Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — Beef Day is an annual tradition at the BC legislature, a spring barbecue to celebrate the province’s fragile ranching industry. This year’s event had more tension than usual, as Premier David Eby welcomed the BC Cattlemen’s Association for the event and a meeting over the implications of the NDP government’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPA). The day after the barbecue, May 6, association president Werner Stump announced that the cattlemen are applying as intervenors in a key case before the BC Supreme Court. The Pender Harbour and Area Residents Association on the BC coast has led opposition to DRIPA and the rest of the NDP government’s multi-pronged “land back” agenda, with a constitutional challenge to the validity of DRIPA.The implications for ranching are dire. BC ranchers depend on vast areas of Crown grazing rights, and the association is joining the Pender Harbour residents who have seen new restrictions on docks and waterfront development to satisfy the indigenous rights claims of the Sechelt Nation..Stump is an articulate defender of not just ranchers but BC residents in general. He first got involved when Eby’s government attempted to amend the Land Act to allow for co-governance of Crown land. He says the immediate effect was increased uncertainty that caused investors to head for the hills.The cattlemen want to argue three points in the Pender Harbour case. DRIPA is inconsistent with Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 because it doesn’t balance the interests of indigenous and non-indigenous people, it is beyond provincial jurisdiction because the federal government is responsible for indigenous people, and it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by giving Crown authority to indigenous leaders who can’t be elected by 97% of the population.Historically, ranching is one of the activities that brought together indigenous and non-indigenous people in BC’s interior for more than a century. Hockey fans will recall Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price, who made team management nervous in his playing days by spending summers on the rodeo circuit, his specialty being calf roping.Price still resides in Anahim Lake, the main settlement of the Ulkatcho First Nation in the Chilcotin Plateau of south-central BC. He grew up as a rancher, his dad being successful enough to fly him to junior hockey games around Western Canada in his light plane. Price’s mother served several terms as the elected chief of the Ulkatcho and was the first woman elected to the executive of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs..BC has already seen a preview of indigenous control over range lands. The Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark 2014 Tsilhqot’in decision granted title over 1,700 square kilometres of land in the Chilcotin Plateau, effectively declaring a separate country in the middle of BC.Since then, the remaining non-indigenous residents of the region have depended on a temporary stewardship agreement that runs to 44 pages of dense legalese that I won’t pretend to understand. It does bind the province to maintain the roads and other services, and provides annual funds to develop a final agreement. The temporary deal expires in 2027.By 2020, ranchers and tourism operators in the region were seeing the effects of a deal executed by former federal indigenous relations minister Carolyn Bennett, who flew in for closed-door meetings with indigenous representatives in 2018. Ottawa ceded federal fisheries control, licencing, buildings and all to the Xeni Gwetin, a member band of the Tsilqot’in, for part of the title area.In some cases, ranchers were told by indigenous leaders not to turn their cattle out on traditional grazing lands. Wilderness resorts began to close, unable to get permission for continued access to Crown land that was ceded to the Tsilhqot’in.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc
