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British Columbia saw a rare unanimous vote in its legislature in October 2019, when members passed a law adopting the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, setting out standards including free, prior and informed consent for actions affecting them.

The law “fundamentally changed the relationship” between First Nations and the province, said Terry Teegee, regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations.

“Rather than having some sort of consultation, right now we’re actually talking about shared decision-making,” Teegee said in an interview.

John Rustad threw his support behind the legislation as a member of the Official Opposition B.C. Liberal Party, but as the B.C. Conservative leader he has since signalled his intention to “repeal” the law if his party wins the Oct. 19 provincial election.

Rustad said in a statement on the Conservatives’ website last February, that the UN declaration, known as UNDRIP, was “established for conditions in other countries — not Canada.”

Teegee said Rustad was “creating enemies” with First Nations.

“As we come to Sept. 30, he’s repealing, in a way, reconciliation,” Teegee said in an interview ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. “He’s undoing a lot of the good work that many people in this province have worked toward.”

B.C.’s legislation adopts the declaration as the framework for reconciliation and charts a path for the province to negotiate agreements with First Nations aimed at establishing shared decision-making in their territories.

It has led to changes in provincial laws related to land management, including mining and forestry, and it has helped facilitate progress in returning jurisdiction to First Nations over the welfare of their children, Teegee said.

Unravelling the nearly five-year-old legislation would set reconciliation back in B.C., he said, leaving First Nations without a forum to hold constructive discussions about the recognition of land rights and shared decision-making with the province.

“I think it (would) bring us back to 40 years ago, maybe even longer, when the first court cases began by the Nisga’a and Calder,” he said, referring to a landmark case that led to the Supreme Court of Canada recognizing Aboriginal title in 1973.

“If we’re at odds with each other, then many First Nations will continue to do what they did before, (which) was to go to court,” he said. “It leaves a lot of uncertainty.”

The Canadian Press requested an interview with Rustad related to his stance on B.C.’s declaration legislation, but did not receive follow up to arrange a call.

Conservative candidate A’aliya Warbus, a member of the Sto:lo Nation, said asking Rustad about the declaration was “top of mind” when she first met him.

“What the heck? Why would we take this legislation? We fought hard, Indigenous communities, for our rights and recognition of those rights, and upholding social determinants of health in our communities, and this legislation helps us do that.”

But Warbus, who is running in Chilliwack-Cultus Lake, said she was “really satisfied” with her conversation with Rustad.

She said Rustad “explained” that adopting an international framework such as UNDRIP wasn’t the right fit for B.C.’s context, with more than 200 unique First Nations and vast traditional territories that aren’t covered by treaties.

Warbus said B.C.’s declaration legislation is “97 per cent good,” but the application of free, prior and informed consent had not been settled in the province.

She pointed to conflict over the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northwestern B.C.

Opposition among Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs to the 670-kilometre pipeline sparked rallies and rail blockades across Canada in 2020, while the elected council of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation and others nearby had agreed to the project.

“That was a key example of how free, prior, informed consent, without definition, doesn’t tell us who gets to make that decision at the end of the day,” Warbus said.

The 670-kilometre pipeline was mechanically completed in November 2023 and an update posted to the project website in June says the focus had turned to the safe operation of the pipeline system as well as cleanup and reclamation work.

“There’s no impetus from me or the party to go backwards on reconciliation at all,” said Warbus, whose father is former B.C. lieutenant-governor Steven Point.

The switch in Rustad’s stance on the declaration came as he was speaking out against proposed changes to B.C.’s Land Act, which have since been scrapped.

The Conservative statement last February starts by saying the changes were an “assault” on private property rights and the right to access shared Crown land.

“Conservatives will defend your rights to outdoor recreation — and your water access, as well as B.C.’s mining, forestry, agriculture sectors and every other land use right,” said the statement posted by Rustad.

A provincial consultation presentation said the proposed changes would have opened the door for shared decision-making under the Land Act, but nothing would require the province to enter into such an agreement with a First Nation.

“The public interest will be a critical part of any provincial government decision to enter into a negotiation of an agreement,” the slide deck said.

The B.C. government announced later in February it was dropping the plan.

At the time, the minister of water, land and resource stewardship, Nathan Cullen, issued a statement saying “some figures (had) gone to extremes to knowingly mislead the public about what the proposed legislation would do.”

Cullen said he spoke with many people during the consultation process who were “surprised to learn that the claims being made … were not true and that there would be no impacts to tenures, renewals, private properties or access to Crown land.”

B.C. Indigenous leaders, including Teegee, have said Rustad was making false statements about the province’s plan and stoking anti-Indigenous sentiment.

In an interview, Teegee said Rustad was engaging in “fear mongering” and using First Nations as a “wedge issue” for political gain ahead of the election.

“I don’t think he can be trusted.”

Rustad led the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation in Christy Clark’s Liberal government, the department was then called Aboriginal Relations,and his statement in February says he signed 435 agreements with First Nations during his tenure as minister.

“Through this economic reconciliation, we saw First Nations communities rise up from impoverished conditions and truly begin to thrive,” the statement says.

