This summer, a poll from the Angus Reid Institute found roughly one in five residents of British Columbia want Indigenous authorities to have final say on land use. This should set off alarm bells for the provincial NDP government, which has embarked on a secretive and reformative reconciliation approach aimed at resolving outstanding Aboriginal title claims.
The numbers from the survey hardly improve regarding the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), passed by B.C. legislators in 2019. DRIPA aligns provincial law with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that Canada endorsed in 2010, expressed full support for in 2016, and adopted federally through the UNDRIP Act in 2021.
In 2025, just 39 per cent of respondents think DRIPA is necessary, while 44 percent say the legislation goes too far in curbing the power of the elected provincial government. A clear majority of participants in the poll want a referendum on DRIPA, and this includes 57 percent of NDP voters.
This presents a major problem for the NDP. While reconciliation remains broadly popular as a principle, the public is far less certain when it comes to granting decision-making powers to Indigenous bodies they did not elect.
Two years ago, Research Co. found that 65 percent of British Columbians had positive views of reconciliation, but just 50 percent backed “economic reconciliation.” Now, even fewer respondents support giving the final land use decision-making to Indigenous governments.
Meanwhile, as the BC NDP continues to secretively sign away authority over land use to different Indigenous groups, the issue has become a box of political hand grenades.
Kaboom: Aboriginal title can supercede private property rights
The first of these to explode was last month’s Cowichan Tribes v. Canada decision by the B.C. Supreme Court.
Following a 513-day trial, Madam Justice Barbara Young granted Cowichan Aboriginal title on about 800 acres of private property, industrial and Crown land, along with fishing rights in the southern Fraser River. Young ruled that Crown land grants to fee simple private title were “defective and invalid,” and “unjustifiably infringed the Cowichan’s Aboriginal title.”
Only the City of Richmond argued the longstanding legal position that Aboriginal title is extinguished on private property. The provincial and federal governments did not, having each adopted a policy directive that forbid the argument on the basis it was counter to their interpretation of UNDRIP and reconciliation. Instead, the B.C. government argued that Aboriginal title should be limited by private property title.
How badly this hurt Crown’s defence of private property in the Cowichan decision is a matter of debate, but one former B.C. deputy minister and chief treaty negotiator says it forced government lawyers to “pull its punches.” Either way, the Cowichan decision was the first time a court ruled that Aboriginal title could co-exist and even supercede private property rights.
“The question is not whether Aboriginal title can exist over fee simple lands, but whether fee simple interests can exist on Aboriginal title lands. In my view, the law has evolved and the answer to that question is ‘yes,’” wrote Young in her decision.
Cowichan decision will also impact First Nations
It was a gut punch for small business operators and homeowners. If the land your livelihood or house sits on is considered legally defective, how valuable or operational is it anymore?
Attorney General Niki Sharma admitted that the Cowichan decision could have “unintended consequences for private property rights.” But that is just scratching the surface.
The Musqueam and Tsawwassen were also defendants in the Cowichan Tribes case. They asserted the Cowichan land claim overlaps with their traditional territory and was essentially stolen by the Cowichan through warring aggression. But Young rejected that a finding of title for Cowichan title would disturb any other First Nations “as that area has been frequented by many Indigenous groups since time immemorial.”
How this aspect will play out given First Nations have laid claim – much of it overlapping – to 95 per cent of the province, is another open and volatile question.
The provincial government has announced it will appeal the decision and intends to defend private property rights, but has not yet revealed on what grounds it will do so. In any case, it will likely be years before the case reaches the Supreme Court of Canada.
Haida agreement draws fire
In the aftermath of Cowichan, another grenade went off.
On September 5, Justice Christopher Giaschi recognized Aboriginal title over the entirety of Haida Gwaii before the public was even informed the matter was being considered by the BC Supreme Court. The decision was based on the 2024 Rising Tide and Big Tide agreements, negotiated by the B.C. government and rubber-stamped by the federal Liberal government. The agreements recognize Aboriginal title across the whole archipelago, including private property, with an undefined commitment to protect property land owner interests.
While the Haida are certainly justified in celebrating this as historic, not everyone is joining them.
Critics say the B.C. government agreement recognizing the whole legally unproven Haida territorial claim as Aboriginal title was a secretive, political manoeuvre that subverted decades of constitutional law, including the province’s landmark Indigenous title cases Delgamuukw v. British Columbia and Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia.
Opposition Leader John Rustad of the BC Conservatives warned that the Haida title agreement constitutes a dangerous precedent: “The Eby NDP has allowed this process to unfold in secrecy, without consultation with non-Indigenous residents or businesses, and now thousands of British Columbians face uncertainty over their homes, property and livelihoods … this model will be a template for the rest of the province.”
Secrecy around Heritage Act amplifies uncertainty
As if that was not enough, the NDP’s changes to the Heritage Conservation Act will further throw private property rights into uncertainty.
The NDP plans to expand the protections in the act to cover “intangible cultural heritage” that includes oral histories, language, “knowledge,” objects, songs, ceremonies, and “places within Indigenous world view” that will require archaeological data checks before authorizing permits, new subdivisions, or even property sales outright.
Forests Minister Ravi Parmar has pledged clearer rules and faster permitting, but it is difficult to see how that is possible given the scale and undefined nature of the proposed changes to land use. Municipal governments were even required to sign non-disclosure agreements before being briefed, which only compounded the atmosphere of secrecy.
Legal scholar Dwight Newman has written about just how unstable the situation has become. Regarding the Cowichan and Haida cases, Newman cautioned that, “Private property owners … should likely be careful about making any assumptions either way on the status of their property, which has now been declared by a judge to all be part of Aboriginal title land.”
BC NDP reconciliation strategy runs counter to public opinion
The efforts by the NDP to embed DRIPA across the province’s legal framework are on a collision course with the public, and their closed-door, opaque approach is making a bad situation worse.
British Columbians have every right to be sceptical of the NDP and their record on land use. Private property rights are the basis for the economy, and democratic decision-making is the foundation of Canadian society itself.
Non-Indigenous people who own homes, businesses, and other properties could be subject to the whims of Indigenous governments whom they cannot elect or otherwise hold to account at the ballot box. Even Indigenous people who do not belong to the right nation or band could be affected in the same way.
It should therefore come as no surprise that Angus Reid’s poll found that people do not want this to be their future. Those same people are the ones who will determine whether or not the NDP will continue to govern B.C. the next time around.
If Premier David Eby and his government continue to steam ahead with their non-transparent, heavy-handed approach to land use decision-making, they will erode the public’s already plummeting support for DRIPA and the reconciliation strategy wielded in its name.
And those alarm bells they’ve been ignoring may ring in a new government next election.