The BC Treaty Commission was created by an NDP government in British Columbia 20 years ago in order to remove an impediment to deeper capitalist penetration of territories belonging to Indigenous peoples. Land claims settlements could provide a more solid legal and economic foundation for accelerating the production and transport of natural resource wealth from Indigenous territories. This is the case made by the writer below in the Globe and Mail capitalist daily.
The writer is not the first to make such a case. And successive BC and federal governments have made some headway on this, for example, with an agreement last year with representatives of the Tswassen territory in the Vancouver metropolitan region that will allow for an expansion of the neighbouring Roberts Bank coal export terminal. But the governments demand stiff terms from many of those Native peoples with whom they negotiate. Those without important natural resources or other potential wealth get shunted aside or frozen out altogether from the process.
The BC Treaty Commission has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 20 years with too little to show for it, argue some capitalist proponents. Meanwhile, the slow pace of treaty negotiation is sparking rising anger among Natives and risks widening the struggle for meaningful expressions of self-determination. Witness the second article below, on mounting protests against tar sands pipelines proposed to cross northern British Columbia.
Unfortunately, the example of Bolivia’s revolutionary process is largely unknown in British Columbia, as in the rest of Canada. Thus sits an important political challenge for progressive activists across the country–to take up the cause of Indigenous self-determination and self-government. This has been done successfully in Toronto with Toronto Bolivia Solidarity.
RA
Settle treaties to open a gateway to the B.C. economy
By Daniel Veniez, comment in Globe and Mail business section, Oct 17, 2012
The broken treaty process is a conspicuous illustration of a major impediment to the expansion of British Columbia’s economy. The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline debacle is its latest casualty.
In 1992, the federal and provincial governments created the BC Treaty Commission (BCTC) to facilitate the negotiation and settlement of treaties in British Columbia. Twenty years and an estimated $900-million later, a grand total of three treaties have been signed. Sophie Pierre, the Chief Commissioner, told me that the commission could be around for another 20 years.
Unsettled land claims are a quagmire, and the perpetual uncertainty over ownership and control of the land has stopped resource development. This should be a wake-up call to policy makers.
Aboriginal rights and title are protected by the Constitution, and confirmed as a concept in common law. The courts have repeatedly encouraged governments to deal with these claims. Politically at least, Ottawa and Victoria have not shown an interest in resolving these issues. Governments don’t appear to appreciate the economic damage their procrastination has inflicted. Some politicians are skeptical of treaties and prefer to pretend there’s no need for them. That’s a delusion. The Northern Gateway fiasco is an example of the extraordinary costs we endure for government inattentiveness.
Most reasonable Canadians would agree that moving our energy resources to customers in new markets is in our national interest. The Northern Gateway pipeline proposal was designed to fill part of that need. Yet it was left to Enbridge to do all the heavy lifting. There has never been a coherent and co-ordinated approach from the federal, Alberta and B.C. governments to deal with the file. This has not only jeopardized this pipeline proposal, but any others for the foreseeable future.
Despite the fact that the constitutional requirement to consult with and accommodate first nations resides with governments and may not be delegated, Enbridge was left alone to negotiate and secure no less than 43 agreements with individual first nations along the environmentally treacherous 1,177-kilometre proposed route. The first nations want to talk about aboriginal rights and title, topics open only to governments. Enbridge can offer only economic participation and environmental safeguards – necessary but hardly sufficient.
Creating modern treaties is a fundamental precondition for the development of B.C.’s resource economy. And no one should be under any illusions: First nations have an effective veto over any development on their “traditional territories.”
Jock Finlayson of the Business Council of B.C. reminded us last month that 80 per cent of the province’s international merchandise exports consist of resource goods. It is also central to the government’s capacity to generate revenues to pay for programs and services we expect. That underlines the significance of these issues since 100 per cent of all Crown land in B.C. is covered by unresolved and often overlapping land claims.
Modern treaties purge the insidious dependence of the arcane Indian Act, which has been an immovable obstruction to the health, prosperity and independence of Canadians under its grip. This law is a relic, and is a scar on Canada as a whole. “Indians,” as the law of the land calls them, crave to be fullfledged participants in Canadian society, not legislated wards of it.
PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that the net economic benefit (in 2009 dollars) to Canada of settlements is at least $14.5-billion. The faster the pace of settlements, the greater the economic benefit.
The truth is that it is difficult to quantify the opportunity cost of unresolved claims. But common sense tells us that PwC’s analysis is conservative and only scratches the surface. Valuable lands and the awesome human potential of a great people are locked in a bureaucratic, legal and political purgatory.
In the early 1990s, uncertainty over Quebec, fiscal policy and regulatory burdens were the reasons that capital markets attached a “Canadian discount” to transactions. While there has been some meaningful improvement, the time is now for Ottawa and Victoria to remove the barriers that remain such a deep structural drag on development in much of Canada’s heartland.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Christy Clark should put the full weight of their governments behind restarting the stalled treaty process. That will require real commitment, flexibility and openness. But the rewards to Canada’s social and economic well-being are boundless.
Daniel Veniez is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur.
And to underline the preceding case:
Nobel winner joins pipeline opposition
Daryl Hannah, Mark Ruffalo and Michael Moore among celebrities protesting ‘folly’ of tar sands extraction
By Mark Hume, Globe and Mail, Oct 17, 2012
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams and a growing array of entertainers, including Michael Moore, Daryl Hannah and Mark Ruffalo, are adding their voices to a protest against a proposed pipeline across British Columbia.
Ms. Williams, an American who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban anti-personnel landmines, said at a press conference in Vancouver on Tuesday that a tour along the pipeline route left her convinced that local communities will halt the proposed Enbridge project.
“I was totally awestruck by the commitment of all the women we met,” Ms. Williams said of the tour of 13 communities just completed by a delegation from the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She said in one community after another women told the delegation: “It will not happen … we will lie down in front of the bulldozers.”
Ms. Williams said her group met with more than 200 women in northern B.C. and Alberta, and the delegation was moved by stories about the impact resource industries are already having on the health of communities.
She said the group is calling on the government to launch a public inquiry into the social, economic, environmental and health impacts of oil sands developments on northern communities. Ms. Williams also said the Nobel Women’s Initiative would send a representative to the Defend Our Coast mass sit-in, in Victoria Oct. 22, that will protest against the proposed pipeline and related tanker traffic.
In a statement released Tuesday, Greenpeace Canada said the entertainers have all issued statements supporting the sit-in. “We stand in solidarity with our northern neighbours,” said Ms. Hannah, who has appeared in more than 30 films, and who was arrested recently for blockading a construction site for the Keystone XL pipeline route.
“Tar sands pipelines are an exercise in folly,” said Mr. Ruffalo, who played The Hulk in the recent hit movie The Avengers. “As the world inevitably transitions away from fossil fuels, a small group of corporate radicals is dead set on accelerating climate change in the biggest land grab and property rights infringement in history.”
Mr. Moore, an Academy Award winning director, said: “There’s a reason Americans call Stephen Harper ‘Bush of the North’ – he’s a totally owned subsidiary of big oil, and is trying to import all of the worst things about the U.S. and get rid of all the best things about Canada.”
In his statement Mr. Moore said demonstrations in the United States helped delay the Keystone XL pipeline, and they can have the same impact in Canada, with the proposed Enbridge project.
“President Obama listened to the voices of the people who protested in Washington D.C., and said no to the Keystone XL pipeline. Now’s the time for Canadians to do the same in Victoria on October 22, and force Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Christy Clark to listen to someone other than their oil-company donors. Tarsands pipelines are not a pathway to Canada’s future or America’s future or any future. They’re a dead end,” he said.
