Unpublished Newswire

New Brunswick’s Court of Appeal has ruled that an Indigenous group cannot seek a declaration of Aboriginal title over private property, saying the harm to private property rights would undermine Canada’s efforts at reconciliation with First Nations.The decision Thursday overturns a lower-court ruling that would have allowed the Wolastoqey Nation to lay claim to privately owned industrial lands as part of their broader Aboriginal title case. It is in strong contrast with a recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling that has cast private property rights into question.

Alberta’s Auditor-General says the province’s reporting on how the health care system is performing is not credible and has worsened over time – an issue that needs to be corrected if Premier Danielle Smith’s plan to dramatically reform the system is to be fairly evaluated. Auditor-General Doug Wylie made his assessment in a report, published Thursday, that found data used to validate the early success of Ms. Smith’s plan to improve the province’s health care system were inconsistent and were selected to make “performance look better than it actually was.”