Thoughts on BC Politics and More

As First Nations battle over two new agreements, George Abbott sees progress. New chief treaty commissioner George Abbott says the battle over two First Nations treaties being debated in British Columbia’s legislature shows the need to address shared territories and overlapping claims. “It’s not a new issue,” said Abbott, a former BC Liberal cabinet minister and author of the book Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Scott McInnis, MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke and Official Opposition Critic for Indigenous Relations, introduced the Aboriginal Title Transparency Act, a private member’s bill requiring the provincial government to publicly disclose Aboriginal title claims filed against the Crown, notify affected communities, and report annually to the Legislature on active claims and related agreements.  It also requires disclosure of negotiated legislation of Aboriginal Title between the Province and First Nations.   “Right now, British Columbians are in the dark,” said McInnis. “Property owners do not know whether their titles are affected. Municipalities do not know what claims have been filed in their regions. Businesses cannot make investment decisions when the rules could change without public notice. This bill puts transparency into law.” The Aboriginal Title Transparency Act would: Establish a free public online registry of active Aboriginal title claims filed against the Cro...

RE:   Proposed Heritage Conservation Act changes won’t shift financial burden landowners   (Castanet – March 25 th , 2026) This is a perfect example of how out of touch the government is with people on the ground. You’ve got situations where a homeowner can suddenly be hit with massive costs because something is found on their property that they had nothing to do with. And honestly,   Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir is right on that point, if the burden stays on the landowner, people are going to think twice before reporting anything. That’s just reality. Then the government turns around and says they’re “streamlining” things with fewer permits and faster timelines. That sounds good on paper, but it completely misses the point. The government is tweaking the process to make it smoother, but they’re not fixing the biggest issue, property owners still carry the risk, the cost, and the uncertainty. So, what’s actually changed? You’ve got a slightly faster p...

The article,  Kamloops councillor, MLA hoping to have more input as BC mulls plan to weaken DRIPA , was shared on the Politics and More in BC and Across Canada Facebook page.  This topic, as will often happen, turned into a discussion about who we are as individuals: Settlers, Immigrants, Canadians, and First Nations. Cormac McCann had thoughts on the topic I believe are worth sharing, and they follow: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   I hear what you’re saying, but I think there’s an important piece of history and present reality that can’t be left out of this conversation. Canada is a relatively new country, but the land itself—and the nations who have lived on it for thousands of years—are not.  For many of us whose families came from Europe, Asia, Africa, or elsewhere, we are settlers on Indigenous land, whether our families arrived generations ago or more recently. I was born here to settler parents and grandparents, and th...

The BC Conservative Caucus is calling on the NDP government to come clean with British Columbians about their proposed amendments to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and to immediately end the secretive process that is sowing doubt, creating confusion, and undermining public confidence in reconciliation. For weeks, the NDP government has insisted it is committed to transparency and partnership. But its actions tell a different story. According to public reporting, the government has circulated proposed DRIPA changes behind closed doors, shielded key documents from public scrutiny, and required non-disclosure agreements before some First Nations leaders could even review the details. At the same time, the broader public has been kept in the dark about what exactly the government wants to change, why it wants those changes, and what the legal and economic consequences could be. That is not how a serious government builds trust. And it is not how a governmen...

PART 2 of Budget estimates for the Ministry of Forests – Wildfire Timber Salvage (from Tues March 10th, 2026)   WARD STAMER:   Let’s just move on a little bit from that to wildfire. We can talk about this. If we can, let’s ask a couple of questions around salvage. We know full well that we’ve lost an incredible amount of fibre in the last five years, ten years, on wildfire. I’m looking at the information in front of me, when it talks about the minister’s…. It’s the manual for wildfire recovery. In that document, it specifically says that we have specific timelines when it comes to salvaging fibre from a wildfire. There are implications, even in the minister’s numbers, saying that the expectation is only 10 percent… Ten percent is the number to recover wildfire fibre. Now, there are many of us that would disagree with that number. Part of the reason, I believe, that we’re having that low number is it’s taking an incredibly long period of time to be able to access th...