Land claim for hydro dam flooding
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A frontier power company built an illegal dam across a major northern Ontario river, flooding parts of the ancestral lands of the Mattagami First Nation, guaranteed to them by Treaty just a few years before. For decades, the band's letters to the government and to Ontario Hydro complaining of devastation to their harvesting livelihoods were ignored. Finally, the First Nation retained us to sue Ontario Hydro and the Canadian government for the flooding and for timber mismanagement. Ontario Hydro settled the case by agreeing to pay $5.7 million for the flooding, plus rent for future use of the land. The Canadian government has agreed to negotiate for further flood-related and timber compensation.
First Nations war veterans
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Veterans returning from World War II were met with generous government assistance programmes, except First Nations veterans, who were sent back to their reserves with a fraction of the farming, housing and educational opportunities made available to the non-Natives at whose side they had fought. After decades of fruitless representations by First Nation veterans, Klippensteins was retained as co-counsel to sue on behalf of the Saskatchewan First Nations Veterans Associations, and to assist First Nation veterans at the national level. We began legal proceedings and organized compelling economic expert evidence. In response, the government agreed to a Round Table for discussions and the vets suspended litigation. When the Round Table produced nothing, the veterans announced they were resuming litigation. The federal minister immediately announced in the House of Commons a $39 million settlement offer. While the offer was inadequate and subject to further negotiation, it was the first significant concrete result the veterans had seen in half a century.