Originally published in The Tyee on August 19, 2026.

On July 2, the governments of British Columbia and Canada announced a memorandum of understanding that provided the framework by which a new oil pipeline to the West Coast will be built.

It is just one of a series of pieces of an increasingly complex web of commitments, agreements and political rhetoric between Canada, Alberta, British Columbia and major oil producers.

But approval for the West Coast oil pipeline at the centre of the deal between Canada and B.C. is not unconditional. Three separate agreements share a key premise: the pipeline cannot proceed without a carbon capture and storage project. What is not shared is a timeline. British Columbia accepts the pipeline risks now. Alberta and the oil industry are committed only to work toward carbon capture on a schedule stretching to 2045.

In my last piece, I shared my experience in meeting with the newly formed Major Projects Office. The office is the federal government’s concierge service for major projects navigating the Building Canada Act process. They are the chauffeur in a black car service tasked with getting projects their inevitable “national interest” designation and developing conditions that must be met for the projects to be built.

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The Canada-B.C. agreement is heavy on promises of future negotiation through a bilateral “Implementation Committee.” While it explicitly maintains the North Coast tanker ban and offers a $3-billion federal bailout for the BC NDP’s beleaguered George Massey Tunnel replacement project, many of the other details are vague, or to be worked out later. One point is clear, though: British Columbia acknowledges that the one project is “dependent” on the other.

Premier David Eby has promised that British Columbians will provide certainty for a new million-barrel oil pipeline to the south coast. Doing so accepts the immediate and indefinite risks of a pipeline to our fragile coastline long before Alberta has proven it can deliver on the reversible half of the bargain — namely the Pathways Project, which isn’t slated to be fully operational for nearly two decades.

The November 2025 memorandum of understanding between Alberta and Canada states that both governments “agree that the Pathways Project is also a prerequisite to the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline, given that the two projects referred to in this MOU are mutually dependent.”

The asymmetry is obvious. Under the dark cloud of Alberta’s threat to leave Canada, British Columbians are forced to accept another taxpayer-funded pipeline proposal by this October. Meanwhile, Alberta doesn’t have to prove the prerequisite carbon capture and sequestration project is viable until long after the construction starts on the pipeline and damage in British Columbia is already done.

The B.C.-Canada deal explicitly acknowledges that Canada’s agreement with Alberta lacks any real enforcement mechanism to ensure the Pathways carbon capture and sequestration project is actually built.

The national-interest designation and project conditions on the oil pipeline will be set within the next year. Alberta and the oil and gas industry will have collectively obtained regulatory certainty for a new pipeline, long before they need to deliver on any of their commitments. This is hostage taking, not nation building. And it gets worse.

On the same day the Canada-B.C. deal was announced, the public learned of a trilateral memorandum of understanding between Canada, Alberta and the Oil Sands Alliance — a collection of major oil companies including Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil and Suncor. That agreement describes a “shared objective” for the industry, which says it “intends” to reduce emissions by six million tonnes by 2035 and has set a “common goal” to further reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes by 2045.

Alberta and the oil and gas industry are seeking regulatory certainty for a new West Coast pipeline while offering British Columbians and Canadians aspirational emissions reductions in return.

There are at least three issues British Columbians need to get serious about in the next few months. The first is timing. British Columbia carries all the upfront risk while Alberta and the industry public relations muse about their “intentions,” “shared objectives” and “common goals” for the next decade.

Next are the legitimate concerns about execution. The promise of carbon capture and sequestration has never been delivered, and certainly not at the scale being considered here. The potential ability to capture some of the carbon they create has always been the elusive carrot dangled by the oil and gas industry to increase social licence.

Third is the uncapped taxpayer-funded subsidization of these projects. The trilateral memorandum of understanding doesn’t lock in what Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for. It simply commits Canada to “maintain appropriate fiscal support to enable the required investments” and to keep reviewing the existing regulatory framework and tax credits that cover up to half of the capture equipment cost and 37.5 per cent of transport and storage infrastructure.

Not surprisingly, the Oil Sands Alliance wants more from the public. Jon McKenzie, the chair of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and head of Cenovus Energy, said the industry is ultimately looking for the government to cover three-quarters of capital costs and more than half of operating costs.

Meanwhile in British Columbia, more than 20,000 residents are evacuated from their homes because their communities are reduced to ash by wildfires, while thousands more cannot get insurance to protect their private property. Those are the real consequences to everyday British Columbians held captive by an industry asking us to accept a decade more of emissions in exchange for hopes, dreams and propaganda.

Each memorandum of understanding is consistently clear about one thing: a new West Coast oil pipeline is contingent on a viable carbon capture and sequestration project. Not just the “approval” of a new pipeline, but also the “commencement and continued construction.”

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That means Eby has important work ahead. The pipeline’s economic and revenue framework, royalty payment and environmental liability fund are all to be negotiated before Dec. 1.

Most importantly for British Columbians, Eby cannot cave to Canada and Alberta because he has a desperate need for federal cash to fund his failing administration.

Once the federal government gives national-interest designation to a new West Coast oil pipeline a few weeks before Alberta’s referendum on separation in October, the Building Canada Act process will be concerned only about answering the question of how the pipeline will be built.

But if the pipeline is truly contingent on a successful carbon capture and sequestration project, then the two timelines need to align. British Columbia must insist that Alberta and the Oil Sands Alliance have a construction timeline, not a promise. They must put their money where their mouth is and have industry’s contribution in the bank.

If they believe British Columbia should provide them certainty on our half of the bargain, then British Columbians should also receive certainty. Not some elusive pipe dream two decades from now.

