I suspect your comment refers to the treaty that was signed to cover a native band in Newfoundland and which allowed everyone under the sun with some native ancestor somewhere in their family tree to claim native ancestry. 

There was an article a few days ago about that. Subsequently a board was set up to assess all the applicants (I think it was 80,000) and weed out those who didn't meet some additional criteria. The article said the numbers had been weeded down to about 10,000. 

So yes, people came out of the woodwork and applied. But most of them didn't get in.