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Ontario’s Bill 5, or the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, is facing fierce resistance from First Nations. The bill intends to fast-track mining projects, especially around what is known as the Ring of Fire, located in Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario. The Ring of Fire is rich in critical minerals like chromium, palladium and platinum, and 40,000 mining applications have been submitted for the area, with a boom in recent years. To fast-track them, Bill 5 would designate certain areas as “special economic zones” and in those areas suspend provincial and local laws and regulations that often require consultations with affected First Nations. This is supposed to speed up the approval and development process.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford insists his decisive election win in February gives him a mandate to enact Bill 5 and he has called consultations with some First Nations around the Ring of Fire “ridiculous.” In this context, a last-minute amendment affirming the government will fulfill its duty to consult with the First Nations — a duty that should have been assumed as it’s constitutionally required — did little to convince First Nations leaders the government has in fact changed its position on consultations.
But ultimately, consultations are not the barrier to developing critical minerals in Ontario. The province’s resistance to engaging with First Nations as nations, disagreements around what meaningful consultations look like and a history of broken trust are all core obstacles to Ontario and First Nations getting on the same page and speeding up industrial development around the Ring of Fire.
Early treaties between diplomats and First Nations were signed as agreements between different nations. By the middle of the 19th century and with the introduction of the Indian Act in 1876, federal government bureaucrats were increasingly tasked with colonial administration of First Nations and treaties. In part, this meant those governed through the Indian Act did not have to be consulted as equals and were instead treated as colonial subjects.
Through a series of decisions in the early Charter years, the Supreme Court expanded the Crown’s obligation to exercise power for the benefit of Indigenous Peoples — in other words, the Crown’s fiduciary duty. It almost goes without saying the Crown has a fiduciary duty to properly consult First Nations in matters that concern them, and especially the use of their land.
In the 2014 Grassy Narrows case over logging rights on the nation’s Treaty 3 territory, Ontario tried to argue that since treaties were signed with the federal government, Ontario, as a province, has no responsibilities in relations with First Nations. The Supreme Court strongly disagreed, affirming that treaty obligations extend to the provinces and are not just a federal matter. That means Ontario has a court-enforced obligation to properly consult First Nations, especially when the government seeks to develop their land.
In the past, Ontario has delegated some of the duty to consult to municipalities who are unequipped or unable to properly fulfill the duty. What was supposed to be a mechanism for maintaining nation-to-nation relations has devolved into a cog in the machine that too often forces affected First Nations to resort to years-long battles in court to protect their land and their right to be properly consulted.
To remind Ontario of the duty to consult, Grassy Narrows First Nation took the province to court again last year, this time about mining on Indigenous land, including the Ring of Fire. Another six First Nations filed a similar court case this year, seeking to overturn Ontario’s Mining Act, which came into force in 1990, pointing to its “abysmal system of consultation.”
During the 2025 provincial election campaign, Premier Ford referred to consultations with First Nations downstream, but not in the exact area, of the Ring of Fire, as “ridiculous” and urged them to “take us to court, do whatever you want, we’re moving.”
The matter of consultation is complicated by the fact the government and First Nations diverge in their notions of what exactly this should look like. Ontario’s Mining Act details the process of consultations with affected First Nations at various stages, from early exploration to mining closures. The process is uniform and places specific demands on the province — and likely qualifies as what Ford referred to as a “maze of bureaucracy, red tape and duplicative processes” that Bill 5 would cut through. Yet, the process falls short of what many First Nations expect of a respectful consultation. The legislation does not require consultations at the land-use planning stage prior to exploration, it allows mining companies to carry out consultations themselves instead of the province and does not allow sufficient time for First Nations to respond at each stage.
Lawyer and former chief of Couchiching First Nation Sarah Mainville explained in 2009 that consultations should not just be sprung on a First Nation without proper preparation. Instead “a pre-consultation approach means that we define the process together, and that is always the approach that we take,” she explained in an interview with a researcher. “We initially need to define what are the issues, what are the real issues and what capacity building is needed, what is the proper approach.”
Ontario’s Mining Act has allowed the government to dictate the terms of consultations, from the timing and duration of the process, to the subject and extent. For some Indigenous leaders, the 11th-hour amendment to Bill 5 affirming the commitment to engage in consultations is yet another example of the government dictating the terms of consultations.
The Chiefs of Ontario, representing the province’s First Nations, insist that a government taking a different approach, truly committed to consultations, would not advance this bill, and instead consult the First Nations before proposing the law. As Bill 5 is well on its way to becoming law, Hanna Sewell, co-chair of the Ontario First Nations Young People’s Council, questioned whether the outpouring of criticism toward the bill is being “taken at face value as consultation.”
The history of broken trust from the inception of Treaty 9 also weighs down on meaningful consultations. For the Treaty 9 First Nations threatening to take the province to court over Bill 5, the treaty “created a special legal relationship requiring both Indigenous governments and settler governments to consent to resource extraction and development.” Diaries of the Crown negotiators of the treaty confirm First Nations were told these were the terms in the early 1900s. However, the text of the treaty itself, in contradiction with what was verbally agreed, includes a clause that gives the Crown control over “such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes.”
The court admits oral evidence in its considerations on par with written documentation — a change in the legal system since 1997. And there is sufficient evidence of the Crown negotiators’ deliberate deceptive behaviour around the signing of Treaty 9.
The court has had to intervene when corporations extracting resources have failed to respond to the affected First Nation’s consultation requests in the past. Over the years, the province allowed the destruction of the boreal forest contrary to Treaty 9, as three First Nations assert, and the nations turned to the courts to force the province into consultations. In the 2024 decision over the terms of Treaty 9, the Supreme Court went as far as to refer to the Crown’s conduct as “what can only be described as a mockery of the Crown’s treaty promise.”
The history of broken promises and trust undermines confidence. If — or when — under Bill 5 the province fast-tracks mining projects in Treaty 9 territory, Indigenous Peoples will have little reason to trust the government will ensure minimal harm to their lives and ways of life.
Formal consultation procedures, in line with constitutional requirements, are not what is slowing down industrial development in the Ring of Fire, or Ontario more broadly. Rather, like the signing of Treaty 9, it is the lack of political will to engage in consultations in good faith, with the First Nations as nations and not as minor stakeholders, through acceptable consultation procedures.
Such a conceptual shift, reflected in evidence of consultations that exhibit fiduciary duty towards Indigenous Peoples, may actually quicken industrial development. Stoking the flames of resistance and discontent will do the opposite.
Indigenous leaders have already made clear that consultations should have preceded the introduction of Bill 5 and warned of “conflict on the ground,” if it becomes law. Changing Ontario’s long-standing pattern of behaviour and thinking around consultations won’t happen overnight. But it could still be more expedient than a series of court cases and disputes, blocking the road to the Ring of Fire.
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