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Originally published in The Tyee on August 19, 2026.

I sat down with former BC cabinet minister and now BC’s Treaty Commissioner, George Abbott for a conversation about his book, Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now.

Here is the video of the conversation.

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I grew up on Tsartlip First Nation, an Indian reserve just north of Victoria, BC and our community, like every other First Nations community in British Columbia, is deeply impacted by the outcomes of the colonial and provincial policies George outlines in his book.

On stage, George and I worked through Unceded. We discuss how deliberate the history of Crown-Indigenous relations in British Columbia has been. Nothing, not the size of reserves or the absence of treaties, happened by accident.

From James Douglas’s early approach, to Joseph Trutch’s deliberate unwinding of it and Article 13 of British Columbia’s the Terms of Union, George works through how public policy, not chance, was the foundation of the social, political, and legal reality that still deeply challenges us today.

We also talked about where that history has led: from Calder in 1973 through Delgamuukw, Haida, and Cowichan, and what it means for the current and future work for Crown-Indigenous relations in creating pathways for First Nations to reach self-determination, whether through treaty or other agreements.

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I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to create a space where our history could be laid out clearly, in public, by someone who spent decades inside the system it describes. I’m grateful George stepped onto the stage with me, and grateful to everyone who showed up in the room.

Originally published in The Tyee on August 10, 2026.

On July 23, I attended a midsummer virtual information session for First Nations hosted by the Major Projects Office regarding the proposed West Coast Oil Pipeline project. It was a jarring experience.

Passed by Parliament in June 2025, the Building Canada Act allowed the federal government to create the Major Projects Office, which would manage all the procedural aspects of answering whether a major project is in the “national interest.” If a project is determined to be in the national interest, it is guaranteed to move forward — no longer is the question a matter of if the project will go ahead, but how.

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Despite the summer heat, the proceedings left a chill. The presentation was bureaucratic and rigid. We were reminded multiple times by the administrators that the question — whether or not the West Coast Oil Pipeline is in the national interest — is narrow, and we were cautioned to not get ahead of ourselves.

If the project is successfully listed under the Building Canada Act, the mechanisms, such as environmental assessments, through which our concerns — and the concerns of Canadians — would otherwise be raised will still exist. Those mechanisms just won’t have any power to determine the outcome.

The process to build another pipeline west from Alberta started with a political declaration on Nov. 27, 2025. A bilateral memorandum of understanding between Canada and Alberta declared the intention to create an unnamed “Alberta bitumen pipeline” — now officially called the West Coast Oil Pipeline — to be in the national interest months before Alberta found a proponent, or determined a route.

That memorandum propelled us into a stampeding summer consultation, set against a manufactured deadline imposed by governments who know that summer is the worst time to meaningfully and respectfully engage First Nations.

This is not genuine consultative behaviour. It is a performance.

The Building Canada Act restructures the regulatory process for the projects listed as in the national interest.

Section 6(1) states: “Every determination and finding that has to be made and every opinion that has to be formed in order for an authorization to be granted in respect of a national interest project is deemed to be made or formed, as the case may be, in favour of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part.”

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The “in favour” there is key.

The Major Projects Office stated it clearly in the information package attached to the July 10, 2026, letter to the First Nation I work for: “If a project is listed, the Building Canada Act specifies that all remaining federal authorizations necessary for the project to proceed will be granted. This is intended to shift the regulatory focus from ‘whether’ the project should proceed to ‘how’ it should proceed.”

They also acknowledge the extraordinary pace at which they are operating. They demanded a response regarding the West Coast Oil Pipeline, a project that has yet to be designed, before Aug. 26, 2026. Forty-seven days. After many First Nations communities pushed back on the original timeline, the Major Projects Office extended the deadline to Sept. 18, 2026, citing competing priorities and wildfire impacts in Alberta and British Columbia.

The information session made it obvious: the federal government has skilfully constructed a two-act bit of bureaucratic theatre to play out the story to its predestined conclusion. And the calendar they built to dispense with their obligation lands in August, when they know that First Nations leadership don’t meet in August, and many First Nations people are out harvesting.

In the meeting, the Major Projects Office laid out the government’s timeline. The self-imposed Sept. 1, 2027, deadline for a conditions report demands the minister list the project by Oct. 1, 2026. When that happens, and it most certainly will, there will be an 11-month sprint for Act 2 to design the project and develop the conditions by which it will proceed. A Major Projects Office representative remarked the time period “is shorter than anything we’ve ever seen.”

To determine if the pipeline is in the national interest, the Major Projects Office will consider if the project will: advance the interests of Indigenous Peoples; strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience and security; provide economic or other benefits to Canada; have a high likelihood of successful execution; and contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.

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There is something missing from that list.

We know for sure that upholding the honour of the Crown is in the national interest. While the five factors may address pipeline policy, what is off the table is whether the process used to reach (or confirm) the decision is itself honourable — that is, lawful and legitimate. A process design that pre-decides its outcome and then compresses the only formal input window in a month and half in the middle of summer fails the standard regardless of what it concludes.

The honour of the Crown requires respectful dealings, not self-imposed urgency in a condensed consultative process that demands answers from First Nations based on completely absent design and technical detail.

Crown-Indigenous relations aside, the same mechanism that pre-empted consultation with First Nations pre-empts every other check in the system. First Nations are just the first ones finding that out. What that means for anyone else in the path of a “national interest” project is a separate piece.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is mobilizing with astounding efficiency. The urgency is framed as a response to a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, a defence of Canadian sovereignty and a message to investors that Canada is open for business.

