One million hectares of land over the entire Haida Gwaii archipelago—including public Crown land and private land—has been declared Haida Aboriginal title.

You might think such a groundbreaking development must be the result of a long and detailed court case that carefully considered all evidence of actual Haida historical occupation of land as of 1846 and properly applied legal tests for such title set out by the Supreme Court of Canada.

But this stunning breach of the public interest resulted from the “negotiation” of two bilateral so-called “Reconciliation Agreements” by two activist public governments along with the Haida.

The British Columbia government announced the Gaayhllxid Gllhlagalgang “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement on April 14, 2024. The government legislated—arguably unconstitutionally—the provincial declaration of Aboriginal title under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, in the Haida Nation Recognition Amendment Act, 2024.

The Trudeau government announced a similar agreement on Feb. 17, 2025, between Canada and the Haida entitled the Chiix̲uujin / Chaaw K̲aawgaa “Big Tide (Low Water)” Haida Title Lands Agreement. Though the federal government has not passed any equivalent legislation to the provincial Act.

To prevent any future government from questioning this arrangement, the three parties, on Sept. 5, 2025, asked a B.C. Supreme Court judge to issue a consent order declaring Haida Aboriginal title under section 35 as set out in the two agreements. That order included the imposition of Aboriginal title over public Crown and private lands of Haida Gwaii.

The Haida never had to face—and may never now have to face—the requirement to prove Aboriginal title to lands on Haida Gwaii under the stringent test of regular occupation of particular areas of land in 1846 as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Instead, these “negotiations” of Aboriginal title occurred without any public input, entirely disregarding the larger public interest, and then the B.C. Supreme Court affirmed these outcomes by way of consent order that cements them into constitutional concrete.

What has occurred on Haida Gwaii is not only a gross breach of public trust, but a punishing example of how two activist governments threw the rights of both the general public and private landowners on Haida Gwaii completely under the bus.

Read the full article at The Fraser Institute: How two governments breached the public interest and rights of private landowners in B.C. (Part 1)