Lawyers Brief PBCN Members About Claim Potential

Lawyers Brief PBCN Members About Claim Potential

Tuesday, June 22, 2004 at 15:28

Members of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation have gathered in Sandy Bay this week to talk about possible legal action over lands flooded by hydro development several decades ago.

Over the next few days, band lawyers will go over the case the band has for launching a claim for compensation.

The band has unsuccessfully tried to work out a compensation package with SaskPower since the late 1980s over the construction of the Whitesand and Island Falls dams.

Those hydro projects flooded lands occupied by band members in northeastern Saskatchewan in the early part of the last century.

SaskPower’s last offer to the band was in the neighbourhood of 10 million dollars, but band officials rejected that settlement offer based on the compensation awarded in similar cases in Manitoba.

Some bands in Manitoba have received 6 or 7 times that figure from Manitoba Hydro.

Representatives of those bands are in Sandy Bay this week to talk about their claims.