But none of these factors requires a summer deadline, especially when government knows exactly the cost of that timing to First Nations’ ability to engage in the process effectively.

The prime minister means business. However, we are still a democracy. The federal government still has legal and constitutional obligations, and the Crown acting honourably in its relations with Indigenous Peoples is one of them. So far, that obligation is not being met.

Originally published in The Tyee on August 10, 2026.

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Originally published in The Tyee on June 9, 2026.

British Columbia is one of the most remarkably diverse places inAmerica. The province celebrates its ecologic biodiversity as “Super, Natural,” and Destination BC posters use the mountains, oceans and forests to draw visitors from around the world.

But the provincial territory is much more than its ecological splendour. What is often undervalued in the story we tell of British Columbia is how it is home to more than 35 distinct Indigenous languages, and dozens of legal orders and governance traditions. All told, British Columbia is an unparalleled mosaic of cultural and linguistic diversity.

Recently, the tenor of conversations in media, on Facebook and among politicians has encouraged British Columbians to see this diversity as a threat. But it is actually our collective inherited wealth.

Viewing Crown-Indigenous relations from an abundance mindset addressing the outstanding land question offers us a way to see the more spectacular story of what British Columbia could fully become.

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Manufactured crisis and escalating rhetoric

The British Columbia legislative assembly has now adjourned for the summer. Unfortunately, the centre for politics in our province has turned into an engine of anti-Indigenous racism. Some members have chosen to use the chamber, and the iconic building, as a content farm for the social media outrage machine.

I, and others, have written extensively on how Crown-Indigenous relations have deteriorated over the past several months. This is the result of a variety of reasons including a lack of broad public awareness of British Columbia’s history, the evolving Indigenous law through key B.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions, and a B.C. Conservative Opposition party that decided that rather than focus on the overlapping social, environmental and economic crises facing our province, they would use their time to persistently attack Indigenous rights and title.

But the problem is that recent court decisions did not create a crisis. Instead, they exposed the reality of the “Indian land question” that was already lurking under the splendid facade that British Columbia has constructed and maintained every day since the province joined Confederation.

By treating the current conditions as a crisis, the provincial government escalated and reinforced the fearmongering rhetoric of the opposition parties.

Depoliticizing Indigenous rights and title

Question period is not the right venue for elected leaders to investigate, prosecute and defend Indigenous rights and title in British Columbia. For the past two years the B.C. Conservative and OneBC opposition parties have used their precious 30 minutes at the start of every day of the legislative session to hammer reconciliation and relentlessly attack the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA. But question period creates political heat — not public policy resolution.

In my experience, select standing committees are a much more appropriate space to undertake work that requires a more precise and surgical response in good public policy-making. No matter who sits in the premier’s chair, they will confront the reality of Crown-Indigenous relations. No single party should feel they carry the full weight of the issue, nor should they take sole credit for reconciliatory efforts.

The cross-party work of parliamentary committees removes the responsibility from any one political party. They report to the whole legislative assembly through clear terms of reference, and it is a space where they can inform their work by inviting the testimony of historians, constitutional experts, academics, First Nations leaders and community members. Their reports are consensus-based, reflecting only what all members can find agreement on. There is no other space in the legislature that reflects this approach.

The Aboriginal affairs committee is one of 11 permanent committees of the British Columbia legislative assembly. But the government never leverages this tool for its full benefit. I was an appointed committee member for the seven years I was an MLA. But the committee never met — not even while B.C. was developing DRIPA.

Indigenous rights, title and reconciliation are not the governing party’s problem to solve alone. In fact, it substantially weakens the work when the only place for opposition members to raise important questions is question period.

It is long past time the government share the responsibility across the whole legislative assembly by removing the issue from the bombast of question period and by placing it in the far more constructive and calm venue of a parliamentary committee.

Indigenous rights are not the liability

In a December 2025 speech to the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Premier David Eby said DRIPA is necessary to the work of Crown-Indigenous relations. But, he added, “it could also be the undoing of our province as a place to do business.” Through statements like this the premier frames Indigenous rights as the source of the province’s liability.

The problem is not that Indigenous people have rights. The land question has been accumulating since the founding of the province, and it grows every day it remains unresolved. The liability is the lack of resolution and the leadership required to pursue that resolution fairly and in accordance with the province’s own laws.

The government’s evasion of its responsibility is what has created uncertainty for industry, for investors and for all British Columbians who rely on the systems built on top of that unresolved question. Reconciliation is not the risk; Indigenous rights have not created the uncertainty. Reconciliation is the remedy.

Grounded through hope

With the legislative session adjourned for summer, the pressure is off. This is a moment for government to move thoughtfully and deliberately.

It is time for elected leaders in British Columbia to stop treating its greatest asset as if it were our greatest liability. The diversity of the province — ecological, cultural and linguistic — is not a problem we inherited from history, but rather the foundation of strength and resilience. In the end, the land question will be answered. But will it be negotiated or litigated?

My late grandmother reminded me that I come from both parts of the Indigenous-Crown relationship. She encouraged me to use my complex social location to be a bridge. In all my political work I have tried to do that. British Columbia sits at the same crossroads, between what it has been and what we could fully become. I am hopeful that British Columbians will choose the collaborative path forward.

Originally published in The Tyee on June 9, 2026.

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I am honoured to be Harrison Mooney’s first guest on the debut episode of The Tyee Podcast. We spent about an hour working through the current political tensions DRIPA, how we got here, what the government got wrong, and whether there’s a way forward.

