Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦 on X - "Remember when the @LawSocietyofBC implied that BC lawyer Jim Heller was racist because he asked them to stop spreading the lie that hundreds of murdered children had been discovered in Kamloops? He is suing them."
Jonathan Kay on X - "amazing story: @LawSocietyofBC embedded the myth of 215 child “remains” in its teaching materials, & then went double or nothing even when its misinfo was called out, smearing critics as racists. Now the case goes to court, & the law society will be forced to defend its lies"
Jas Johal on X - "BC Conservative MLA Peter Milobar is a good man. Without mentioning caucus colleague Dallas Brodie, he pushed back on residential school denialism, saying he owed it to his constituents and family. #bcpoli #vanpoli"
Robert Stevenson on X - "I’m sorry but “denialism” is such an evil word to use in this context. The invocation of the word implies a holocaust-type genocide occurred at residential schools. And then when people rightly ask for evidence, you refuse to provide anything other than hearsay."
Josh Dehaas: There’s no denying land acknowledgements are political - "with the assistance of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a group of University of British Columbia professors and a former student filed a lawsuit asking the B.C. Supreme Court to protect academic freedom by ordering the university administration to stop breaching its statutory duty to remain non-political: No more requiring fealty to DEI ideology from job applicants. No more statements about the Israel-Gaza war. No more land acknowledgements by the administration in academic settings where academic freedom is impinged. There’s been little pushback to our claims that DEI purity tests or Israel-Gaza statements contravene B.C.’s University Act requirement that the public university’s administration remain non-political. The criticism of our claim that land acknowledgements are political has been substantial. One critic is UBC assistant professor Scott Franks, who argued in an op-ed in the Globe and Mail that, rather than being political in nature, “land acknowledgments are statements of legal fact.” Franks offers an example: it’s a “legal fact,” he says, that the land that UBC Vancouver sits on is “unceded and that the Musqueam Nation retains title to those lands.” It’s difficult to understand how the assertion that UBC is on “unceded” Musqueam territory, to which they have title, is anything other than political. There is no court decision that says the Musqueam possess title to those lands. That includes Aboriginal title, which is the communal right to use land that courts have found in small parts of B.C., where First Nations have lived continuously and with the ability to exclude others since the Crown assertion of sovereignty... In the 1994 decision Jamieson v. Victoria Native Friendship Centre , the tribunal found that the Friendship Centre had discriminated against a prospective employee, Jamieson, for his political beliefs asserted in connection with his membership in the Mohawk Warrior Society. The tribunal found that the beliefs in question were political because they concerned “the way First Nations communities are organized and governed and how these communities relate to each other and to other levels of government.” Claims that UBC is on “unceded” land, and that the Musqueam have title, are similarly about how the First Nation community relates to the B.C. government. Whether those claims are right or wrong (we take no position), they are political. In the 2012 decision Wali v. Jace Holdings Limited, a pharmacist established that his employer discriminated against him by firing him over his statements opposing a policy from the College of Pharmacists. The tribunal found that Ahmad Wali’s statements were political in nature for three reasons: they were connected to a law, they involved the public welfare on a matter subject to debate within the community and they related to “ social co-operation .” The claim that UBC is on “unceded” land and that the Musqueam have sovereignty or title ticks all three of those boxes. In the 2019 decision in Fraser v. B.C. , the tribunal found that the B.C. government had discriminated against an applicant by rescinding a job offer over comments he had made about the way the B.C. government had dealt with the Council of Haida Nation on forestry matters, including its development the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. The applicant’s comments were political, the tribunal said, because they involved “discourse on matters of public interest which involves or would require action at a governmental level.” Claiming in a land acknowledgement that land is “unceded,” which implies that is stolen, that it should be given back or that compensation is owing, is obviously related to an issue of public interest and discourse that would require action on the part of the government to achieve. Ergo, such statements are political... Individual professors and students must be free to take any and all positions in this political debate when pursuing their research, learning and teaching. They are not free to do so when UBC’s university administrators — the people who do the hiring, decide promotions and grant the degrees — have already taken a side."
'Nothing to fear' from Sunshine Coast land deal: NDP - "When the New Democrats concluded a secret agreement with the Sunshine Coast shíshálh Nation a year ago, they included commitments regarding private land that remain secret to this day. The 44-page agreement was withheld from the public until after the 2024 provincial election and not released until January of this year. The province provided the shíshálh with $104 million over five years, the transfer of six square kilometres of Crown land, and committed to expedite exclusive decision-making and Aboriginal title for the nation. But even then, significant passages were redacted, including two full-page schedules detailing tracts of private land that were also targeted for acquisition and/or protection."
B.C. court tosses jail sentence for ‘life-altering’ aggravated assault - "British Columbia’s highest court has thrown out a jail sentence for a man whose unprovoked attack left his victim with a severe brain injury, after ruling the offender’s Indigenous background reduced his moral culpability. Isaac Harrison Davis had been sentenced to 21 months in jail by a Courtenay provincial court judge last November after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault against a man identified in court documents as Mr. Stone in January 2023. Davis, who was 20 years old at the time of the assault, was on the phone with his mother, who was just involved in a car crash with Stone, when Davis thought he heard Stone yelling at his mother, according to a B.C. Appeal Court summary. Thinking his mother was in danger, Davis rushed to the scene of the accident and was at his mother’s side within minutes when he saw Stone hurrying towards them. Stone had just come from a store where he bought cigarettes for Davis’s mother, in what the court judgment described as “an act of kindness to Mr. Davis’s mother, who was upset by the accident.” Misunderstanding the situation, Davis approached Stone and, despite his mother’s pleas, punched the man in the middle of the forehead, knocking him out cold... Stone was rushed to hospital in Victoria where he underwent multiple emergency surgeries to relieve pressure on his brain from two separate bleeds, the court heard. He was in a coma for three weeks and remained paralyzed for 14 days after. “It was touch and go for a while as to whether Mr. Stone was going to survive or not,” the trial judge wrote. “The assault was both life-threatening and life-altering for Mr. Stone,” the judge said, describing how the victim continues to suffer from memory loss, speech impairment, cognitive deficiencies and hearing loss. “He is now often irritable and short-tempered,” the trial judge continued. “He has two young children and he now finds it is a challenge for him to help raise his children as he finds he has no patience.”... Despite taking responsibility for his actions, Davis appealed his jail sentence, seeking instead a conditional sentence on the basis the trial judge failed to fully consider the application of the Gladue sentencing principles, which instruct the courts to weigh how the circumstances of Indigenous offenders differ from those of non-Indigenous offenders... Fenlon, writing the Appeal Court’s decision, found the lower court judge made an error by giving less weight to the Gladue principles because Davis had graduated from high school, was employed, and had no prior criminal history or addiction issues. Fenlon wrote that Davis, who is a member of the K’omoks First Nation, was raised in poverty and was exposed to domestic violence and substance abuse. He became protective of his mother as a result and achieved successes in life despite his background, the judge concluded. “Mr. Davis’s moral blameworthiness is markedly diminished by his circumstances as an Indigenous offender,” Fenlon wrote."
Are people still pretending that there's equality before the law, given that indigenous people can almost kill others and still not go to jail?
When reconciliation fails in B.C., David Eby will be to blame - "David Eby appears determined to become the funeral director of reconciliation in British Columbia. Once touted as a worthy cause, reconciliation under Eby has become divisive and suspicious. British Columbians never voted for extreme secrecy, heavy-handed decisions, and one-sided governance, but they are getting hit with all of it whether they like it or not. Regular people and families are now wondering if the homes they saved for are truly theirs, or if they will wake up to find the name of their community, or street changed, or unable to camp at their favourite spots in the province. Ninety-four per cent of B.C. is Crown land, making the province ground zero for the collision of Aboriginal title, Crown land, and private property. Earlier this month, B.C. caught the attention of people across Canada following the Cowichan Tribes v. Canada decision. The B.C. Supreme Court issued a ruling that declared that a number of Crown land grants in Richmond were “defective and invalid” because they unjustifiably infringed Cowichan Aboriginal title, raising questions about the status of surrounding privately-held fee simple properties. Justice Barbara Young found that Crown grants that had enabled the land sales were “unjustifiable infringements.” Premier Eby’s own Attorney General Niki Sharma even admitted that Justice Young’s decision could have “unintended consequences for private property rights.” It is not just private owners who have been upended by the Cowichan decision. Even local First Nations with their own claims to the land in question are furious, with the Musqueam calling the ruling offensive. The shock and awe that followed the decision might have been mitigated had the B.C. NDP approached decision-making with openness and honesty when it came to land use and Aboriginal title. Instead, the provincial government has spent the last two years deliberately dodging public debate and consultation with all British Columbians on an issue that is shaking the foundations of their society. Take the shíshálh Nation Agreement for example. Signed behind closed doors in 2024, it handed over $104 million in payments, transferred six square kilometres of public land, and committed the province to negotiate recognition of Aboriginal title and to explore exclusive decision-making powers for the Nation within five years. It was only revealed after the 2024 provincial election, with local residents furious at learning they had been left in the dark. Even the freshly elected NDP MLA Randene Neill admitted she too had no idea of the deal while running. For the B.C. NDP, subterfuge is often the rule, not the exception. At the most basic level, this is exemplified by the fact that they have choked off access to public information by charging $10 per ministry for Freedom of Information requests. Because the province treats its 28 ministries and agencies as separate “public bodies,” a single cross-government request now costs $280 just to make a request. It is an unambiguously undemocratic policy that turns transparency into a privilege for those who have the means. The Eby government’s application of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) is another way by which ordinary British Columbians have had the rug pulled out from underneath them. Passed in 2019 by the provincial legislature, DRIPA commits the provincial government to implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a non-binding document adopted by the UN in 2007. In March, residents of Okanagan Falls voted by 53 per cent to incorporate and become the province’s newest municipality, and learned what DRIPA could mean for them. It was only well after the vote that the NDP asked the people of Okanagan Falls to consider a change of name to align with local Indigenous wishes, and to possibly surrender certain Crown land located within their proposed borders. Some fear this could mean losing access to popular hiking trails and other attractions, and those in Okanagan Falls who have pushed to become a municipality rightfully feel cheated... Historically, British Columbians could take it for granted that once they bought land, it was their property until they chose to sell. Courts are now questioning the relationship between Aboriginal title and fee simple rights, raising new doubts about the security of land ownership in B.C. Even the NDP have been rattled by the Cowichan decision, given the implications, and have appealed the ruling. If reconciliation was ever a unifying cause in B.C., it is no longer, and the NDP are responsible. Polling by Research Co. in 2023 found that while 65 per cent of British Columbians approved of reconciliation in principle, only half supported “economic reconciliation.” Changes to the B.C. Land Act, which dictates title and land use, have proven especially controversial. Angus Reid found that 94 per cent of British Columbians agreed that changing the Land Act was a “major transformation,” while 75 per cent wanted a referendum on the matter, and with good reason... No British Columbian ever voted in a referendum for DRIPA. They never voted for the fundamental rules of their democracy to be altered, and they certainly never voted for private property to be thrown into question without their consent. The NDP do not make court rulings, but they have fostered a climate of mistrust, and have no roadmap to deal with the consequences of decisions like Cowichan."
The B.C. Supreme Court’s Extreme and Unjust Cowichan Decision Threatens Private Property Across B.C. : r/VancouverLandlords - ""legal basis for settler ownership of land in most of British Columbia."
Dunno why you're ragging on immigrants, that's not cool."
