Eby bringing B.C. to its knees with Aboriginal land deals
Recently, British Columbia Attorney General Niki Sharma said that fee simple title in private property is superior to Aboriginal title. She’s a day late and a dollar short. In fact, her NDP government, led by Premier David Eby, has been doing everything in its power to have Aboriginal title triumph across B.C.
A few days earlier, the City of Richmond sent out a letter to more than 125 property owners warning them that the security of their land is in doubt. “For those whose property is in the area outlined in black,” the letter reads, “the Court has declared aboriginal title to your property which may compromise the status and validity of your ownership … The entire area outlined in green has been claimed on appeal by the Cowichan First Nations.”
The Richmond letter is a consequence of a recent decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, which awarded Aboriginal title over 800 acres of land in Richmond to the Cowichan First Nation. Wherever Aboriginal title is found to exist, said the court, it is a “prior and senior right” to other property interests, whether the land is public or private.
It is finally dawning on British Columbians that obsequious devotion to reconciliation is putting their land at risk. Sharma claimed that B.C. was pursuing multiple grounds of appeal, but that makes her a hypocrite. Her government did not robustly defend in court against the Cowichan claim. And in a dozen other ways, the Eby government has sought to put title and control of B.C. into Aboriginal hands.
In early 2024, it proposed to amend the province’s Land Act, which governs the use of Crown land in B.C. It planned to give B.C.’s hundreds of First Nations a veto over mining, hydro projects, farming, forestry, docks and communication towers. The government tried to consult quietly, but the backlash was immediate. It withdrew the proposals, promising to be more transparent. But it did not shelve its objectives or its plans. And did not deliver on its promise. Instead, it sought to make agreements over specific territories with specific Aboriginal groups, often negotiated covertly and announced after the fact.
In April 2024, the Eby government recognized Aboriginal title to Haida Gwaii, the archipelago on Canada’s West Coast. Around 5,000 people live on Haida Gwaii. About half are Haida, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal. But non-Haida residents had no say. The Haida agreement says private property will be honoured, but private property is incompatible with Aboriginal title, which is communal. If Haida Gwaii really is subject to Aboriginal title, then no one can own parts of it privately.
Eby has said that the Haida agreement is to serve as a “template.” In late January 2025, his government revealed that it had made an agreement for Indigenous management of land and resources with the shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast. Aboriginal title is in the works. The agreement was made in August 2024 on the eve of the provincial election but kept hidden for five months. Residents were in the dark until the government revealed the finished deal.
Even before that agreement was negotiated, shíshálh Nation and the province had developed a “Dock Management Plan” to impose various new and onerous rules on private property owners in Pender Harbour, including red “no-go” zones and rules that made many existing docks and boat houses non-compliant. Residents with long-standing docks in full legal compliance had no right to negotiate, to be consulted, or to be grandfathered.
In June 2025, the government gave the Tsilhqot’in Nation a veto over mining projects in the Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) area. In an agreement with the Squamish Nation, it established 33 cultural sites off limits to development. The government has also allowed First Nations to close provincial parks to the non-Aboriginal public.
Much of this can be traced to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and to the B.C. statute that incorporates UNDRIP into B.C. law. That statute, known as DRIPA, was passed unanimously by the B.C. legislature in 2019. It calls upon the B.C. government to “take all measures necessary to ensure the laws of British Columbia are consistent with the Declaration.” UNDRIP says, literally, that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” To be charitable, not all members of the legislature may have understood what they were doing. Next up for DRIPA transformation appears to be the B.C. Heritage Conservation Act.
In September, to make its Haida Gwaii agreement irreversible, the Eby government sought to constitutionalize it. Along with the federal government and the Haida Council, it applied for a court order on consent declaring Aboriginal title to Haida Gwaii. The B.C. Supreme Court obliged. The effect of that declaration is to incorporate Haida Aboriginal title into a constitutional right under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. No future government can revisit it.
B.C. is home to the most famous ostrich farm in the world, but it is the people who have had their heads in the sand. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” said abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1852, “power is ever stealing from the many to the few.” It’s quintessentially Canadian to be oblivious to the autocracy of one’s own governments. Especially in British Columbia, where the premier is mounting an existential threat to the future of his own province. |