The conversation covers the political drivers that turned a unanimous 2019 vote into a made-in-B.C. political flashpoint, including John Rustad’s exit from BC United, the Cowichan and Mineral Tenures decisions, and why the BC NDP’s reflexive response on the day the Gitxaala decision came down made everything much more difficult than it needed to be.

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We go back further too — to Trutch, Douglas, Lord Dufferin, the McKenna-McBride Commission — because this moment we are living in didn’t arrive without a long history driving it here. The inevitable and inescapable outcome of decades of the Crown denying Indigenous rights and title.

I also make the case for moving this conversation from the highly-charged politicized debate of Question Period, mainstream and social media, into a more civil, collaborative, public policy-oriented Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs. In this setting, the work of reconciliation is shared across the whole of the Legislative Assembly, not carried by one political party alone.

We ended on hope, and I meant that too. My grandmother recognized that I am the sum of my parts me and she encouraged me to go and be a bridge. If I can exist, we can exist. British Columbia a beautifully diverse territory and it will be far better off with each of us, embracing all of us.

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This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political Panel covered three issues: the ongoing political triangle between Alberta, BC, and Ottawa over pipeline politics, the BC Conservative leadership vote, and the spring legislative session that wrapped up Thursday.

On the pipeline issue, I was compelled to mention how I am increasingly exhausted hearing the political right in British Columbia scapegoat Indigenous rights and title as the single greatest threat to the economic certainty in this province while their colleagues in Alberta are running a referendum on a referendum that could redraw international boundaries. No private proponent is going to put billions on the table for a new pipeline while that question is live!

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On the Conservative leadership, the same dynamic that removed John Rustad is still in play. The part of the political spectrum that went after woke cancel culture has now built its own cancel culture, pointed in the opposite direction. The new leader will need the fortitude to tell some members no, and whether they will do that, or play into it, is a question of consequence.

On the legislative session, I chose to highlight the lowlights. Independent Member Tara Armstrong stood in the legislature, repeated a Nazi slogan, and attempted to rewrite the history of Crown-Indigenous relations in this province. The Speaker rightly asked her to retract the phrase. He would not ask her to retract the history. That distinction matters as it clearly maintains a double-standard with respect to Indigenous rights. With the government meeting with First Nations leaders to discuss the future of Crown-Indigenous relations, it may prove to be a long summer ahead.

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This week’s CBC Victoria Thursday Political Panel covered three issues: the BCNU’s 98.2% strike vote, the still-undisclosed cost of hosting seven FIFA World Cup games in Vancouver, and the long-running governance crisis at BC Ferries.

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Nurses absorb the physical and psychological stress of a broken healthcare system every shift. I raised my hands to the people going to work every day under very challenging circumstances and now confronting those circumstances at the negotiating table. We knew this was coming. It's unfortunate where the Nurses' Union lands in this negotiation cycle.

On FIFA, I am a huge soccer fan, and still the event is landing really flat. There's none of the excitement of the 2010 Olympics and accessibility for British Columbians is limited. We can gather in downtown Vancouver and be told where we can and cannot stand by FIFA, and in the end we're paying the bill. The decision was made by a different premier at a different time and the number that Premier Eby will announce by the end of the month will be big!

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On BC Ferries, I'm still waiting to see the evidence of the shipbuilding commitment the BC NDP government made after 2020. BC Ferries moves roughly 30% of this province's economy. The arms-length governance model keeps means the transport minister, (past, present, and future) will remind British Columbians about the need for an efficient and affordable ferry service while conveniently pushing accountability elsewhere.

Full podcast available to subscribers of The Hatchet.

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Earlier this month I published an editorial in The Tyee tracing the origins of BC’s current political crisis — not to the Gitsxała decision, not to Cowichan, but to Joseph Trutch. BC’s first Lieutenant-Governor did more than anyone to embed Indigenous land dispossession into the province’s foundations, and his logic has echoed through every generation of political leadership since.

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That piece led to a conversation with The Hatchet about how that history connects to what we’re living through right now.

This isn’t an abstract debate about the past. The same arguments Trutch made in 1872 — that recognizing Indigenous title would destabilize what settlers had built — are the arguments being made today. Different letterhead, same letter.

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The full interview is available to Hatchet subscribers. If you’ve been following this file, it’s worth your time. We get into the history, the court decisions, DRIPA, and why ignoring Indigenous rights doesn’t bring certainty — it just defers the reckoning.

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I was a guest on Canadaland Politics this week, joining a conversation about how DRIPA (British Columbia’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act) became the centre of a divisive political fight.

The episode traces the arc: the unanimous 2019 vote, the Gitxaala court decision in December that gave DRIPA legal teeth, and the political unravelling that followed. Premier David Eby’s response has been a communications disaster — amend, don’t amend, pause, don’t pause, confidence vote, never mind. The episode captures that chaos clearly.

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My interview was edited into a “debate” with a former provincial Aboriginal law lawyer who believes DRIPA is fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution. We don’t agree.

My position hasn’t changed. DRIPA doesn’t create new rights. It recognizes obligations that already exist. Repealing it doesn’t bring certainty. It brings litigation. The courts have been telling us that for years.

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What’s striking listening back is how much of this crisis is a failure of political leadership, not a failure of the law.

Give it a listen.

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This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political panel covered three issues: the looming federal health care funding cliff, the political flashpoint over overlapping First Nations land claims in BC treaty negotiations, and whether Premier Eby should be trying to save the Vancouver Whitecaps.