Legal rights should not depend on Indigenous lineage - "A judge of the British Columbia Supreme Court recently found that the Cowichan First Nation holds Aboriginal title over 800 acres of government land in Richmond, B.C. But that’s not all. Wherever Aboriginal title is found to exist, said the court, it is a “prior and senior right” to fee simple title, whether public or private. That means it trumps the property you have in your house, farm or factory. If the Cowichan decision holds up on appeal, it would mean private property is not secure anywhere a claim for Aboriginal title is made in Canada. In November, a judge of the New Brunswick King’s Bench suggested that where such a claim succeeds, the court may instruct the government to expropriate the private property and hand it over to the Aboriginal group. Don’t dismiss these decisions as isolated or not having national implications. They are the logical extension of the Supreme Court of Canada’s extensive Aboriginal jurisprudence. They are also consistent with what in recent decades have become core Canadian beliefs. Special status for Aboriginal people is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture and since 1982 enshrined in the Constitution. Aboriginal rights are widely regarded as the natural and proper order of things. In fact, they are the opposite. In a free country governed by the rule of law, Aboriginal rights should not exist... Once upon a time, legal rights did depend on who your parents were. The ruler was the son of the ruler before him. If your parents were serfs, you were a serf, too. Lineage was destiny. But, like the culture, the law evolved. Eventually, everyone got the vote and the right to run for office. Everyone could own property and was free to buy and sell it. Everyone could marry whom they chose, and divorce as they saw fit. But in progressive Canada, lineage has become a constitutional imperative. Under Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, the legally privileged group is Aboriginal, not European. Indigenous people have the same legal rights as any other Canadian citizen. But they also have rights no one else may claim. Depending on their group affiliations, they may have treaty rights. They may be entitled to tax exemptions. They may receive exclusive benefits. They may claim positions on governing bodies and in institutions reserved only for them. They may be entitled to procedures and considerations in criminal sentencing that no one else receives. Their group may be granted Aboriginal title on land from which other Canadians are excluded. This special status has not benefited most Aboriginal people. But it has enriched their elites who administer the substantial largesse that flows from government coffers. Aboriginal property is a group right controlled by Aboriginal leaders. Individual Indigenous people do not own plots of land on reserves or on lands subject to Aboriginal title. Dependency endures because governments and many Indigenous leaders are content with what has become the legal and constitutional status quo. Former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson, among others, has argued that we can trace persistently poor social conditions experienced by many Indigenous people to a thriving “Aboriginal industry.” Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions and individuals — chiefs, leaders, consultants, managers, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and others — have a vested interest in the existing system of Aboriginal rights and status as special groups. Section 35, as interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, constitutionally entrenches this system. The recent Cowichan decision is just one of its consequences... Generations have passed. We are all Canadian citizens mixed together. Some people have Aboriginal lineage, some have British or French, some have both, and many have none of the above. It’s time to repudiate the idea that legal rights depend on lineage. Purging it from the Constitution, of course, would be no easy task, and may prove to be impossible. But the crucial first step is to reject the legitimacy of different legal status. In a free country, laws apply not to distinctive peoples, but to people, period."
