FLETCHER: BC’s latest treaties will provide land certainty? No, they won’t

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — It’s currently drowned out by the struggle of new BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay to hold the opposition together and get a seat in the legislature, with Premier David Eby poised to use another snap election to take advantage of the turmoil and extend the NDP’s rule.Eby is riding high, the public having temporarily forgotten the crisis he caused by passing laws to give indigenous leaders control over provincial decision-making that courts have said now extends to private as well as Crown land. A new majority mandate would give the NDP time to carry out their radical plan to reshape the province as a patchwork of dozens of semi-autonomous nations based on race and ancestry.This plan includes not only new treaties, but a new type of “foundation agreement,” first with the Tahltan Nation, giving it effective control over the most significant metal mining region in Canada. There is also a series of “co-management” areas where indigenous leaders call the shots on everything from mining to logging to swimming in rivers.This week a soothing open letter was released by 11 former attorneys general, asserting that “modern treaties are among the clearest and most durable means of advancing reconciliation while maintaining confidence in private property rights.”Treaties do offer a chance to define property rights. That’s better than what we have seen with the secretly negotiated deal to surrender all of Haida Gwaii, including private property, to the Haida Nation..It’s better than the recent BC Supreme Court ruling that the Cowichan Tribes hold title to their former fishing and raiding camp across the Strait of Georgia in Richmond. That ruling held that Aboriginal title is a “prior and senior” right to private property, and appeals are many years away.Leaders of the Cowichan, Eby, and current Attorney General Niki Sharma have insisted that there is no intent to take private property, even though the ruling explicitly opens that possibility. And here’s what’s happening on the ground.The Business Council of BC published an interview with a lawyer specializing in real estate appraisal, who described a survey of real estate sales in the Richmond claim area since the Cowichan decision. Assessed property values have dropped by between 40% and 70%, and the number of sales since then is zero.So how are these modern treaties doing? The K’omoks treaty on central Vancouver Island was endorsed by the BC legislature this spring, with federal approval still to come. Thirty years in the making, the treaty was immediately protested by surrounding indigenous communities claiming overlapping title to the land.There have been thinly veiled threats to blockade highways and the BC Hydro dam that is vital to the region’s power supply. Court challenges, funded by taxpayers, of course, seem sure to follow, further weakening the “certainty” argument.When the legislature resumes sitting in October, or after the next election, the plan is to introduce the Kitselas treaty involving land along the Skeena River in northwest BC. It too was greeted with threats of protest and legal action by all of the neighbouring indigenous groups, including the Haisla Nation that is proceeding with BC’s next liquefied natural gas export project..One former attorney general declined to sign the letter assuring us everything is going to be fine. That was Barry Penner, who served as BC’s indigenous relations minister as well.In an interview with Vancouver-based Sitka Media, Penner noted that the latest treaties contain wording that did not appear in the Tsawwassen and Nisga’a treaties, modern settlements that have proven successful and led to significant economic progress.“This letter that was signed by many of my predecessors and successors as attorney general talked about treaties providing certainty,” Penner said. “But it depends on the wording. And in these more modern treaties, it’s leaving open certain elements, what they call exercisable rights, some of which will be determined later.”These “exercisable rights” are an effort by Eby’s government to execute a huge out-of-court settlement via treaties. They include a concept taken from union negotiations, a sort of “me-too” clause that allows contracts to be reopened to include gains made by other unions.This isn’t certainty. It’s the opposite.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: BC’s latest treaties will provide land certainty? No, they won’t

Related Stories

Snap election seems 'imminent' after BC Premier Eby names campaign manager

The old Liberal bench is circling Findlay’s by-election wagon

WATCH: Findlay video casts Eby as authoritarian culture-war strongman

Eby shuffles BC NDP cabinet after Bailey cancer diagnosis