Translation of "Center for Comparative Aboriginal Law " (English → French) :

(Return tabled) Question No. 334 Hon. Irwin Cotler: With regard to bijuralism and harmonization: (a) what measures are in place to ensure legislative bijuralism across all departments; (b) since the adoption of the “Policy on Legislative Bijuralism”, how has the Department of Justice (i) ensured that all legal counsel in the Department are made aware of the requirements of legislative bijuralism in order for them to be able to take it into account when advising client departments on legislative reforms, (ii) enhanced the capacity of the Legislative Services Branch to draft bijural legislative texts, (iii) undertook, in drafting both versions of every bill and proposed regulation that touches on provincial or territorial private law, to tak ...[+++]e care to reflect the terminology, concepts, notions and institutions of both of Canada’s private law systems; (c) since the adoption of the “Policy for Applying the Civil Code of Quebec to Federal Government Activities”, what measures are in place to ensure (i) changes to Quebec’s Civil Code are known and monitored by the government, (ii) assessment of federal legislation relative to changes to Quebec’s Civil Code, (iii) federal legislation is introduced to reflect, where necessary, changes to the Civil Code of Quebec; (d) with respect to the “Index of Bijuralism and Harmonization Caselaw” found online and indicating its most recent update was June 12, 2012, (i) how often is this page updated, (ii) given that some cases thereupon are from 2013, when was this page last updated, (iii) whose responsibility is it to update this page, (iv) what cases are currently being monitored for potential addition to this page; (e) with respect to cases involving bijuralism and harmonization, (i) in what ways are these made known to the Department, (ii) whose responsibility it is to monitor these cases, (iii), what role does the Federal government play in these cases if a party, (iv) what role does the government play if not a party, (v) who m ...

It seems to me that if you adopt an Interpretation Act provision comparable to what Manitoba and Saskatchewan have done, what you are saying is that the starting point is that when Parliament adopts new laws, it intends to respect the rights of Aboriginal peoples.

In that way, Aboriginal organizations will not find themselves to be disadvantaged in one piece of legislation compared to another and people enforcing the law of the land will have a clear understanding of a standard process.

In the introduction, the professors state quite rightly that comparative studies of law used to be limited to analyzing the various facets of civil law and common law, but now they have to take into account the ramifications of Aboriginal law, among others.