“Aboriginal Fatigue”

Within the tangle of Indigenous rights holding down the Canadian economy is Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution — the Indigenous rights guarantee. It’s the country’s very own Gordian Knot, and that’s why it was such a good sign that Premier Danielle Smith is willing to split it.

“If there’s an appetite among the other premiers to talk about defining that ever further through some kind of constitutional amendment, I’m open to having that conversation,” Smith told reporters at a Friday news conference. She added that the conversation could start as early as this week.

OTTAWA — A majority of the House of Commons voted against a non-binding motion on Monday that called on the federal government to protect private property from First Nations land claims — a political issue the Crown-Indigenous Relations minister has said is rife with partisan rhetoric.

The motion stems from a 2025 B.C. Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the Cowichan Tribes hold Aboriginal title over about 300 hectares of land in Richmond, B.C.

The ruling led to questions about how Aboriginal title and private property rights can coexist.

Another “Conservatives seized”

Remember when the chief of police said “leave your car keys by the front door..”
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u/Quietlyrightt in
canadian

The agreement between the federal government and Premier Danielle Smith’s government in Alberta—a series of undertakings including the construction of an oil export pipeline to the North Pacific Coast—is a great step forward, though it is lumbered with some excessive green baggage. The more recent decision of an Alberta court that the province cannot respond to a petition from hundreds of thousands of its citizens fulfilling existing legal conditions to hold a referendum on the issue of independence, is a timely demonstration of the congestive breakdown of Canadian federalism.

One unhappy First Nation makes headlines.

Canadians broadly support reconciliation with First Nations. As Prime Minister Mark Carney often reminds us, we accept the constitutional duty to consult on large-scale nation-building projects — oil and gas pipelines, new mines, and port expansions. But a troubling pattern is spreading: a single First Nation’s objection to more mundane local decisions — usually framed around inadequate consultation or cumulative environmental impacts — now lands in small-town newspaper headlines and can delay or kill modest community projects.

BC Parks plans to close Joffre Lakes Park to the public for a week this summer and for 23 days this fall to allow local First Nations the opportunity to “connect with the land.”

Similar closures have been carried out over the past few years, cutting off public access to the hiking trails and lake areas at the southwestern B.C. park 35 kilometres east of Pemberton.

‘Colonial thinking’: Inuit criticize backlash to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon’s brand of bilingualism

Crystal Martin says it was “emotional” when she and her daughter watched Mary Simon be sworn in as Governor General in 2021.

“For me, it was this moment of she can see herself in that role if she wanted to,” Martin, an Inuk advocate, said. “[Simon] being in this role has really opened up a lot of imagination for Indigenous youth and children across Canada.”

British Columbia’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) is encroaching on the democratic rights of British Columbians.

DRIPA, as developed by the provincial NDP government and defended by the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC), has gone beyond the process of consultation required under Canadian law. Now, it has become a vessel for co-governance between First Nations and the provincial government.

Childcare authorities were called on Lara Yates, a mother-of-four, after she dared to heckle a land acknowledgement at a school in British Columbia, says her lawyer.

Land acknowledgements are tedious political theatre and pompous virtue signalling and weaponizing social services to persecute those who refuse to adhere to this zealotry smacks of the Inquisition.

In August 2025, after one of the longest trials in Canadian history, Justice Barbara Young of the British Columbia Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling declaring that the Cowichan Tribes hold “Aboriginal title” to 800 acres of land in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond.

The 800 acres includes government land and 150 “fee simple” properties, the most common form of residential land ownership in Canada. In other words, people’s homes and businesses.