“Lofty goals paired with chaotic implementation leave everyone frustrated and no one accountable.”
––Geoff Russ
For over a decade, governments in Canada have been promising a new relationship with Indigenous peoples, one based on respect, reconciliation and shared prosperity.
In British Columbia, that promise is colliding with the realities of law, politics and property rights in ways that are already changing the landscape, literally and figuratively.
Recent events suggest the second half of the 2020s will be not just tumultuous but transformative, and for many, deeply uncomfortable.
The spark in the current firestorm is the recent Cowichan Tribes v. Canada decision in the B.C. Supreme Court. After a 523-day trial, Justice Barbara Young awarded the Cowichan of Vancouver Island Aboriginal title to an 800-acre parcel of urban land in Richmond, along with fishing rights in the Fraser River.
She ruled historic Crown grants of fee simple title in the area were invalid and the rights of the Cowichan Nation were never lawfully extinguished. The case didn’t make a direct claim against private landholders but the reasoning is clear enough: where Aboriginal title exists, it can trump private property.
It’s a reality the B.C.’s attorney general admitted could have unintended consequences for property rights and is now headed for appeal by the province and probably others. The Cowichan nation launched the suit against the City of Richmond, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, the Musqueam Indian Band, the Tsawwassen Nation and the federal and provincial governments.
For homeowners and small business owners, the implications are obvious and scary. How much is your property worth if its legal foundation is “defective and invalid” and the only likely buyer is the nation vying to take it back?
Guide outfitters are early casualties of Aboriginal title
You don’t have to look far for a warning of where things are headed. In the Tsilhqot’in title area, guide outfitters and tourism operators spent years building businesses only to be forced to watch helplessly as years of work collapsed when they lost access to Crown land after it was transferred to the Tsilhqot’in.
The province left it to the nation to approve tenures on their newly recognized title land, and even provided a fund for property acquisition, but Tsilhqot’in refused to buyout many of the tenure holders. Instead of stepping in to negotiate a resolution, or ensure buyouts or compensation for the outfitters, the province has done nothing.
In the meantime, operators like Tsylos Lodge and Skinner Creek Hunts have been denied access to land or endured permit delays so severe some seasons ended before their licences were issued.
The Tsilhqot’in have said certain areas will remain off-limits. Non-Indigenous operators shut out of their livelihoods are in a tough spot. The First Nation doesn’t represent them and the province has shown no appetite to take a stand or negotiate a solution.
Unresolved land claims collide with uncertain property rights
That uncertainty is now seeping into the broader property market.
If the Cowichan precedent stands, thousands of square kilometres of B.C., most of it under unresolved claims, could see similar challenges.
“Land back” has evolved from a radical movement to a core tenet of the province’s land use agreement negotiations. And the effects are no longer abstract when someone’s retirement plan, business or family home suddenly sits on contested ground and the only buyer willing to purchase it can set the price. Or not buy it at all.
Nor is this just a Crown vs. private citizen fight. Nation-on-nation conflicts are multiplying.
The Musqueam and Tsawwassen First Nations have said they may challenge the Cowichan decision, arguing the Cowichan’s newly recognized Aboriginal title land in Richmond overlaps with their own territory.
The Blueberry River First Nation, fresh from their 2021 court victory that halted much industrial development in their Treaty 8 territory, have filed another lawsuit over land-use and resource issues. That’s on top of two ongoing suits from two other Treaty 8 nations alleging the Crown bargained in bad faith on the Blueberry agreement. Add to that a previous court challenge launched and won by the former Blueberry chief against her own council after councillors ousted her.
Elsewhere, overlapping claims pit the Tahltan against neighbouring nations even as the province pushes for land-use agreements to clear the way for mining.
We’ve seen this before: the Coastal GasLink pipeline protests split the Wet’suwet’en between hereditary leaders and elected councils while the province and federal government stumbled through inconsistent responses.
No one was in charge then and it’s hard to see who is in charge now.
Eby government leans into secret, hurried agreements
B.C. Premier David Eby’s government says it’s taking the right approach by negotiating land-use agreements and co-management frameworks under the province’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
In theory, these deals should clarify who has a say over resource development, environmental protection and land management. In practice, the rollout has been marred by flawed policies, poor communication, rushed timelines, and a lack of transparency.
Good intentions have been undone by political haste, poor planning and a lack of transparency about the trade-offs.
