On Dec. 3, the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-15 into Parliament to bring the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into Canadian law. It sounds like a great idea: why not have Canada join 147 other countries in adopting the UN’s minimum standards for recognizing the rights of Indigenous peoples. But it’s not a great idea. For Canada, UNDRIP is a step backwards. Its introduction into Canadian law is likely to cause costly legal confusion in return for no real benefit to Indigenous peoples or anyone else except maybe lawyers.
