Does this give Aboriginal folk per se a veto over the activity, in one sphere, of the provincial legislature? I am afraid that is how it is going to look politically in Alberta. The separatists here are extremely outnumbered, not to mention at each other’s throats most of the time, and if they had been allowed to fight a referendum without contrived interference from a court, a humiliating loss would have been certain. But the law of Canada, which allowed for two uninterrupted Quebec referendums on secession and which consciously envisions the separation of a province, appears to have grown spiky new principles that give courts a gatekeeping role.