BC DRIPA drama has province reaching new level of "incompetence and ineptitude"

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:05]Even from the position that we find ourselves here in Toronto, which some people believe is the center of the universe, we do have a perspective and a view of a political crisis that is coming to a head in the province of British Columbia. And it all comes down to the declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples act dria which was adopted by the EB government in 2019 and it needs to be said it was adopted with unanimous support from all members of the legislative assembly. So that means the BCNDP and the BC Liberals which uh you know fell by the wayside reinvented in a lot of ways as the BC conservative party. A lot of those members stood shoulder-to-shoulder with David Eie back then. That's important to note. And this was intended by David Eie uh to be the framework that would accelerate reconciliation in his province. Instead, we have been uh subjected to and certainly the people of that province have been subjected to crisis after crisis, problem after problem, battle after battle, be it uh legislative uh be it in the press or in the courts where we have seen the rise in power and influence of a great number of first nations tribes and uh crisis crises as big as questioning whether or not valid title holders over property in vast swaths of that province still maintain that property.

[00:01:58]And it has not gotten better. It has gotten worse since that very day. And so yesterday uh or just a few days ago, I'm sorry, that same government that wholeheartedly embraced the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People's Act, which is based on the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNRIP. They essentially took that piece of um we'll call it literature from the UN, which was never intended to become enforcable legislation. and they cut and pasted it and turned it into legislation. This thing was supposed to be um this was supposed to be spiritual. It was supposed to guide legislators moving forward to keep an eye on the things that matter when dealing with coexisting and thriving alongside First Nations.

[00:02:57]And so, uh that did not happen. We find ourselves in the situation we find ourselves in. and David Eie, the architect of DRIPA, tried to postpone and and essentially put on pause this legislation for as long as 3 years. He faced insanely um problematic push back from those who have become accustomed to DRIPA being part of their lives, First Nations, and he is now slowly walking that back. Why walk it back? Well, let's listen to the premier himself. There is a very real threat to our province and continued conflict with First Nations. It's why our government is committed to finding if at all possible collaborative paths forward. We want to move past the court battles uh past the blockades, past those issues. Uh and that was what the declaration act was all about. We hear from the conservatives that they are fully comfortable with that division.

[00:03:52]They're comfortable with those fights.

[00:03:53]They want to repeal the declaration act.

[00:03:55]They want to pick that fight with First Nations. It is a very different view of the path to prosperity and certainty in this province. Uh for our part, we believe the path forward is together.

[00:04:06]>> Well, with all due respect, sir, DRIPA was supposed to pave that path and with respect, that fight that you claim the conservatives want to pick, it's been picked already. that the battle lines have been drawn and they they've been drawn along alongside the legislation that you said was going to calm all of this down. Jeffrey Moyes was legal counsel in the BC Ministry of the Attorney General's office for more than 30 years. This man knows the law in British Columbia and he spoke with Global BC.

[00:04:42]This is his assessment of DRIPA. I have never seen anything like this. Over six terms of governments working for the provincial government. I have never seen this level of ineptitude and incompetence. There's nowhere else in the world that has done this to itself.

[00:05:01]>> So what did we do to ourselves? What did British Columbia do to itself? Well, again, let's listen to the words of Mr. Moyes.

[00:05:11]>> Nobody votes for them except their communities. They have no obligation to the public interest for the other 5.7 million British Columbombians and they are co-developing British British Columbia's legislative agenda. Um, from my understanding and my training as a lawyer, that is completely unconstitutional. British Columbia is now being co-ruuled by the democratically elected legislative body and indigenous groups who are answerable to only themselves. Now I want to be very clear what I am explaining to you is how I see the lay of the land. I am not advocating to turn our backs on first nations. I have said many times that the prime minister that achieves full and true and honest reconciliation with First Nations will be regarded by history as one of our if not our most important and significant prime ministers. I I believe it is paramount for all politicians of all stripes to keep that as one of our north stars.

[00:06:19]However, I'll say it again. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was never meant to be a piece of legislation in its purest sense. It was never supposed to be binding. The UN called it quote soft law. This was supposed to be a guiding principle that was supposed to help us uh remember that um free prior informed consent is important. It offered a framework for reconciliation. It talked about standards for survival and dignity and security and the well-being of indigenous peoples. I mean these are broad strokes and the NDP cut and pasted it and said now it's a law. Today in the Globe and Mail, Jod Wilson Rabolde, the former justice minister under uh Justin Trudeau and not for nothing a member of the First Nations, argued that adopting UNRIP into Canadian law was performative, unworkable, and failed to achieve substantial reconciliation and encourages litigation. She contends that true progress requires moving beyond this symbolic performative legislative nonsense and uh operate as she says operationalized self-government shifting focus from political maneuvering to practical action. This is this is a woman uh who has spent a great uh long time understanding this but also living this.

[00:07:43]All right. So where are we today? How did this come to a head? And why are why why is the chief architect of this disaster now trying to reverse course?

[00:07:54]Well, land claims disasters. The Kawichan tribe uh ruling by the BC Supreme Court that essentially gave vast swaths of Richmond, British Columbia to a tribe of 5,000 people. Oil pipelines, those aren't getting built anytime soon.

[00:08:10]They are even you want to develop natural resource right uh natural resources in that province. It goes through these bans who are not this free and informed prior consent uh has been viewed by a great many people and increasingly by these bans as a veto a veto against natural resource development and extraction.

[00:08:36]People could be losing their homes. And what have we been doing? Yesterday or a couple of days on the show, a few days ago on the show, the Aristotle Foundation put out a report saying that the Cowitan tribe, again, of 5,000 people have been given$ 1.3 billion, 1.3 billion to 5,000 people over the course of a couple of decades. That comes out to tens of thousands of dollars per individual. That's on top of every benefit that everybody gets for being Canadian. And I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist here, but what happens with this money that is being shoveled un in an unaccountable and lack of transparency way uh into the uh coffers of these tribes? Well, in a lot of cases, they're hiring lawyers.

[00:09:20]They're hiring judicial experts, constitutional experts to then fight back against the very legisl uh legislators that are wanting to partner with them on these projects and in an effort to further reconciliation. This is a path. This is a non-starter. It is a non-starter.

[00:09:37]And so this is where we are today. Uh where do we go next? Well, we're going to be talking with a constitutional lawyer, Keith Wilson, next about where we stand today from a legal perspective.

[00:09:47]And perhaps maybe we can we can talk about some solutions on how can we navigate our way out of these self-inflicted disasters that we have put on ourselves. That's next on the Ben Maloney Show. Thanks so much for watching the show. Now, if you enjoyed what you saw, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode of the Ben Maloney