RUSS: Do Eby and the NDP want DRIPA to wreck BC?

Geoff Russ is a writer and columnist based in West Vancouver.NDP have learned that they cannot control the machine once they give away control of it. The province is currently in what they have called a “complex legal environment,” which can more accurately be translated into “we were warned.”The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) has blown reconciliation out of the water and into the weeds of a legal, political, and cultural nightmare.Who governs BC? Nobody is quite sure, as nobody can tell you who can approve the development of major projects, how it can be approved, or what their property will be worth. To boot, it is unclear whether the province can even make or amend its own laws without permission from indigenous governing bodies that nearly all British Columbians cannot elect.On that note, is “British Columbian” even considered a respectable term anymore? The NDP certainly do not believe so, and has filed it as an “exclusionary” term.Fortunately, British Columbians are well aware of the government disaster that has engulfed their home. Angus Reid has found that most people in BC know DRIPA has gone too far when it comes to kneecapping the authority of the elected legislature. Most also distrust assurances that recent title agreements and rulings will not affect their property rights. A full two-thirds say that if private property and indigenous governance come into conflict, property must come first.The business community has noticed too, with the Business Council of BC conducting a member survey in which 98% of respondents said DRIPA had not delivered certainty for investment, one of the bill’s key selling points. Three-quarters of respondents said that they are scaling back their plans for investment in BC..In the political realm, the NDP is in trouble. The BC Conservatives have had a decidedly bitter and somewhat chaotic leadership race, but they are now statistically tied with the NDP according to Angus Reid, while others have the Conservatives 10 points ahead. There are many reasons for this, one being a giant deficit and cancelled healthcare projects, but the indigenous files stand out above all else. They are glaring failures because they reveal that the NDP has not only lost control but given it away.A question that people should be asking is, was it on purpose?For a split second, Premier David Eby looked like he would fulfil his promise of going “to the wall” to defend private property. His government promised to suspend or amend DRIPA after the provincial courts decided it was an enforceable law rather than mere guidance. In an instant, the First Nations Leadership Council applied pressure and threatened legal, political, and direct action, likely meaning protests and blockades.Then Vancouver-Strathcona NDP MLA Joan Phillips said she would not back any amendments to DRIPA, and the New Democrats got cold feet. Eby soon folded and delayed any possible changes to DRIPA until the fall.The premier’s retreat has been seen as a weakness, but it may reveal something darker and more insidious. It may simply be that Eby never believed in amending DRIPA, and perhaps even agrees with the course that “reconciliation” has taken.A full-scale surrender on DRIPA would certainly fit a pattern that has marked Eby’s career. In 2010, long before he was premier, Eby, a transplant from Ontario, routinely puffed out his chest and declared that Vancouver was “unceded native land” in the lead-up to the Olympics..As the leader of the BC Civil Liberties Association at the time, he joined the anti-Olympic activists who assumed that BC was morally compromised due to its origins in the British Empire. Even as premier, Eby has called the province’s origins an “original colonial mistake.” One of his own caucus members, Rohini Arora, declared her support for “reconciliation” as being motivated, in part, by the fact that Canada, India, and Pakistan are countries sharing “the same colonizer.”These should all be seen as clues for anyone wondering what motivates the increasingly powerful activist wing of the NDP. When the government sees the province as an error, how can it possibly be called upon to defend the authority of the Crown, which it sees as a “colonizer.”What does a mining permit or a deed for a property matter to a caucus infected with “decolonization” politics? Such currents have already made their ugly heads known during this NDP government.In 2021, the Royal BC Museum was a preview when then-premier John Horgan’s government planned to rip up the exhibits on the province’s history and try to rebuild them as a permanent ritual humiliation of “settler” visitors.Now, that looks like child’s play, for the same currents have now created two political classes: one that is weakened and answerable to the electorate, and the other composed of indigenous governing bodies that are insulated from it.DRIPA promised certainty and delivered chaos. The NDP promised reconciliation and delivered a likely constitutional crisis that will likely destroy its government. That latter point is perhaps the only positive takeaway for British Columbians.Geoff Russ is a writer and columnist based in West Vancouver.

RUSS: Do Eby and the NDP want DRIPA to wreck BC?

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