Without legislative approval or a public mandate, the BC NDP government—apparently enabled by the federal government—is negotiating a secret agreement with a tiny, remote Indigenous community that aims to recognize legally unproven Aboriginal title, transfer lands, share revenue and cede unprecdented governance authority over 11 per cent of the province in one of Canada’s most mineral-rich districts, containing an estimated value of known deposits exceeding C$1 trillion.
That’s trillion with a ‘t.’
The end goal of the so-called “foundation agreement” is the recognition of Tahltan Nation rights and title over “Tahltan territory,” defined repeatedly as its entire legally unproven territorial claim spanning 96,000 square kilometres, according to public documents and other heavily redacted files obtained under a Freedom of Information request by the Public Land Use Society.
“The foundation agreement negotiations will be based upon recognition of Tahltan Aboriginal Title and Rights in Tahltan Territory,” reads a 2020 “shared prosperity agreement” that defines the geographic area as “the traditional territory identified by the Tahltan.”
Tahltan’s territorial claim spans and area larger than Portugal, including 70 per cent of the Golden Triangle, one of the richest mineral districts in Canada, which the BC Geological Survey estimated in 2021 to held a total contained metal value of C$1.28 trillion.
In a statement last November after meeting with the premier, the Tahltan reaffirmed the scope, and the need to finalize and implement the agreement “to embed consent-based and shared decision-making across all resource, land, and environmental governance systems, and to invest in housing, health, and essential services in our communities.”
The foundation agreement goals are also apparently shared by the federal government, according to an agreement announced on July 2 between Ottawa and B.C. that commits the Carney government to determining “mechanisms to participate in and contribute to the Tahltan Foundation Agreement… including through separate agreements or arrangements.”
Six years in the making, with no signed foundation agreement yet, the BC NDP government has already handed unprecedented jurisdiction to Tahltan with the province’s first consent-based decision-making agreements over approval of two multi-billion mining projects—Eskay Creek gold and silver mine and Red Chris gold and copper mine.
Consent-based decision-making under Section 7 of the Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) enables agreements requiring the consent of an Indigenous community for a project to proceed on its claimed territory, without any test of the claim in court. Withheld consent effectively amounts to a veto.
Government documents indicate these two consent-based decision-making deals are a template for more of the same and part of a wider “territory plan” that includes the building up and “recognition” of Tahltan’s government structures, improved shared revenue streams, “harmonization of the Parties’ respective jurisdictions and titles,” joint development of standards and processes regulating mining and natural resources, transfer of unspecified “agreed-to lands” related to reserve land expansion, natural resources and other tenures, all in pursuit of looks to be sovereign state-like powers.
Read the full article at Northern Beat: Backed by Ottawa, BC negotiates governance, Aboriginal title in mineral-rich northwest.