In January, columnist Tom Fletcher wrote a scathing article in the Western Standard about the newly inked deal between the Tahltan First Nation and Skeena Gold and Silver.
In the introductory paragraphs of his article, Fletcher writes:
“The BC NDP government is celebrating its first completed agreement under its ground-breaking Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), to restart the Eskay Creek gold and silver mine in the remote northwest “golden triangle” of rich metal deposits.
The Tahltan Nation deal is termed a “consent agreement,” defined by a huge “consent area” that includes some of the richest metal deposits in Canada. That’s consent as in “free, prior, and informed consent” of the Tahltan that Canadian law does not require but has been granted by BC under the DRIPA.
According to the province, restarting Eskay Creek involves capital investment of $713 million, and the BC government expects to collect $1.19 billion in Crown revenue over the extended life of the mine. Skeena made an impact benefit agreement with the Tahltan that promised $1.2 billion in cash and another $570 million in contracts and wages…
…That agreement went to a vote of Tahltan members in December, sweetened with a $40 million up-front payment from Skeena that allowed the Tahltan Central Government to distribute $10,000 payments to each member before the vote. Not surprisingly, it passed, allowing the province to stage a celebratory announcement on January 27 in Vancouver.”
I am in no position to verify or deny the numbers sets out in this article, but this appears to be the first example of Premier Eby’s UNDRIP-based DRIPA section 7 “pay to play” we have seen in British Columbia.
In 2019, the NDP passed legislation that sought to bring the laws of B.C. into conformity with the 46 Articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples(UNDRIP).
Articles 26 and 32(2) of UNDRIP set out respectively the concepts of “owned” self-defined Indigenous traditional “territories” and the requirement for Indigenous “consent” for any government action that might affect those self-defined allegedly “owned” territories.
Read th efull article at Fraser Institute: Recent deal highlights B.C. government’s costly ‘pay to play’ approach to land use.