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On health care, we’re looking at a $13 billion deficit, a nursing strike on the horizon, and a federal transfer rate dropping from five percent to three percent in 2028. It sounds manageable until you factor that health care is forty percent of the provincial budget and has been growing at seven percent a year. Efficiency measures help at the margins. What we actually need is system reform and that’s a much harder conversation than any government wants to have.

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On the treaties, the overlapping claims dispute is not a surprise, it’s the predictable result of a nation-by-nation process that governments have been too tight-fisted to resource properly. Neighbouring First Nations received $25,000 to participate in consultation on a treaty that took millions to negotiate. That disparity is one of the reasons why we’re here. The Crowns keep saying accommodation can wait. This is what later looks like.

On the Whitecaps, I love this team! However, Vancouver has now lost the Grizzlies and may lose the Whitecaps while angling for an MLB franchise. At some point that pattern says something about the city’s relationship with its own sports teams.

This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political Panel covered three issues: Premier Eby’s ongoing struggle with DRIPA reform and First Nations consultation, changes to BC’s Freedom of Information legislation, and whether American liquor should return to BC shelves.

On DRIPA, I named an issue that is lurking under the surface of this debate, namely the persistent framing of Indigenous rights as a source of uncertainty and threat. It appears in both the Conservatives manufacturing urgency and the NDP trying to manage it. The threat isn’t Indigenous rights. The threat is how government responds to them. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. We were always going to arrive at this moment. The question is whether we rise to meet it.

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On FOI, I pushed back on the framing that only journalists and academics should care. Sean Holman put it well before the committee in 2022 — this is about whether citizens have enough information to make the rational, empathetic decisions democracy requires. Governments move words around in legislation during busy news cycles. “Reasonable” sounds innocuous. The outcomes may not be. Access delayed is access denied.

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And the booze ban. Thirty seconds, live radio, and I ran out the clock on my own underdeveloped point. The short version: if there’s no principled answer to when American liquor comes back, the removal was performance, not policy. A Canadian flag in front of the legislature is not a trade strategy.

I was on the floor of the Legislature for Question Period yesterday. Over the past several months, I have been engaged and actively commenting on the unfolding saga of Premier David Eby’s proposed amendments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. The long-promised, on-off––on-off-again has been confusing for British Columbians and exhausting for First Nations leaders.

In his first response to a question, Premier Eby announced there would be no bill introduced this Spring session. Instead, he had reached agreement with the First Nations Leadership Council to develop a task force to work over the summer. He said, “It took longer to get here than I had hoped for, and I accept responsibility for that. It is possible to move off confidently in the wrong direction.”

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The past four and a half months have been costly. It’s felt like the Premier took the family car for a joyride, smashed into a few familiar tropes about Indigenous people and caused real damage to fragile relationships. Indigenous people have been absorbing the brunt of public and political criticism. Going forward how that damage is politically accounted for will be an issue for the Premier’s party and their membership. That is their work.

Taking responsibility and changing course is not nothing. Noted, and warmly received. However, the clock is running. From when the Legislative Assembly adjourns for summer and returns in October, there are only a few precious weeks to undertake this important work. British Columbians are expecting progress.

We were always going to arrive at this inevitable moment. It’s the confluence of the unresolved legal liabilities that have been accumulating from colonial British Columbia until today. While British Columbia has outrun them for more than 150 years, this moment has always been inescapable. Summer is short.

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Word is circulating that tomorrow the BC NDP government will introduce legislation to suspend critical provisions of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

DRIPA passed in 2019 with the unanimous support of every MLA in the chamber, including me. BC was the first commonwealth jurisdiction to commit in law to aligning provincial legislation with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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The First Nations Leadership Council issued an open letter to every MLA. It deserves to be read in full.

The letter makes three things clear.

First, the legal risk BC faces is not created by DRIPA, but rather the decision to undermine it.

Second, using legislation to engineer a preferred court outcome limits First Nations’ access to justice in a way that echoes the 1927 prohibition on First Nations hiring lawyers at all.

Third, no matter how hard Premier David Eby tries to sell it, First Nations were not intransigent.

First Nation leaders have brought concrete proposals. For example, Huy wu qw, Laxele’wuts’aat, Shana Thomas Hereditary Chief of Lyackson First Nation suggested,

1. An independent, co-governed UNDRIP Consistency Review Office to provide expert, early review of legislation and policy; similar to a tribunal.

2. Mandatory UNDRIP consistency statements for all bills and regulations, similar to Charter compliance assessments; and

3. A limited stated-case or reference process to allow advisory judicial guidance as a last resort, avoiding protracted litigation.. The proposals rejected, and suspension declared “non-negotiable”, by the Premier.

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Other proposals outlined in the FNLC letter are: “a DRIPA Implementation Act, an an independent oversight body, a joint Cabinet Committee on DRIPA implementation and a proposed process to identify a workable “off-ramp” to avoid amendments or suspension of DRIPA.”

The characterization that First Nations won’t compromise is not accurate. It is a familiar and tired trope that flows from the earliest decades of British Columbia’s Crown-Indigenous relations policy.

MLAs should think carefully before voting to suspend human rights. There is still another path. The FNLC letter points to it plainly.

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Write your MLA. Share on your social media. Demand they stand up for Indigenous human rights in British Columbia! HÍSW̱ḴE.

Originally published in The Tyee on April 15, 2026.

Why does British Columbia keep arriving at the same place? Every generation, a new set of political leaders faces the same Indigenous land question, reaches the same conclusions about cost and timing and legal uncertainty and finds a way to leave the question closed.

