Ministry of Forestry seized four logs in the possession of Paul, a registered Indian, who planned to use the wood to build a deck on his home.

Paul asserted that he had an aboriginal right to cut timber for house modification and, therefore, the relevant provision of the Forest Practices Code did not apply to him.

The Court ruled that the BC Legislature was unable to give the commission the power to rule on Paul's aboriginal rights claim by reason of s. 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, which gives the federal Parliament exclusive jurisdiction to regulate with respect to "Indians, and Land reserved for the Indians."

130 to 141 of the BC Forest Practices Code are ultra vires because they trench upon the core of Indianness, as protected by s. 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867.

The court canvasses arguments that aboriginal rights are somehow different from other constitutional rights, either in their complexity, state of flux, or precedential import, but rejected all such proposals as not providing a workable principled distinction between areas that are generally agreed to be within the competence of inferior tribunals (e.g. the factual determination that a person is an Indian) and those that would putatively not be within the tribunal's jurisdiction.