A Rights Recognition Agreement signed in secret between the Musqueam Indian Band and Canada’s federal government recognizes Musqueam Aboriginal Title over Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Port Moody, and much of the Lower Mainland. Much of this same area is also claimed by the Tsawwassen, Squamish, and Cowichan Aboriginals.The Musqueam Band, with about 1,500 members, claims this Agreement will not impact the homes or private property of the more than two million people who live in Greater Vancouver. Yet the actual agreement says otherwise because Aboriginal Title means land ownership, not merely an interest in property. Musqueam's promise to refrain from collecting rent is not legally binding.Further, this agreement creates a race-based third level of Aboriginal government for Musqueam members to exercise authority over Greater Vancouver, alongside the federal and provincial governments.Basing legal rights on race or descent is a recipe for mistrust, strife, and conflict, not reconciliation. The only way for a country to achieve harmony among people of different ethnicities is by implementing the principle of “equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”Racism is the belief that race determines (or strongly influences) human worth, abilities, behaviours, and other traits. Racists believe that all members of a race or ethnic group share certain features in common: a certain level of intelligence, a certain level of morality or moral development, and certain talents, abilities, and character traits. For racists, what matters most about each person is his or her ancestry or descent. Racists reject the idea that all individuals (regardless of race) are equal before the law. Instead, racists favour having different laws for different people and using the law as an instrument to promote the rights of the favoured ethnic group.The opposite of racism is respect for each individual as created in the image of God, and recognizing the great worth and inherent dignity of each person. Within this belief system, a person’s skin colour or race is real, but it’s a reality that has little or no relevance. Respect for the individual is a pillar of a free society, where each person is equal before the law. In the “free and democratic society” that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets forth as its goal, personal characteristics like race and skin colour should have no bearing on a person’s legal rights and obligations..Unfortunately, Canada has had race-based laws and policies since its founding in 1867. Section 91(24) of the British North America Act (now called the Constitution Act, 1867) gave the federal government exclusive jurisdiction over “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.” Canada’s Constitution lists Aboriginal peoples as an object of government control, alongside Sea Coast and Inland Fisheries, the Postal Service, the Regulation of Trade and Commerce, the Census and Statistics, Navigation and Shipping, and Currency and Coinage, to name a few examples.Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 continues this tradition of conferring legal rights and privileges based on race: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights [including land claims agreements] of the aboriginal peoples of Canada [Indian, Inuit, and Métis] are hereby recognized and affirmed.”Historical examples of race-based laws are easy to find. In South Africa under Apartheid (1948-1991), every person was legally designated as White, Black, Coloured, or Indian, based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle. A person’s official, legally designated race determined where he or she lived, went to school, worked, and socialized. Under Apartheid, the Whites-only South African government forcibly evicted millions of Blacks from their homes and moved them into “tribal homelands” called bantustans. Apartheid laws stripped Black South Africans of their South African citizenship and declared them to be citizens of these bantustan “reserves.” Apartheid policies in South Africa may have been inspired by Indian reservations in Canada and the US.Germany’s Nuremberg Laws of 1935 are another example. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and barred Jewish households from employing German women under the age of 45. The Reich Citizenship Law restricted citizenship to people of "German or related blood," reducing others to state subjects without full rights. These Nuremberg Laws followed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed shortly after the National Socialists acquired power in 1933. This law forbade Jews as well as known political opponents (Communists, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats) from holding positions as civil servants, teachers, professors, lawyers, notaries, and judges.Of interest: both the National Socialists and the Apartheid supporters claimed to be following “the science” by which the government mandated racial separation as a natural, biological necessity..Some Canadians argue that Apartheid and the Nuremberg Laws were bad racism, and that Canada today should pursue good racism in order to help Aboriginals.Perhaps this Rights Recognition Agreement, signed in secret, was intended to repair historical injustices. However, violating the property rights of millions of BC homeowners by giving the Musqueam (and/or the Tsawwassen, Squamish, and Cowichan) a race-based right to collect rent will certainly generate inter-ethnic resentment, not reconciliation. Millions of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, African, and South Asian immigrants to Canada had nothing to do with the French and British conquest of the land that is today Canada. Nor should Canadians of European ancestry have to pay for the sins that some of their ancestors may — or may not — have committed.In short, race-based policies like this Rights Recognition Agreement generate new, complicated, and impossible-to-resolve injustices. Aboriginals in Canada should enjoy full and equal rights before the law. Historical injustices cannot be cured or healed by imposing new injustices on innocent Canadians, like the millions of British Columbians whose property rights and autonomy are now being violated.The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even if current policies vis-à-vis Aboriginals are motivated by the best of intentions, secret deals like the Rights Recognition Agreement, and declaring Greater Vancouver to be legally owned by one ethnic group, are a recipe for inter-ethnic mistrust, strife, and conflict, not reconciliation.It’s not fair to punish people today for the wrongs that may or may not have been perpetrated by their ancestors. The way to achieve reconciliation is for Canada’s Constitution — and all federal and provincial government policies and laws — to be based on the principle of equal rights for all, special privileges for none.John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
