Adhering B.C.’s laws to a UN charter is doing the exact opposite of what they said it would
When the B.C. NDP introduced a 2019 act committing the province to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), they very specifically assured critics that it would not be a “veto” over existing laws.
“The UN declaration does not contain the word veto, nor does the legislation contemplate or create a veto,” Scott Fraser, the province’s then Indigenous relations minister, told the B.C. Legislative Assembly.
Fraser explained that it was not “bestowing any new laws,” it would not “create any new rights” and it certainly wouldn’t make B.C. subservient to a UN declaration.
Fraser would even explicitly assure British Columbians that there was no conceivable future in which, say, a private landowner could suddenly see their property declared Aboriginal land.
“We are not creating a bill here that is designed to have our laws struck down,” he said.
That it only took six years for all of these scenarios to take place may explain why there is so much panic in B.C. right now.
The newly appointed head of the B.C. Conservative Party is calling for an emergency Christmas session of the legislature to excise UNDRIP from provincial law, saying it has become an anti-democratic tool.
Even B.C. Premier David Eby — a onetime champion of the legislation — has said that “clearly, amendments are needed.”
And British Columbians, whose support for the UN law was already not great, are growing restless. According to an Angus Reid Institute poll released on Wednesday, Eby ranks as one of the least popular provincial leaders in the country.
What changed was a Dec. 5 B.C. Appeals Court ruling that not only struck down a B.C. law (the Mineral Tenure Act) on the grounds that it violated UNDRIP, but effectively ruled that any law or government action could similarly be overturned if it wasn’t in line with the 32-page UN declaration.
By writing UNDRIP into B.C. law, the province had adopted the Declaration as “the interpretive lens through which B.C. laws must be viewed and the minimum standards against which they should be measured,” read the majority decision.
Read the full article at National Post: The mother of all unintended consequences is hitting B.C. right now | National Post