VANCOUVER — BC Premier David Eby continues to insist that private property owners in Richmond have “nothing to fear” from negotiations following last summer's BC Supreme Court decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada, yet he has stopped short of demanding or securing an explicit, legally binding renunciation of the nation’s underlying title claim to the fee-simple private property..The demand for Eby to renounce such claims has regained attention amid resurfaced footage from a November 2025 news conference where Lyackson First Nation Chief Shana Thomas, a Cowichan Nation member, stated the chiefs were “not looking to displace anybody,” despite the fact the BC Supreme Court Justice provided the Cowichan Tribes with aboriginal title to more than five square kilometres of Richmond in her decision last summer.“Private property owners have nothing to fear from the negotiations. That private property is not part of this negotiation, full stop,” he said, adding that he could assure outgoing Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie that “private property won’t be used as a bargaining chip.”The premier’s remarks came in direct response to a strongly worded letter from Brodie and Richmond city council sent this week to four Cowichan chiefs and copied to the provincial government.The letter demands the Cowichan Nation “renounce in a form that is legally binding any claim to private property in Richmond arising out of the recent court ruling regarding aboriginal title.”Brodie, in his letter, argued that public statements and a prior joint declaration from the province and nation fall short of the ironclad guarantee homeowners and businesses desperately need.The demands echo the raw anxiety on display at a heated town hall in Richmond last October.Standing-room-only crowds of property owners confronted city officials and voiced deep frustration over potential hits to property values, financing and long-term security..At the heart of the dispute is last August’s BC Supreme Court ruling recognizing Cowichan Aboriginal title over roughly 5.7 square kilometres on the south shore of Lulu Island — the historic Quw’utsun village site of Tl’uqtinus.The decision declared certain Crown and city titles “defective and invalid” and ruled that the granting of private fee-simple titles unjustifiably infringed on Cowichan title. It ordered the parties into reconciliation negotiations even as the province, Ottawa, the City of Richmond, and several other competing indigenous groups appealed the decision.Hundreds of residential, commercial and industrial properties are caught in the claim area. In the ruling’s wake, Brodie sent warning notices to 125 to 150 owners.While Cowichan leaders have repeatedly said they have no intention of displacing individual owners and did not name specific landowners in court, they — like the premier himself — have not issued the legally binding renunciation Brodie is demanding.
