On December 15, 2017, the government passed Order-in-Council P.C. 2017-1684 which set out a number of land transfers and related matters; the Order includes Schedules A to O (1.8 MB).
The Order always refers to Windmill as “Windmill Dream Zibi Master LP, by its general partner, Windmill Dream Limited Partnership, by its general partner, EB Eddy Sustainable Revitalization Inc.” This suggests that any land transfer from Eddy to Windmill/Dream has not been formalized. At the same time, the recognition that Eddy has any land to transfer to a private buyer flies in the face of Lindsay Lambert‘s conclusion that all the Island lands remain Crown land.
The Order identifies:
+ a transfer of 18,407 m² on Chaudière and Albert Islands from Public Works to the NCC (Schedule A). All of that and a bit more — 18,798 m² — is then transferred to Windmill (Schedule G);
+ a transfer of 22,100 m² on Chaudière, Victoria and Amelia Islands from Public Works to the NCC;
+ smaller parcels on Chaudière Island from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources & Forestry and from Windmill to the NCC (4,831 and 1,546 m² respectively, Schedules C and D);
+ in Gatineau, a total of 3,180 m² from Windmill to the NCC (Schedules E and F); and 3,400 m² from the NCC to Windmill (Schedule H);
+ various easements and servitudes of passage (Schedules I to O).
There is no reference to money transactions in the Order.
On February 13, 2018, the Grandmothers of Pikwanangan, Traditional Anishinabe Algonquin Grandmothers and Albert Dumont filed an application in Federal Court requesting a judicial review of Order-in-Council 2017-1684. The applicants seek to quash the Order, arguing that it is disrespectful of their constitutional rights and is not consistent with an 1854 O-i-C which reserved the Islands for public purposes, not private development; nor with 1870 legislation requiring that works on the Ottawa River shall be for the general advantage of Canada. They also refer to an earlier Statement of Claim filed in Superior Court of Ontario (Court File No.17-71837).
