DOSMUKHAMEDOV: The BC NDP didn't advance reconciliation — they gambled with it

For years, Premier David Eby and the BC NDP presented themselves as the government that would finally deliver genuine reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

The branding was careful, the language was progressive, and the intentions, at least publicly, were sincere.

The results tell a different story.

The legal framework the NDP built — DRIPA, Section 8.1, the UNDRIP interpretive architecture — has not produced the durable, negotiated reconciliation it promised. It has produced courtrooms. It has produced frozen financing, stalled projects, and communities still waiting for the economic certainty that genuine reconciliation was supposed to deliver.

Proponents argue the framework is still evolving and that courts and governments are clarifying its application. But even they acknowledge that the transition period has created legal uncertainty that policy has not yet resolved. British Columbia cannot afford to wait for clarity that may take a decade of litigation to arrive.

The question is not whether reconciliation matters. It does, profoundly, and the constitutional obligations underpinning it are real and enduring. The question is whether this approach has served Indigenous communities — or whether it has substituted legal complexity for the practical outcomes those communities actually need.

The record of successful reconciliation in British Columbia is real and substantial. It just does not look like DRIPA.

The Nisga’a Final Agreement, signed in 1999, delivered self-government, land certainty, and resource-sharing through years of patient negotiation. It gave the Nisga’a Nation a clear legal foundation, democratic accountability, and the tools to build an economy.

The Nisga’a recently confirmed a landmark agreement to supply liquefied natural gas to Germany — the first such deal between Canada and Europe — with the $10 billion Ksi Lisims LNG project moving closer to a final investment decision. Negotiated clarity has produced durable economic outcomes, and decades later it is still delivering results.

The Tsawwassen First Nation treaty attracted over a billion dollars in private investment onto treaty lands, creating thousands of jobs and significant residential and commercial development. It was built through negotiation, consent, and certainty rather than judicial interpretation.

LNG Canada negotiated benefit agreements with twenty elected First Nation councils along the pipeline corridor, producing thousands of Indigenous jobs and hundreds of millions in contracts. It succeeded because the consent was negotiated and the outcomes were concrete.

These examples share a common architecture: negotiation over litigation, economic results over process, certainty over ambiguity.

Against that record, the DRIPA framework has been associated with a starkly different set of outcomes.

The Cowichan ruling created legal uncertainty over private land in Richmond that has frozen financing, stalled development, and left 150 property owners notified by municipal letter that their titles may be affected by litigation they never knew was happening. The Gitxaala ruling declared BC’s mineral claims regime inconsistent with UNDRIP, generating uncertainty across the mining sector and opening the door to dozens of additional court actions.

The Business Council of BC reports that 98 percent of its members say DRIPA is not living up to its promise of investment certainty, with 74 percent decreasing investment plans and one in three reducing hiring. These are jobs not created, projects not built, and economic opportunities not shared — including with Indigenous communities whose prosperity depends on a functioning investment climate.

Ellis Ross, the MP and former Haisla Chief Councillor, has spent his career making this argument from the inside. His own Haisla Nation moved from talking about unemployment and poverty to, in his words, “the management of wealth” — through economic partnership, not legal confrontation. Prosperity, not process, is his measure of reconciliation.

He is not alone in that view. Aaron Pete, Chief of the Chawathil First Nation, has argued publicly that reconciliation has become too focused on symbolism and not enough on practical results. His test is direct: are homes being built, are people getting clean water, are First Nations building real economic independence? If the answer is no, the language of reconciliation is not enough.

These are Indigenous leaders speaking from experience. The NDP’s framework has generated legal complexity while delivering less and less of what those communities are asking for.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s former Attorney General and an Indigenous leader of the We Wai Kai Nation, was explicit. The government was specifically warned that embedding UNDRIP as a broad interpretive standard without clear implementation guidance could produce a confusing legal landscape. The government proceeded regardless.

When the courts began producing outcomes it did not anticipate, Eby’s response was to suggest the courts were confused rather than the framework flawed. He told reporters the courts “seem to have some confusion around what was clearly intended when we introduced this legislation.” He then proposed amendments — which stalled before reaching the legislature, withdrawn after First Nations called them unacceptable.

A government genuinely committed to reconciliation would ask whether its framework is producing the outcomes Indigenous communities need. This one has not asked that question seriously enough.

Done well, reconciliation produces the Nisga’a model: negotiated certainty, self-government, economic opportunity, and a legal foundation that keeps delivering — as this week’s landmark LNG agreement with Germany confirms. Done poorly, it produces what BC has now: courtroom uncertainty, investment hesitation, communities still waiting, and a government that mistakes legal architecture for progress.

The DRIPA framework was presented as the most progressive path to reconciliation in Canada. It may instead prove one of the most counterproductive — not because reconciliation was the wrong goal, but because the chosen instrument prioritised judicial process over the negotiated certainty that actually delivers results.

British Columbia deserves a reconciliation framework measured not by the sophistication of its legal architecture, but by whether Indigenous communities are demonstrably better off. The Nisga’a model answers that test. The DRIPA model, so far, has not.

Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov holds a doctoral degree in law from the University of Oxford and is a former senior associate member of Oxford. He specializes in constitutional and international law and writes on governance and accountability in British Columbia.