Left wingers love a caste system. As long as "minorities" are at the top
Adam Pankratz: B.C.'s shameful race to give up public land
Adam Pankratz: B.C.'s shameful race to give up public land - The NDP government is aggressively trying to give First Nations more powers over provincial lands — with next to no public input : r/ilovebc - "The weird thing is we had a referendum on these topics and it’s clear what the electorate think. Views will only have hardened since then as we have many more people who have no familial/ancestral connection to 19th century events. In conjunction with the price of property being so high that anyone who owns has too much on the line to support giving their land away and potentially converting to low value leasehold at the behest of an FN group. The referendum has been completely ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_British_Columbia_Indigenous_treaty_referendum"
Defying the wishes of the majority is only oligarchy when it hurts the left wing agenda
B.C. keeps renaming landmarks in languages spoken by only a handful of people - "British Columbia continues to rename streets, provincial parks and even entire cities in Indigenous languages that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization classifies as “critically endangered.” One prominent example came in 2018, when the province renamed Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park—home to one of North America’s largest sockeye salmon runs—to Tsútswecw Provincial Park... The park’s former namesake, Haig-Brown, was a conservationist who wrote several books educating the public about the importance of protecting salmon, watersheds and sustainability. Despite his efforts — and both historical and personal significance to the park — the B.C. government went ahead with the name-change as part of its “reconciliation efforts with Indigenous peoples.” More recently, the City of Vancouver made headlines this year when it renamed Trutch Street to šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm following a unanimous 2021 city council vote in favour of the name change. The new street name translates from the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm language to “Musqueamview,” referring to a vantage point or perspective overlooking traditional Musqueam territory. According to the most recent comprehensive report on British Columbia First Nations languages, there are just over 100 fluent speakers of the language — and far fewer are capable of reading or writing in it. Delivery agents, banks, emergency responders, city systems, and even agencies like Canada Post and ICBC have said they’ve had trouble displaying and processing the new name. On Vancouver Island, meanwhile, the city of Powell River, which has a population of about 15,000, faces a possible name change in 2026 following calls from the Tla’amin Nation to drop the colonial name. The local visitor information centre has already rebranded as the “Qathet Visitor Centre,” adopting the Tla’amin word for “working together.” A newly installed poster at the centre instructs visitors to “identify your intentions and willingness to abide by Tla’amin protocol,” though staff have admitted they cannot explain what those protocols entail. The Tla’amin Nation estimates only 68 people speak its language fluently. British Columbia is home to roughly 30 Indigenous languages, all of which UNESCO categorizes as “critically endangered.” That status—Grade 1 on the organization’s vitality scale—generally means a language is spoken almost exclusively by great-grandparents or older generations, with little intergenerational transmission. But that hasn’t stopped the B.C. government from utilizing these languages—rarely spoken, even amongst the Aboriginal populations that created them—to rename everything from streets to community centres to entire communities."
Vancouver man says institutions unable to recognize new Indigenous street name - BC - "when he tried to change his address to the legal Musqueam spelling — šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm — both of his banks told him they have no capacity, nor plans, to be able to recognize the official spelling."
Non-Indigenous visitors being turned away from B.C. public parks - "In what critics say is a template of things to come, B.C. has begun closing public parks to non-Indigenous residents citing “cultural concerns.” This week, the B.C. government announced that Botanical Beach — a popular spot along the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail — would be closed for 24 hours over the May 24 weekend “to provide time, space and privacy for members of the Pacheedaht First Nation to harvest marine resources and reconnect with an important part of their territory.” This follows on a series of similar closure of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, one of the busiest recreational spots in the province. From April 25 until May 16, non-Indigenous usage of the park is banned, and “more temporary closures are anticipated” reads an April 25 bulletin by B.C.’s Ministry of the Environment and Parks. The closures are to “provide time and space for members of the Líl̓wat Nation and N͛Quatqua to reconnect with the land and carry out cultural and spiritual practices,” it reads. It will be the third year in a row that Joffre Lakes has been subject to some sort of closure for non-Indigenous visitors. The first, in 2023, occurred when the nearby Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua First Nations unilaterally barred public access to the park for more than five weeks. “In this time of reconciliation, Lil’wat Nation and N’Quatqua First Nation are asserting our Title and Rights to our shared unceded territory to take this time to harvest and gather our resources within our territories,” read a statement telling the B.C. public they would be barred access to the park from Aug. 23 “until National Truth and Reconciliation Day” (Sept. 30). When the Joffre Lakes closure was given official government sanction in 2024, B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman notably stressed that the action would not be a template for future closures of parks to non-Indigenous users... In addition to the Botanical Beach and Joffre Lakes shutdowns, B.C. has also seen a series of federally run recreation areas closed to public usage, with authorities also citing cultural concerns... The Joffre Lakes closure has previously attracted criticism from Kevin Falcon, who served as Opposition leader until B.C.’s October 2024 provincial election. Last summer, he told a news conference that he opposed the closure of public parks in principle, and that any Indigenous accommodation of the site “should be done in the context of ensuring that this park is still available to the public.” But one of the most widely circulated critiques of the policy is a May 8 video by Caroline Elliott, a former candidate with the now-defunct political party BC United. Elliot said that the Joffre Lakes closure was precipitated via the Lil’wat and N’Quatqua’s mere assertion of title over the park — even though this claim has never been formally confirmed. B.C. differs from much of Canada in that most of the province sits atop land that has never been formally ceded via treaty, aside from a handful of small 19th century treaties and four modern treaties struck in the 21st century... “We’re now in a place where the mere assertion of title confers the right to prohibit public access to public spaces,” said Elliott, noting that every single hectare of untreatied land in B.C. is subject to at least one or more Indigenous territorial claims. “We have to ask; what would prevent more closures like this, not just in parks, but in relation to any other public land?” she said."
