go to the certainty of objects requirement of the -- of the trust.
9 Similarly, the fact that there may be pending membership applications or that certain
10 individuals may have had their membership applications denied doesn’t go to whether the
11 trust itself is valid. And we would caution the Court to be careful in drawing any
12 conclusions in the matter before you with respect to any pending applications. Ithink I
13 heard my friend this morning say that, you know, maybe there are hundreds of pending
14 applications outstanding. Well, there’s no -- there’s very little evidence before the Court in
15 relation to pending applications. Certainly there’s no evidence before the Court that there
16 are hundreds outstanding. And we dealt at paragraph 105 through 107 of our brief with
17 the whole concept of the fact that you can’t take judicial notice of facts that are proved in
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another proceeding.
20 In any event, the fact that you have a pending application doesn’t say anything in relation
21 to whether the membership process per se is functioning properly or not. There may be a
22 good reason why there are pending applications, or there may be a good reason why
23 applications have been denied. And by analogy, if you take the situation where you have,
24 say, six individuals who have submitted claims to the WCB and these six individuals have
25 had their claims denied, that doesn’t necessarily mean that WCB is acting improperly or
26 that the WCB -- the process is faulty or it’s not functioning. Each of these individuals are
27 individuals. They all have different circumstances. They have different issues. They have
28 different doctor reports. And you can’t draw any conclusions, it’s respectfully submitted,
29 from that. And the same goes with, we submit, membership applications. And my friend
30 commented about, is the process functional? We need to know, before the Court even
31 considers changing the definition to equate the membership, we need to know whether the
32 membership process is functional. And that begs the question, what does that mean
33 exactly? We know that there’s -- that the Sawridge First Nation has control of its
34 membership, that there is a membership code, that the Minister of Indian Affairs would
35 have approved that some 27 years ago. So we know there’s a process there. We know
36 there’s acriteria there. The fact that you may have 5 or 50 or 500 pending applications,
37 we submit, doesn’t go to the process or whether it’s functioning or not. The fact that
38 someone may have applied 20 years ago and suggests that their application has not been
39 dealt with doesn’t go, we submit, to the functioning of the process. One has to ask, why
40 hasn’t that individual pursued it? Why hasn’t that individual gone through the -- gone
41 through the process in the membership code? Why hasn’t that individual gone to Federal