THIELMANN: From Joseph Trutch to David Eby — BC’s battle over land, productivity, and power

Tim Thielmann is a former indigenous rights lawyer, writer/director of the Making a Killing documentary, and the chief of staff to British Columbia MLA Tara Armstrong.One is a nineteenth-century founder whose name has been stripped from British Columbian street signs; the other is a premier trailing ten points behind his rivals. Yet the ties between Joseph Trutch and David Eby run deeper than their recent declines in popularity.Trutch, BC’s much-maligned Commissioner of Lands and Works and later Lieutenant Governor, implemented land settlement policies that notoriously limited indigenous claims. But on the surface, his reasoning was not entirely unlike Premier Eby’s own justification for the NDP’s anti-speculation housing policies. In both cases, there was a perception that valuable properties were being hoarded or underutilized by private parties whose objectives did not align with the broader public interest.With powers granted under British Columbia’s Land Ordinance Act of 1870, Trutch tightened requirements for indigenous property ownership and advocated for small reserve allotments. There was an empirical basis for his position. An 1867 report on the Lower Thompson River Valley documented that thousands of acres of arable land in the region, which could have supplied nearby mining camps, were instead lying largely unutilized by local natives, who had grown only a few patches of potatoes and leased small tracts for grazing.Trutch also prioritized settlement by British subjects who not only shared a common culture but were legally obligated to demonstrate productive capacity. Land grants required costly improvements over multiple years, such as clearing, fencing, and working the land. He recognized that provincial infrastructure could only be built upon a foundation of productive land use for the benefit of its people..Fast forward to 2018: David Eby’s NDP government introduced the Speculation and Vacancy Tax and increased the foreign buyer’s tax to 20% on the premise that vacant or underutilized residential properties should be opened up to British Columbian renters. But although his stated purpose mirrors Trutch’s, Eby has not been philosophically inclined toward policies that reward productivity or self-sufficiency.And this is where the two figures fundamentally part ways. The people targeted by Eby’s taxes are often among the most productive members of society — individuals who have generated enough wealth to purchase multiple residences. There are consequences to punishing the productive class: they build homes, invest capital, and generate wealth elsewhere.Furthermore, by contrast to the colonial settlement policies championed by Trutch, which required demonstrable self-sufficiency and prioritized cultural continuity, Eby has celebrated the radical resettlement of the province through third-world mass migration. This has not only driven up rents — contrary to the stated goals of his housing policy — but has also overwhelmed schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure, while tightening cultural tensions.Eby could learn a thing or two from Trutch about productivity. We all can..As an engineer, Joseph Trutch helped open British Columbia’s interior through major infrastructure works such as the Cariboo Wagon Road and the Alexandria Bridge, connecting mining, farming, forestry, and inland settlement to the growing provincial economy. He later established a rigorous survey and land-title system that allowed property throughout the province to be securely held, developed, and exchanged as productive assets, laying the legal and economic foundation for long-term growth. Most consequentially, as the chief negotiator of British Columbia’s Terms of Union, he secured the transcontinental railway connection that integrated the province into Canada and helped transform a remote and sparsely settled territory into a nationally connected industrial economy.Ironically, David Eby’s legacy has been to undermine the productive foundation established in British Columbia, thanks in large part to Joseph Trutch. Eby is stoking the same aspirations for private tribal control over lands, which Trutch recognized as fundamental to the broader public interest. Eby’s decisions to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a provincially binding legal mandate, to concede the Cowichan Tribes case by refusing to argue that Aboriginal title over private lands was extinguished, and countless other decisions are undermining the legal, political, and cultural integration that gave rise to British Columbia’s remarkable growth over the last 150 years.The question now is what the next 150 years will hold. Will British Columbia launch itself into a new era of industrious prosperity? Or will unproductive squabbles and misguided settlement policies entrap our inestimable potential?The answer to that question depends upon whose legacy we choose to embrace.Tim Thielmann is a former indigenous rights lawyer, writer/director of the Making a Killing documentary, and the chief of staff to British Columbia MLA Tara Armstrong.

THIELMANN: From Joseph Trutch to David Eby — BC’s battle over land, productivity, and power

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