The view from Pete

We stand at the precipice of a major human rights accomplishment by advancing towards reconciliation and settling century old land claims in BC.

What should be a humbling yet proud moment for BC, has turned into a political opportunity for the BC Conservatives and related hard liners to attempt to undo reconciliation – period.

Their position against reconciliation has morphed into an effort, using BC’s “Recall and Initiative Act” to force a repeal of the Dripa Act.

Make no mistake, while their petition initiative is to repeal the Dripa act, its final goal is to stall or reverse reconciliation with First Nations entirely.

The opinions coming from the opposition and their friends range from “we’ve given too much to the natives” to “white people didn’t do anything wrong”, while some argue that residential schools were harmless, even ‘good’ for natives.

There was nothing innocent or virtuous about the residential school program as it was designed to erase Indigenous peoples’ cultures and assimilate into Canadian society by forcibly taking children from their homes to schools far away from their communities.

Our government tried to, systematically, delete cultural groups and their identities from their existence in Canada.

On the matter of taking land, consider this for a moment. In the late 1800’s, Canada passed the Dominion Land Act, which gave land away for a nominal fee provided that the settler built a house and committed to farming the plot for 40 years. We read that in history as “settling the west” to blunt America from claiming parts of the west in those years.

Ok, but whose land was it to begin with?

If you guessed that it was first nations land, you’re right. Land that legally acquired by the various “numbered” treaties that cover the western provinces.

Except for BC.

In BC, we had almost no treaties with first nations’ and land – when it was taken – was simply stolen. Worse, when the various first nation leaders attempted to recover or be compensated for such losses, they faced official harassment and even death for asserting their proper legal claims.

Free expression is protected in our constitution to be certain, but for a moment consider that some of the most repugnant views shape policy direction of the official opposition in BC and they could potentially reverse 100’s of years of slow progress to reconciliation because its politically expedient to do so.

In the 1935 campaign, the federal Liberal party in BC ran newspaper ads against the then CCF with text such as this, “A vote for the CCF is a vote for Oriental domination.”

While the Liberals clearly no longer support such a position – and haven’t for a very very long time, this politicization of fear, hate over race and equality can have damaging results.

The new CCF party were blunted that election and the cause for human rights and equality was set back for decades because of this political opportunism.

We see it here again in BC today.

The difference is that we have the advantage of knowledge and the study of history. All of which point us naturally to wish to reconcile very bad behaviours by our leaders of the day and historic injustices that are well documented beyond doubt.

So what is the Dripa Act? Here is an AI summary of the law (https://share.google/aimode/WbGgWHeD6IkWKv4NQ), and its accurate. I would argue that it adds guardrails to legislation and government policy going forward to adhere to the principles of the UNDRIP treaty that Canada has signed. But those arguing that we can just repeal the Dripa Act and everything blissfully returns to where it was, are misleading BC voters.

While the Dripa Act is related to the UNDRIP treaty, its also affected by Section 35 of the Constitution Act and unassailable by any legislation by a province – the famous notwithstanding clause cannot nullify Supreme Court decisions related to it,

BC is the last jurisdiction in Canada to adequately deal with land claims. For whatever reason (and there are many – many bad ones) that land claims and reconciliation was never attended to until more recently, its producing some bold headlines. Specifically, headlines regarding substantial land transfers of crown land to various first nations’ as part of overall reconciliations with certain first nations.

These headlines have upset some people though. Read a certain way, it sounds like we’re just giving lands to the indians. Read another (correct) way, we’re transferring land back to these folks.

Through the courts so far, stated by government and affirmed by various first nations’ and their legal teams, they are not seeking to take private property from homeowners and businesses in this process of reconciliation. Given the makeup of the land distribution above, it makes sense to settle these claims through land transfers out of the vast provincial crown land holdings available.

This isn’t free of course. The value of land is what it is.

But consider this. The costs, whatever they are, will dramatically escalate should they be awarded through expensive court litigation as opposed to good-faith negotiations by fair-play actors for all sides to the dispute. Doesn’t it make sense to ‘get this done’ and get it done as soon as practicable?

The business case for settling as soon as possible by good faith negotiations is far stronger than letting the courts decide. Businesses and industry also want certainty, and delaying or obstructing reconciliation has a harmful effect on our economy too.

At my most charitable, I might regard the oppositions exploiting reconciliation because of its unknowns and the related fear and apprehension over such a policy. At worst, I feel that the opposition is attempting to resurrect an “cowboys vs indians” narrative…both are awful, the latter being unabashedly racist.

Exploiting a sensitive issue is typical for an opposition party or movement. They’re trying to portray themselves as on the side of virtue and justice while the government is up to some bad behaviours and needs to be stopped. You can inject almost every issue into this calculus and it makes sense.

But in this case, the efforts of government are to undo generations of injustice – which makes the efforts of the opposition here the side who wish to preserve the injustice – and deny anything went wrong at all.

Some might argue that the reconciliation should at least be slowed down or even paused. But remember that justice delayed is justice denied.

Let’s be clear. This, politically is risky for the NDP. Just like it was politically risky for the CCF to stand up for the oriental for which they paid an electoral price in the 1935 federal election. We were right, then, we are right. now.

History will record who these obstructionists were. We will never forget them.

We have the means and the moral duty to set this right, we can do this and we should do this. Whatever the political fallout may be, so be it.

As Barack Obama once paraphrased, “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”

We must move forward. Eyes forward. We are on the right side of history.

My2bits.