The answer is not cynicism or coincidence. It is the architecture of the province, and one man did more than anyone else to build it.

Most British Columbians know little about Joseph Trutch. What they do know usually comes from a letter he wrote to his family shortly after arriving in the Pacific Northwest. He called Indigenous people “the ugliest & Laziest creatures I ever saw” and scoffed that one might “as soon think of being afraid of our dogs as of them.” It is tempting to leave it there, to file Trutch under ugly history and move on.

That would be a mistake.

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Trutch was not a social outlier. He was an architect. Before Confederation, he was an elected official, a government contractor and a self-interested land speculator. He led the three-person delegation that negotiated British Columbia’s terms of union with Canada. And once that job was done, he was appointed the province’s first lieutenant-governor. His opinions about Indigenous people did not stay in his letters. He embedded them into B.C.’s foundations.

Trutch dismissed Indigenous title as a legal and moral fiction. This was a substantive departure from the Dominion of Canada and the British legal system that arrived here on the boats with the fur traders, such as James Douglas, who had a much closer relationship with the Indigenous people they traded with. Trutch represented the next generation, who saw Indigenous people as impediments to colonization and irritants to settlers.

What made Trutch dangerous was his capacity to turn the colonial theory of Indigenous title into the policy of the land. From his prominent role as the chief commissioner of lands and works for the Colony of British Columbia from 1864 to 1871 and as the province’s first lieutenant-governor from 1871 to 1876, Trutch built the machinery of law and administration that entrenched Indigenous land dispossession. Then he made himself indispensable in the execution of the policy.

Douglas had seen a future in the province for Indigenous people. He created treaties, established Indian reserves based on the direction of Indigenous people themselves and that were sizable enough for them to be productive, and allowed Indigenous people to pre-empt land.

When Trutch became lands and works commissioner, he aggressively reformed those policies. He slashed Indian reserves to a fraction of their size, disallowed pre-emption and clearly stated that Indigenous people had no title to the land.

On several occasions, Trutch lied directly to Indigenous leaders, telling them that previous Crown officials they engaged with had no authority to give them what they did. When he went east to negotiate the terms of Confederation, he delivered his greatest deception. Clause 13 committed Canada to an Indian policy only as “liberal” as British Columbia’s. British Columbia’s Indian policy was far less liberal than Canada was led to believe.

Trutch went further. Following Confederation, he became the first lieutenant-governor of the province of British Columbia. At that time, he was the most powerful person in the fledgling government. When Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was set to appoint Dr. Israel Powell to lead the Indian policy, Trutch intervened in October 1872 with a letter to Macdonald voicing a perspective that ripples through Crown-Indigenous relations in British Columbia to this day.

Calling into question Powell’s experience and advocating to keep himself at the head of Crown-Indigenous relations, Trutch wrote: “As to Indian policy I am fully satisfied that for the present the wisest course would be to continue the system which has prevailed hitherto.... We have never bought out any Indian claims to lands nor do they expect we should.... If you now commence to buy out Indian title to the lands of B.C., you would go back of all that has been done here for 30 years past, and would be equitably bound to compensate the tribes who inhabited the districts now settled and farmed by white people equally with those in the more remote and uncultivated portions.”

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The table Trutch set

Four years later, Gov. Gen. Lord Dufferin was at Government House in Victoria speaking to a crowd. He directly articulated the dismay of the Dominion that British Columbia’s Indian policy was not at all liberal and entirely problematic.

He laid that at the feet of Trutch. “Now, we must all admit that the condition of the Indian question in British Columbia is not satisfactory. Most unfortunately, as I think, there has been an initial error ever since Sir James Douglas quitted office in the Government of British Columbia neglecting to recognize what is known as the Indian title. In Canada this has always been done; no Government, whether provincial or central, has failed to acknowledge that the original title to the land existed in the Indian tribes.”

Dufferin went on to admonish British Columbia for not following other provinces in paying for land and making treaties. Instead, he said, B.C. had “always assumed that the fee simple as well as the sovereignty resided in the Queen.”

However, despite these seemingly progressive views of the governor general, especially for the time, he said: “Of course in what I have said I do not mean that, in our desire to be humane and to act justly, we should do anything unreasonable or Quixotic, or that rights already acquired by white men should be inconsiderately invaded or recalled.”

We know what’s right, friends, but we do not want to upset the table that Trutch spent nearly two decades setting. This has a familiar echo, doesn’t it?

That is why this history is important for British Columbians to understand. No matter how ugly we find Trutch’s opinion on Indigenous people to be, no matter how backward we feel the settler’s colonial mindset was, it is the DNA of the contemporary arguments made by the public office holders, and some of the public themselves. Even though we know, and have known since the start, that Trutch’s land policy, which deliberately excluded Indigenous people, was wrong, there was no political will to do anything about it.

What is different now is that since the middle of the 20th century the judiciary has been hearing cases and making decisions about Indigenous rights and title. From Calder through Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, Delgamuukw, Tsilhqot’in, Cowichan and Nuchatlaht, it isn’t just Lord Dufferin’s 19th-century words framing the land question Trutch claimed did not exist.

The courts have been saying it too, for decades.

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Same letter, different letterhead

We see the same pattern in the contemporary political narrative. When the B.C. Court of Appeal confirmed in Gitxaala that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA, creates real legal obligations on government, Premier David Eby rejected the court’s authority and moved to suspend the legislation rather than honour it. The court told him what Dufferin had told British Columbia in 1876: There are obligations, now keep them. Eby’s response, like the province’s response to Dufferin, was to protect what Trutch built.

