NDP leader David Eby’s repeated justification for calling an election two years early is to stabilize his majority so he can “take big swings” to manage the province’s struggling economy and push major resource development projects on the Crown land base.
Eby hasn’t specified what they are, but one of those “big swings” was revealed by Rob Shaw in Northern Beat on Oct. 15—a secret “land returns” plan to surrender as many as 400 parcels of Crown land to First Nations, through treaties or reconciliation agreements.
Many of the locations are not yet known, but the plan includes proposed legislation that the NDP would push through to limit compensation payable to forest tenure holders. The NDP government’s record deficit and debt make it increasingly difficult to buy out forest licences in the traditional way, and the “land back” demands of dozens of indigenous communities keep coming.
That has led to the NDP government’s rushed treaty settlements for areas where overlapping land claims have stalled treaty talks for decades. When the K’omoks treaty for central Vancouver Island was put before the B.C. legislature this spring, it was immediately greeted with threats from neighbouring First Nations that they would protest with blockades on highways and at the BC Hydro dam that powers the region.
More than two dozen First Nations claim territorial rights there. Among them is the We Wai Kai Nation, whose most prominent member is former federal attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. One local nation said K’omoks’ treaty lands had suddenly been expanded in the past two years under the Eby government, cutting even more into its overlapping claimed territory.
Had the snap election not been called, the legislature would now be debating a second disputed treaty, with the Kitselas First Nation for territory along the Skeena River. Opponents include the Haisla Nation, a key player in the province’s LNG development, the Lax Kw’alaams and others along the key salmon-bearing river.
Both K’omoks and Kitselas entered treaty talks in the mid-1990s. Others have not been willing to negotiate and wait, and have advanced so-called reconciliation or economic development agreements instead.
Indigenous protected areas are simply declared by groups claiming territory
Another big swing that may or may not be included in the 400 parcels being transferred in the land-back legislation is Crown land for Indigenous protected and conserved areas.
In August 2021, the federal government committed up to $340 million over five years, $166 million of which was budgeted to support Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, “which are lands, waters and ice where Indigenous leadership is a defining attribute in the decisions and actions that protect and conserve an area.”
A year later, a Gitxsan house group, Wilps Gwininitxw, declared its entire asserted territory of 1,700 square kilometres along the upper Skeena to be protected.
Another Gitxsan house group, Wilps ‘WiiK’aax, received a $400,000 grant in 2024 through the Watershed Security Fund to declare 2,140 square kilometres of the Sustut, Babine and Upper Skeena watersheds a protected area. The Watershed Security Fund was established in 2023 with $100 million from the B.C. NDP government’s StrongerBC budget, and this spring the fund received a $1 million contribution from the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation.
The goals of the Wilps ‘WiiK’aax include “monitoring and restoring fish habitats against industrial logging and mining pressures,” and “upholding governance rooted in Gitxsan laws carried by the land.”
Okanagan group argues for no mining in its declared protected area
The Lower Similkameen Indian Band also took up Ottawa’s invitation in 2022, declaring the Ashnola Protected and Conserved Area, covering the entire Ashnola River watershed in the South Okanagan, including existing provincial protected areas of Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park and Snowy Protected Area.
This summer, the LSIB went public with its frustration that it hasn’t been able to stop mining claims in the region. Their effort illustrates the web of ministries created by the NDP government, as well as the interests of U.S. indigenous groups in B.C.
“We’re working with Water, Land and Resource [Stewardship],” Lauren Terbasket, LSIB negotiator for protected areas, told the CBC in August. “We’re working with the Ministry of Forests … we’re working in Washington state with the Colville Confederated Tribes.”
B.C.’s Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals has refused to participate, and the chief gold commissioner told the LSIB they are not approved to be part of the region’s land use planning table, Terbasket said.
Layers of land-use programs accumulate
Eby’s government has taken heat over how it is unfolding the NDP’s 2021 old-growth protection strategy, with vast logging “deferral areas” temporarily in place. “Our focus is now on finalizing long-term management plans for these areas,” the government declared in 2025. It’s unclear whether any of these areas are included in the 400 land-transfer parcels.
Forest protection has been layered onto the Eby government’s ambitious land-use planning program. Mineral exploration and other land-based activities are currently paused in north-central and northwest regions, including where Tahltan Nation is co-managing what mineral explorers described as a paralyzed landscape planning process with the B.C. government. As well, a “consent agreement” with Tahltan to allow extension of two mines evolved into ongoing negotiations of a secret “foundation agreement” that has been running parallel to the 35-year mandate of the B.C. Treaty Commission.
Some first nations opt to negotiate outside the treaty process becuase it takes less time and ends up being more lucrative and generous for the community. Some Aboriginal law experts warn that the now-emerging consent or foundation or reconciliation agreements are “one-way transfers” of land, resources, and governance that don’t balance the interests of indigenous and non-indigenous people as treaties attempt to do.
At this rate, it’s unclear how many more of Eby’s big swings the province can take.