A faulty blueprint for BC

If the Nisga’a Final Agreement is the template for the 50 or more land-claim agreements or treaties yet to be negotiated in BC as Premier Glen Clark says it is, then at the end of the exercise, British Columbians will wake up to discover that their federal and provincial governments will have substantially altered forever the economic, social, and political fabric of their province.

We will discover that those governments have greatly diminished the public land and resource base of the province—the greatest source of our wealth; they have turned over much of their taxing power to native bands; they have paid out billions of dollars in cash compensation; they have constitutionally entrenched a native-only commercial fishery; and they have authorized and financed an array of 50 or more ethnic-based governments, whose laws in some instances will supplant federal and provincial laws.

Senior governments will have done all of this for less than 3 percent of the population, while confirming to the native people covered by these agreements their right to continue to receive the benefits from the scores of special programs for native people only, which annually cost the Canadian taxpayer about $7 billion.

The federal treaty-making policy, first established in 1973 and originally designed to compensate natives for the loss of their traditional activities, has been expanded into a policy that now provides a cornucopia of economic and social benefits, land, resources, taxing powers, and self-government—all financially backstopped by the Canadian taxpayer.

One might well ask what motivation drives governments to give to 5,500 Nisga’a, only 2,000 of whom actually live in the Nass Valley, outright ownership of 1,930 square kilometres of publicly-owned land (17 times the size of the City of Vancouver or one-half the size of the Okanagan Valley) including timber, mineral rights, water rights, plus cash payments well in excess of $275 million, and a major say in wildlife resource management in an area one-third the size of Vancouver Island.

Part of the answer is that the whole process is driven by the unrelenting efforts of what has been called the “Indian Industry”—the national native leadership, the many lawyers, consultants, advisers and academics, all government-funded, who would keep it going in perpetuity. Couple this with a provincial government unwilling to aggressively defend provincial interests in court, and you have a bad mix. Over-zealous bureaucrats and compliant politicians complete the loop. But the Canadian public is out in the cold. Paternalism—telling us what is good for us—is now being visited upon us all.

Those who raise legitimate questions over this major restructuring of British Columbia’s social, political, and economic order are called alarmists, obstructionists, or worse. All of this has shades of the Charlottetown Accord debate where those who questioned what was going on were branded by the establishment as “the enemies of Canada.” No one should be intimidated by such labels. The following concerns are being shared by more and more British Columbians as they become more acquainted with this subject:

• Is there any legal justification for the wholesale distribution of wealth that treaties will bring about?
• Will treaties like the Nisga’a agreement really bring certainty and finality?
• Are treaties just about “minority rights,” as the BC premier suggests, and therefore the majority should not have a say as expressed in a referendum?
• What are the full costs of the Nisga’a deal?
• Is it true that Nisga’a will become full taxpayers like other Canadians?
• Is a “free vote” in the Legislature on this deal a sufficient expression of the public will?
• Is the proposed Nisga’a government purely municipal in nature or is it something much more?
• What about the democratic rights of non-Nisga’a who reside on Nisga’a lands?
• Will the Nisga’a agreement achieve the desired result of remedying the discredited native policy in Canada of the past 130 years?

These are legitimate questions which an increasing number of British Columbians are asking. Sad to say, slick answers, or in some cases no answers at all, are forthcoming from governments. This paper attempts to briefly answer these questions. But a preliminary question is, has BC really neglected its obligation to native peoples?