FLETCHER: Eby’s now ‘negotiating’ indigenous rights, but with whom?

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA – BC Premier David Eby abruptly surrendered his latest plan to amend his own indigenous law last weekend, bowing to a threat of “collective resistance from First Nations and allies” and promising to negotiate a solution to sweeping land claims by this fall.The threat was delivered in an April 19 letter from the “First Nations Leadership Council,” an umbrella organization set up in 2005 by former premier Gordon Campbell. The letter was directed not to the government but to all BC MLAs, warning them not to vote in favour of unilateral amendments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which enshrined a UN document originally designed to protect human rights in Third World countries.The only original member of the First Nations Leadership Council still in place is Stewart Phillip, a former chief of the Penticton Indian Band who now insists on being called Grand Chief of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.What is that? It’s a non-profit society set up to oppose the radical 1969 proposal by then-Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien to eliminate the Indian Act and make all Canadian citizens equal under the law. Since defeating that effort, it has grown into a powerful lobby with millions in annual funding from the federal and provincial governments..In 2014, the year before Justin Trudeau took office and promptly repealed Stephen Harper’s First Nations Financial Transparency Act, Phillip drew a salary of $914,219, according to The Globe and Mail and other reports. That’s nearly four times what the premier now makes, and twice the current prime minister’s salary. What Phillip is paid today is not known outside of his organization.What he does today hasn’t changed much since I first encountered him in the 1990s. He opposes. Phillip was a fixture at protests against the Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain, and other resource projects. He was briefly arrested for interfering with work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline. After joining the First Nations Leadership Council in 2006, Stewart helped negotiate a $100 million New Relationship Trust to “build capacity” of BC’s 200-plus bands. In the subsequent election, he turned on Campbell and campaigned for NDP leader Carole James.Campbell’s “new relationship” was also the start of a legal strategy change, where the province would no longer seek to “extinguish” Aboriginal rights and title claims in court. That strategy would later be imposed at the federal level by former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, leading to the recent court decisions that grant Aboriginal title even over private property ownership..The leadership council also includes the BC branch of the National Assembly of First Nations, another non-profit society, and the First Nations Summit, an executive group with no legal status. These are the lobby groups the BC government has been attempting to negotiate with since 2005.The Crown’s obligation to indigenous people in BC and across Canada is not to these groups. They are essentially well-compensated middlemen. The Crown’s obligation is to consult with the province’s 203 Indian Act bands, not to capitulate. Or at least it was.Eby has said the province is already facing 20 legal actions related to DRIPA, which requires the BC government to conform all of its laws to the UN declaration. His preferred approach is euphemistically described as “shared decision-making,” or what has come to be known as “nation to nation” discussions over resource development. DRIPA has given new meaning to “nation to nation,” and Eby has now apparently conceded that he can’t amend the law unless he has consent.The introduction of DRIPA has not reduced legal disputes, but rather encouraged them. Indigenous leaders can only be heartened by the latest court decisions that Aboriginal title is a “prior” and “senior” right that supersedes Crown and private property rights, and that all laws must now comply with an aspirational UN document that was embraced by Eby himself as attorney general.Eby has now indicated that his hot summer of talks will be directly with BC indigenous communities, not the lobby groups who have pushed his government to the brink of collapse. That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s far from a solution.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: Eby’s now ‘negotiating’ indigenous rights, but with whom?

Related Stories