Luckily it's not for Christian or white purposes, or that'd be theocracy and white supremacy respectively.
Public parks aren't public when it suits the left.
"Reconciliation" means letting "indigenous" people do whatever they want.
If you oppose giving some races different rights than others, you're racist.
Caroline Elliott: Closures of B.C. parks to non-Indigenous visitors a sign of things to come - "A year ago in these pages, I criticized land acknowledgements for implying that non-Indigenous Canadians are “uninvited guests” in their own country. Now, the B.C. government has embraced these labels. To the applause of her colleagues, NDP MLA Rohini Arora stood in the legislature earlier this month, encouraging non-Indigenous British Columbians to describe themselves as a “settler,” “colonizer” and “uninvited guest” living on “Indigenous land.” This divisive mindset is increasingly being put into action, with a number of parks in B.C. being temporarily closed to non-Indigenous visitors... While Indigenous rights are protected by the Constitution, this does not give Indigenous groups the right to act unilaterally without consideration of the public interest, especially in cases where Aboriginal title hasn’t been legally established. If the position of Indigenous groups, and seemingly the B.C. government, is that the mere assertion of Aboriginal title confers the right to prohibit access to public spaces, then there is nothing to prevent similar closures not just of other parks, but of any public lands throughout the province. After all, virtually all of the province’s land mass is claimed as traditional territory by one or more of B.C.’s 200-plus Indigenous groups, which together represent around six per cent of the population. The issue already extends far beyond parks. The B.C government was criticized in February for withholding the details of a significant deal with the shíshálh Nation on the Sunshine Coast until after last year’s provincial election. It involves huge amounts of money, transfers of land and promises to negotiate Aboriginal title and “exclusive decision-making” powers in the band’s traditional territory. Ongoing negotiations with the shíshálh Nation are likely to follow the model of last year’s Haida agreement, which Premier David Eby called a “ template ” for other areas of B.C. It recognized Aboriginal title over the million-hectare Haida Gwaii islands. Approved in a referendum held only for Haida voters (even though half the affected residents are non-Haida), it raises democratic red flags , as well as legal concerns about private property rights and the constraints it places on the ability of future governments to act in the public interest. The Haida agreement followed on the heels of B.C.’s proposed Land Act amendments, which were paused following a public outcry. The amendments would have allowed the government to enter into agreements with individual Indigenous groups to give them control over up to 95 per cent of B.C.’s public lands, despite the absence of a democratic relationship between those governing bodies and 94 per cent of the population. All of this is the predictable outcome of decades of land acknowledgements and divisive language that have constantly segregated British Columbians into ancestry-based groups with unequal claims to the land they live on. It’s the foreseeable product of a provincial government that refers to non-Indigenous British Columbians as “uninvited guests,” even as it advises against referring to B.C. citizens as “British Columbians” because it might exclude or offend people. Many of these policies are being undertaken in the name of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which commits the B.C. government to bring all of its laws into alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. While Canadian constitutional law calls for a balancing of the interests of B.C.’s Indigenous groups with the broader interests of the rest of the population, DRIPA provides for no such balance. Aboriginal law expert Geoffrey Moyse explained that under Canadian law, Aboriginal title “does not blanket entire claimed territories as Article 26 of UNDRIP insists it does,” nor does it “allow Indigenous groups to have veto authority over government decision-making as Article 32(2) says they do.” Under DRIPA, it is quickly becoming clear that decisions over public land will increasingly be made by, or require the consent of, small Indigenous governments that have no democratic relationship with the 4.6-million non-Indigenous British Columbians who make up the vast majority of the population. We’re hurtling toward a future of division, exclusion and resentment, but it’s not inevitable. Let’s remind the government that each of us has as much right to our parks, our public lands and our democratic voice as anyone else."