The abandoned attempt to amend the Land Act early in 2024 is a prime example.
The changes were meant to formalize joint decision-making with First Nations over Crown land, 94 per cent of the province, but were launched quietly, without a press release and with only weeks of consultation.
Opposition parties called it a “veto” for First Nations; the government said that was misinformation, accusing critics of racism, but ultimately paused the process after public backlash. The province has since repackaged the failed Land Act in a flurry of land use agreements also negotiated in secrecy, in what some say is a blatant attempt to win Indigenous approvals for major projects.
It’s easy to imagine this approach will incite more conflict than it resolves.
Federal approach gets mixed reviews from Indigenous groups
A similar pattern is playing out federally under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Building Canada Act, also known as Bill C-5.
Passed this spring with Conservative support, it aims to cut project approval times from five years to two for “national interest” infrastructure such as pipelines, ports, mines and other big builds.
Indigenous leaders complained they were left out of the legislative process and Carney has since held three separate summits with First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders to try to fix the damage.
The results were mixed. The Métis were generally supportive, though divided among themselves. The Inuit stressed treaty rights must be respected. The Assembly of First Nations was split between those seeking equity stakes in projects and those opposed outright.
Before the summit was even concluded, an Ontario First Nation filed for an injunction to stop development in the Ring of Fire mining region, the very type of project C-5 is designed to speed up.
Critics of both the provincial and federal approaches point to the same fundamental problem: governments are making big policy moves without getting durable agreements from those affected. Court decisions like Blueberry River and Cowichan have already shifted the balance of power to Indigenous titleholders.
Weak leadership stokes nation-to-nation conflict, ignores Crown interests
Without clear frameworks, every new project will be mired in litigation, protests or both. Investors want predictability. Instead, no one can say with confidence who has final authority.
Non-Indigenous residents, who make up the majority of the population, have no clear representative at the table. The Crown’s interests, supposedly held in trust for all citizens, are often absent.
Even across Indigenous communities there is no guarantee of consensus. Overlapping claims, internal governance disputes and competing visions for economic development can pit nation against nation and leader against leader.
B.C. and Ottawa have so far shown no ability to mediate these conflicts or ensure agreements made with one group don’t trigger disputes with another. In the vacuum, local tensions rise, trust erodes and projects stall.
In the vacuum, local tensions rise, trust erodes and projects stall.
The Blueberry River case is a warning. The court found that decades of cumulative industrial development, forestry, oil and gas, mining, had so degraded the nation’s territory that Treaty 8 rights could no longer be exercised meaningfully.
The decision was hailed as a win for Indigenous rights and a warning to governments to manage cumulative impacts better. The province didn’t appeal, and instead negotiated an agreement that includes significant land protections and a $200-million restoration fund.
But the deal also severely limits new development in an area that relies heavily on resource jobs, leaving neighbouring nations and local municipalities wondering what’s in it for them when their turn comes.
Dwight Newman, a law professor at the University of Saskatchewan who specializes in constitutional matters, says that negotiated land-use agreements are a good idea, even necessary, but the execution has been botched.
Good intentions have been undone by political haste, poor planning and a lack of transparency about the trade-offs. It’s the same dynamic that killed B.C.’s drug decriminalization pilot: lofty goals paired with chaotic implementation, leaving everyone frustrated and no one accountable.
Governments must meet ‘the moment’ and reconcile for all citizens
The stakes are real.
They’re measured in the value of a family home suddenly clouded by uncertainty; a tourism business shut out of lands it once used; a mine, port or power line that could have sustained a community’s economy for decades.
They’re measured too in the erosion of public trust when governments can’t or won’t defend the interests of all their citizens, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.
B.C. and Canada are entering a period where court decisions, legislative experiments and political calculation will collide in fierce and unpredictable ways.
The Cowichan appeal will wend its way through the courts. Implementation of the Blueberry River agreement will measure the province’s ability to honour rights without hollowing out regional economies. Bill C-5 will face its first real test when a project is approved over objections and lands in court.
Homeowners and business owners will find the ground beneath them has shifted legally, economically and perhaps literally.
Chaotic, bitter and breaking may be the right words. But it’s also a moment of decision.
The governments that claimed reconciliation as their mission now have to prove they can reconcile not just with Indigenous peoples, but for the broader public interest.
Without that balance the next decade will not just be turbulent; it will be ungovernable.