Teegee, however, said many of the First Nations leaders who signed agreements during that time would have “plugged their nose and signed them.”

“Some of those First Nations signed them under duress and put that in their agreement themselves. I know my nation did, stating that this wasn’t accommodation,” said Teegee, a member of the Talka Nation in northern B.C. who previously served as tribal chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council.

When asked about criticism of Rustad by other Indigenous leaders, Warbus said it’s “all the more reason to work with him, all the more reason to be directly involved.”

“I feel strongly that Indigenous people need to be inside, involved on the ground, at the legislature level, and that is why I’m doing this,” she added.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2024.

CHRISTINA LAKE, B.C. – The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary says all evacuation orders and alerts have been rescinded after a wildfire began burning close to the community of Christina Lake.

The district says 42 homes located near Brown Road, Caitlin Road and Kensington Place in the community an hour west of Trail had been evacuated.

The district’s social media pages said around 8 p.m., that all alerts and evacuation orders were being cancelled, with the district’s emergency operations centre noting it was on standby shortly after.

Residents in the community were warned of possible low water pressure as fire crews use the available supply to fight the nearby wildfire.

The BC Wildfire Service says the out-of-control blaze near the evacuation zone is located at Spaulding Creek near Highway 3, and the cause is still under investigation.

A notice from the provincial Ministry of Transportation’s DriveBC information system says Highway 3 was closed due to the blaze for a period of time before a single lane was reopened to alternating traffic.

Christina Lake is located about 21 kilometres east of Grand Forks, B.C., where another tactical evacuation took place days earlier due to the spread of the Goosmus wildfire from Washington state.

The evacuation order and alert there have both been lifted after fire crews brought the Goosmus blaze under control.

The service says there are about 185 active wildfires burning in B.C., with only around 19 of them — or roughly 10 per cent of the total — classified as out of control.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2024.

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MONTREAL – Some small Quebec municipalities are considering reducing the size of their city councils due to the challenges of recruiting candidates to run for office.

Quebec recently adopted a rule allowing communities of under 2,000 people to reduce their number of city councillors from six to four after next year’s elections.

The president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités says the rule change has been a “recurrent” request from some towns that have struggled with persistent vacancies on city council or even for mayor.

Jacques Demers says it’s become harder for small towns to recruit candidates due to low salaries, the challenges of the job and a general lack of time and enthusiasm for community involvement.

“When we look at volunteers for leisure, volunteers for culture, volunteers for festivals, for exhibitions, all of this is becoming more and more difficult to recruit people,” he said in a phone interview.

Corina Lupu, mayor of the small community of Lac-des-Seize-Îles in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, says her council will debate the issue at the next meeting before making a decision.

“In small municipalities you don’t have a population of 20,000 to pick from,” she said in a phone interview. “Sometimes you have a population of 1,000 or 500.”

While it’s not an issue in her community, she believes it’s also getting harder to get people to run for office due to the hostile climate elected officials increasingly face.

“Some politicians are rather abused,” she said. “It’s not really a pleasant environment.”

Vacancies are a persistent problem at the municipal level in Quebec. Some 120 mayor and councillor positions went unfilled during the last municipal elections in 2021, while close to 5,000 candidates were elected unopposed.

Both Lupu and Demers say the very low salaries paid to small-town councillors is also a problem.

“In our small communities, municipal involvement is almost volunteer work since many people earn $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 per year for their involvement,” Demers said.

While Lupu says salaries in her community are higher than that, it doesn’t equal much per hour when considering the scope of the job, noting the province has increasingly offloaded responsibilities onto municipalities over time.

“We’re a small municipality, but we still have to fill in all the same paperwork as a large municipality,” she said. “It’s the same bureaucracy, but for less people.”

Chantal Richer, the general director for the 168-person town of Val St-Gilles in the Abitibi region, said her community will consider reducing the size of council.

“It would be easier to find candidates and we could divide the money saved between the four, which would increase their salaries a little more,” said Richer, adding the matter will be discussed at the next council meeting.

The mayors of Barkmere and Lac-Tremblant-Nord, both in the Laurentians, said they felt maintaining a six-person council was better for democracy, despite their small population bases.

“By reducing to four councillors, we could end up with a quorum of three people at council meetings,” Barkmere Mayor Luc Trépanier said in an email. “We do not believe that only three people should decide for an entire municipality.”

Lupu says moving from six to four councillors would allow towns like hers to save some money on salaries, which can be a consideration in places with very small tax bases.

However, she also worries that four-person councils in general could allow strong personalities to dominate and make decisions harder. Despite having fewer than 200 year-round residents, her lakeside community has never had a council vacancy as far as she can remember, and she struggles to imagine council without any of its current members on it.

“I think I’ve gotten a lot of value out of having six councillors, six opinions, six perspectives,” she said.

Municipalities that want to reduce the size of council after the 2025 elections have until the end of December of this year to pass a resolution to that effect. Demers says about 700 municipalities are eligible to make the change, but believes that most will stick with the current six-member-plus mayor format.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29. 2024.