The left hates democracy when it stands in the way of the left wing agenda
'Colonial decision-making': First Nations denounce B.C. park closure as too short - "Two First Nations are denouncing British Columbia’s planned month-long closure of Joffre Lakes Park for Indigenous cultural practices as too short, calling it “a fraction” of what they proposed within their title and rights. The Lilwat and N’Quatqua nations say the closure from Sept. 2 to Oct. 3 is a “continuation of colonial decision-making” that does not respect Indigenous authority over their traditional lands. The B.C. government says it’s the third and final such closure of the park this year."
No surprise. Colonialism stopped the natives from killing each other, after all
Caroline Elliott: The end of Canada is coming and B.C.'s NDP is leading the charge - "Under the auspices of B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s Act, Premier David Eby has admitted that provincially significant projects on Crown land will not be expedited under its own fast-track law without the consent of Indigenous groups. At the same time, an effective veto is already being written into a growing number of agreements with Indigenous groups covering vast swaths of the province... This agreement is rightly seen as a precursor to more deals across the province, despite the fact that its consent-based arrangements are exactly what forced the government to pause its contentious Land Act amendments last year after significant public blowback... There is no legal basis in Canadian law for exclusive Indigenous decision-making over public lands, yet the province admits it would not be at the decision table at all — leaving the public interest totally unrepresented. Even so, the government maintains its implausible position that this is “not about a veto” but rather reflects the (democratically and legally-flawed) DRIPA principle that “both governments have authority to decide whether a particular authorization should be issued.” From a democratic standpoint, shíshálh Nation’s constitution is clear: only members can vote in shíshálh elections, and membership is based strictly on ancestry. This means that tens of thousands of citizens living in the large region covered by the agreement will have no democratic voice in consequential land-use decisions that directly affect their interests, a fact that has already led to an important constitutional challenge by one community group on the Sunshine Coast. And this is just one of many similar arrangements being implemented across B.C... This means Indigenous groups representing a combined population of less than 15,000 will be able to exercise decision-making power over a massive, economically crucial region impacting over five million British Columbians with whom they have no democratic relationship... Over the years, Canadian courts have consistently called for a balancing of the public interest with the unique interests of individual Indigenous groups. Finding that balance is supposed to be the difficult but critically important task of the governments we elect. Instead, under DRIPA, the B.C. government is increasingly abdicating its responsibility to protect the public interest, and eroding the foundational principles underpinning our democracy. Time will tell whether the federal government follows suit."
Some animals are more equal than others
It's okay, they can survive off equalization money despite destroying their province
Looks like they haven't learnt after almost losing the last election
This won't stop left wingers claiming that the BC NDP is really Conservative to justify their cope that healthcare in Canada only sucks because of Conservative governments underfunding healthcare
Caroline Elliott on X - "A 🚨bombshell judgement 🚨was released yesterday by BC’s Supreme Court, declaring Aboriginal title over land in Richmond, including private property. If this stands, it has massive implications for private property across BC. Read the highlighted sections for yourself:"
Karla Joy Treadway on X - "This will lead to civil war if this keeps going. No one is alive from this period of time. First Nation groups have been receiving billions in tax payer dollars. Now they want the land back too? This sets a dangerous precedent."
Greg Wier on X - "What do you mean by “land back”. When Europeans and Asians arrived here, the First Nations peoples were nomadic with no concept of land ownership and no permanent structures. This is “you will own nothing and you will be happy” taking hold."