I was one of the MLAs who voted for DRIPA in 2019. It passed unanimously. Eby was there. So was Spencer Chandra Herbert, who now holds the title of minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation. That title means something. Or at least it should.

As the premier moved to suspend the most significant Indigenous rights legislation in the province’s history, his minister of reconciliation was silent. Trutch also understood the value of letting the machinery do the work.

On April 8, Eby sent First Nations leaders a letter. It is worth reading carefully.

He acknowledges their opposition to his plan. “I understand this step in response to the court decision is not a path many First Nations support.” He acknowledges the timeline. “I regret that the timeline and the legislative calendar do not allow for further opportunity to engage.” Then he closes the question. “This legislation is not the end of our conversation — it is a pause designed to protect the space for a better one.”

In October 1872, Trutch wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Macdonald that acknowledging Indigenous title would mean going back on 30 years of settled policy. The costs were too high, the timing was wrong, the system in place was working well enough. The question needed to stay closed.

One hundred and fifty-four years later, Eby tells First Nations leaders that the court’s affirmation of their rights creates “an untenable degree of legal uncertainty.” The costs are too high, the timing is wrong, the collaborative process in place is working well enough. The conversation needs a pause.

Though Eby has temporarily held off on a vote to pass a bill to amend DRIPA, he has signalled that he will try again, courting the support of Independent MLAs.

The method is the same. Only the letterhead has changed.

We do not need to argue about Joseph Trutch. His own words built the case. His own letters. His own decisions made in moments exactly like this one. That record has followed him for a century and a half.

Every NDP MLA who votes for Premier Eby’s proposed suspension is writing their own entry into that same record. The Hansard will be permanent. History will read both letters.

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Originally published in The Tyee on April 15, 2026.

This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political Panel covered two issues: Premier Eby’s move to suspend key sections of DRIPA in response to the Gitxaala ruling, and Standard & Poor’s decision to follow Moody’s with another credit rating downgrade for BC.

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On DRIPA, I pushed back on the framing the Premier has been selling. There is another legal perspective that suggests Gitxaala decision is far more narrow than the Premier describes, where DRIPA a dispute mechanism and does not open every provincial law to challenge. The courts are a last resort after consultation fails, not the first stop Premier Eby has been describing. More to the point, suspending Section 3 removes the only legal obligation the province has to include First Nations in making laws. His letter and his assurances of continued reconciliation work are just promises now and unilateral action makes promises his weak.

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On the credit rating, S&P’s downgrade is the fifth since 2021. This is not an anomaly, it’s a downward trajectory. Premier Eby says he’s choosing people over credit ratings, but lower ratings mean higher borrowing costs, which means less money for the services he says he’s protecting. And these two issues are not as separate as they appear: a government betting on resource revenues to restore fiscal credibility while suspending the legal framework that Indigenous relationships depend on is not a plan. It’s a gamble.

I joined Jill Bennett on CKNW 730 in Vancouver to discuss Premier Eby’s handling of Crown-Indigenous relations, specifically, proposed DRIPA amendments and suspensions.

I pushed back on the framing that Premier Eby’s late move to suspend the amendments was a “walk back.” It was a step aside. He signalled his intent to amend the Declaration Act on December 5, 2025, the same day the Gitxaala decision came down, and spent the months since creating and defending a deadline rather than a genuine space for dialogue.

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We also talked through what the Gitxaala decision actually says and doesn’t say. The Court of Appeal found the Declaration Act applies across BC law, but that does not automatically mean every statute is immediately vulnerable. There are other reasonable legal interpretations, and those deserve a table for discussion, not a Premier communicating through press events.

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Jill asked about economic certainty for British Columbians. As government funding programs become are increasingly paternalistic and drying up altogether, First Nations rely on own source revenue generated in their local economy. So, when it comes to economic certainty, we are on the same page. However, frustration grows, and files end up in court, because the negotiation tables the province claims to prefer, are chronically underfunded and ineffective. I argue that pattern goes back to the foundations of this province, and it hasn’t changed much.

Originally published on The Tyee on April 2, 2026.

On Dec. 5, as the B.C. Court of Appeal’s landmark ruling on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA, landed, Gitxaała Chief Councillor Linda Innes was ready.

“I hope that they’re ready to roll up their sleeves and work with us.... We’re looking forward to working with B.C. and all parties to implement today’s precedent-setting decision,” Innes said. The Gitxaała Nation was the appellant in the case.

The B.C. Court of Appeal’s ruling found that the province’s Mineral Tenure Act, which prioritizes the stakes of mining companies over other land rights, was “inconsistent” with DRIPA.

The same day, Eby was at an unrelated press event in Surrey. Asked about the ruling, he told reporters the government would review the decision and, if necessary, amend the act.

The opportunity Innes was offering was dismissed before it was ever seriously considered.

The premier’s signal matters

The downstream impacts of Eby’s statements are not inconsequential. By discussing amendments before legal review and before consultation with the rights-holders, Eby didn’t just make a policy choice; he set the Overton window. He defined the spectrum of public debate unilaterally.

With the B.C. Conservatives demanding the act be fully repealed, and First Nations leaders expressing an openness to work with the province to avoid amendments, when the premier states he is open to amending as necessary to satisfy his concerns with the courts, the question is no longer if DRIPA should be amended, but how far will the amendments go?

Eby set up a binary. With the B.C. Conservatives already proposing the nuclear option, anything short of full repeal becomes the reasonable middle ground. So, First Nations leaders who were offering to roll up their sleeves and get to work suddenly find themselves arguing against amendments rather than for implementation.

