RUSS: In the hearts of the British Columbians, property rights are not up for negotiation

Geoff Russ is a writer and columnist based in West Vancouver.The Rubicon has been crossed in British Columbia. Instead of a column of Roman legionnaires and cavalry splashing across a river, it is a horde of statutes, court rulings, and a feckless NDP government that has let things spin out of control.DRIPA, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, is the issue. Passed in 2019, it requires the province, “in consultation and cooperation” with indigenous peoples, to take “all measures necessary” to make BC laws consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).DRIPA provides for joint statutory decision-making and consent-based decision-making agreements involving indigenous governing bodies before certain decisions are made by the BC government. Land acknowledgments are yesterday’s controversy; the same ideology has now latched onto the machinery of governance on the West Coast.Since forming government in 2017, the BC NDP has treated indigenous consultation and co-governance as a harmless and virtuous evolution. Then came the BC Court of Appeal’s decision in the Gitxaala case, which confirmed that DRIPA gives UNDRIP immediate legal effect as an interpretive standard across all BC laws.British Columbians cannot live with a system in which ordinary property, permits, resource development, and public administration are now subject to widening uncertainty. Provincial ministers do not help by offering only warm words about partnership with First Nations, along with assurances that British Columbians’ lives will not be meaningfully changed..These words mean nothing to a company trying to finance a new mine, or to a young family considering a home purchase in small-town BC.Last summer, the Cowichan title decision only made the situation more severe. The BC Supreme Court ruling marked the first time Aboriginal title was established over lands including private fee simple interests. The City of Richmond warned that the decision could affect ownership in areas covered by the ruling, and an appeal is underway.However, the public has already been rudely reminded that secure titles are the foundation of life in Canada.BC’s own DRIPA plan contains 89 priority actions, including self-government, title and rights, and control over lands and resources. The WelcomeBC guide for new immigrants now introduces them to BC through this official reconciliation framework, DRIPA included. It includes the claim that most of BC was never given up or signed away.Even the names of cities are subject to DRIPA and the ideology that inspired it, despite the objections of local residents. Those trying to lead Powell River’s possible renaming process say a referendum is not required, only the provincial authority that would formalize the name change of a town that has stood since 1912..Those seeking a democratic process have been directed to online portals, where they can deliver comments that few will read, let alone allow to affect the process.However, it is not all grim, because the public has taken note of this intolerable, aloof governance.Angus Reid’s May poll in BC found that the leaderless provincial Conservatives were 10 points ahead of the NDP, and Eby’s own approval rating had tanked to 33%. At 36%, the NDP has not polled this low since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.More awkwardly for the premier, nearly half of British Columbians want DRIPA repealed, including a majority of property owners..All remaining BC Conservative leadership candidates support the repeal of DRIPA, and the renegade OneBC party that broke away from the Conservatives has promised to fully remove all traces of UNDRIP and eliminate the “veto powers” of First Nations bands over major projects.The NDP has handed the opposition a winning issue that could lead to the government's fall. Nor can Eby and his government retreat, because the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) has threatened to stage legal and physical protests that would bog down the NDP even further if the government tried even temporarily to suspend DRIPA.DRIPA was never going to be merely a symbolic law, as the courts have now ruled. The question that may remain unanswered is whether the NDP’s lawyers understood this when drafting the legislation, and whether they understood its effect on related Aboriginal title issues.Property is the ordinary citizen’s shield against arbitrary power, and it is not up for negotiation.Geoff Russ is a writer and columnist based in West Vancouver.

RUSS: In the hearts of the British Columbians, property rights are not up for negotiation

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