Professor Magnet has been counsel in more than two hundred constitutional, administrative, and criminal cases before trial courts, courts of appeal, the Federal Court of Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. He was lead counsel in the Manitoba Language Rights Reference, which invalidated all of Manitoba鈥檚 laws after 1890 and required official bilingualism for the Province, the only successful case of this type in Canadian history; Daniels v. Canada, which transformed the constitutional status of 800,000 M茅tis and Non-Status Indigenous People, led the Government of Canada to extend programming to them, and make Self-Government and Framework Agreements with their representative organizations; Pikangikum First Nation v. Canada, which was the first case to invalidate the imposition of 鈥楾hird Party Management鈥 on a First Nation; Lac Seul First Nation v. Ontario, which was the first case to result in equity participation for an Ontario First Nation in hydro-electric development; Ford v. Quebec (Attorney General) and Singer v. Quebec (Attorney General) which successfully invalidated sections of Quebec鈥檚 Charter of the French Language that excluded English from signs and commercial advertising; Lac Seul First Nation v. Canada which resulted in a $232 million settlement and established the framework for calculating First Nation claims; Reference re Minority Language Education Rights which reorganized Ontario school boards for millions of children, and required new minority language school boards to be established; R. v. Powley, the first case to establish that M茅tis people enjoyed constitutionally protected Indigenous rights and set out the structure for adjudicating claims to these; A.B. v. Bragg Communications which showed how to reconcile the commitment to open courts with a victim鈥檚 request for anonymity in a case seeking to hold accountable the person who bullied her online; Lovelace v. Ontario; the Prostitution Reference of 1990; Canada v. Stephen Marshall; Canada v. Joshua Bernard; and other cases that built the framework of the modern Canadian Constitution. Several of his facta are available online on this website.
Professor Magnet was Chief Negotiator for Lac Seul First Nation in claims against governments and others for flooding the First Nation鈥檚 reserve. Professor Magnet negotiated the Final Agreement for the first ever settlement of any of these claims. The settlement created the most significant pool of capital in the First Nation鈥檚 history to that date and conferred on the First Nation scholarships, employment and other benefits for the future.
Professor Magnet was lead counsel for Pikangikum First Nation in its dispute with Canada over contaminated water and other reserve lands infrastructure. Professor Magnet鈥檚 advocacy resulted in a partial settlement of these claims for a package valued at over $65 million.