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What if?

What if instead of signalling an eagerness to amend DRIPA, Eby instead said something like the following:

“The decision has just been published. The attorney general and her team are reviewing it. When we better understand the legal exposure for the province, we will meet First Nations leaders to better understand their perspectives and to see if we can co-develop a way forward together. These are complex issues and need to be handled carefully and respectfully.”

That measured approach would have left all options on the table. Last December, it was fully available to Eby.

We are now nearly four months downstream of that press event.

The political anticipation and pressure are building as the drafting and consultation process is underway. First Nations have established a wall of opposition to amendments to DRIPA. At the Union of BC Indian Chiefs’ council meeting in February, leadership overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive resolution strongly opposing legislative amendments and instructing staff to “engage in planning direct action as needed.”

Westbank First Nation Chief Robert Louie recently published an editorial in the Vancouver Sun expressing his opposition to amendments to DRIPA. He made a pragmatic and direct appeal to the province to step back and consider the potential impact of its actions.

Speaking directly to the economic success of his community, he wrote: “None of this happened by accident. It happened because we had clear rules, clear rights and clear relationships. When partners know who holds authority, and know it will be respected, they commit capital. Certainty secures deals. Ambiguity kills them.”

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The premier needs free, prior and informed consent

Eby chose a direction in December, and he promises to deliver legislation amending DRIPA.

His margin of error is vanishingly thin. Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is clear. “States shall consult and co-operate in good faith with Indigenous peoples in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

This is currently the law in British Columbia. It is clear Eby does not have the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations leaders. He and every member of the BC NDP caucus need to be confident in their consultation record before proceeding, or else they may just be inviting the courts into the mess they are creating. Will the courts be sympathetic to Premier Eby’s political manoeuvres?

An opportunity missed

None of the political and economic uncertainty that has followed the premier stating his intention to amend DRIPA was inevitable.

On Dec. 5, standing at the lectern in Surrey for an unrelated announcement, Eby had a choice. He could deliver a measured response, one that signalled competence, respect and control. It would have served interests of the public, industry and First Nations, better than his decision to go straight to amendments. He just didn’t take it.

That is not the final scene. Eby still has a choice. He does not have to introduce a bill to amend DRIPA. He can pause, sit down with rights-holders and engage in genuine talks. The first opportunity came and went at a Friday press conference in Surrey. This one is still here. The question is whether he will take it.

Originally published on The Tyee on April 2, 2026.

This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political Panel covered two issues: the election of Avi Lewis as federal NDP leader and what it means for David Eby’s government provincially, and Yuri Fulmer’s “unite the right” agreement with OneBC leader Dallas Brodie.

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On Avi Lewis, I noted the contrast between Wab Kinew — who said “I just love Avi” — and David Eby, whose congratulations amounted to the least of what he could offer. That gap is telling. Lewis’s platform exposes a real fault line inside the BC NDP caucus, one that DRIPA is already widening between old guard and progressive members.

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On Fulmer/Brodie, the deal says more about our broken electoral system than it does about smart strategy. OneBC has one MLA and no party status, and Brodie has made it her mission to troll survivors of residential schools. I contend this political maneuvering is a result of a voting system that encourages politicians to act this cynically.

Premier David Eby, Maple Ridge Tour, Province of British Columbia Flickr, used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

First the Land Act retreat. Then Bill 15. Now DRIPA amendments Premier David Eby says are non-negotiable. He didn’t describe it that way on March 9th when he told a virtual meeting room full of First Nations leaders he was open to an off-ramp. Chiefs learned he’d abandoned that position not from him directly, but from the news, the day before he was scheduled to meet with them again.

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What makes this worse is the deliberate conflation. The Gitxaala decision was about mineral tenure and the courts’ interpretation of DRIPA, it had nothing to do with private property. Yet Eby has consistently coupled the two in his public messaging, telling British Columbians "We have to ensure clarity for British Columbians about the act, what it is and what it isn't, and the same is true for private property." That is not clarity. That is fear, carefully aimed at a particular audience, to build political cover for amendments First Nations explicitly oppose.

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BCAFN Regional Chief Terry Teegee is right. This is not a government navigating a tough situation in good faith. This is a government telling First Nations what they want to hear, then telling British Columbians something else. The actual measure of David Eby’s negotiation tables is that I am still forced to build litigation files to get the province to bring the resources needed to make it a serious effort.

This week’s CBC Victoria Friday Political Panel covered three issues: the province’s ongoing consultations with First Nations over proposed amendments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, the quiet elimination of the Climate Action Secretariat, and cuts to the Agricultural Land Commission.

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On DRIPA, I argued that Premier Eby’s decision to signal openness to amendments on the day the Gitxaala decision dropped, before consulting First Nations leader, set the frame for everything that followed. That single moment shifted the public debate from “what are our options” to “how far do the amendments go.” The Premier now has zero consent from First Nations and a consultation record that needs to be impeccable before any legislation proceeds.

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On the Climate Action Secretariat, I noted the pattern was forming. The Declaration Act Secretariat losing its deputy minister mid-process, now a Climate Action Secretariat being disbanded. These structures exist to pull fragmented government together into coherent policy. Disbanding them isn’t reorganization, it’s fragmentation. An NDP government walking back what the NDP built is hard to reconcile.

On the ALC cuts, the through line for me across all three topics is that these are three files where the Horgan government celebrated real progress. Under Premier Eby, we are seeing a substantive retreat.