Our friends at the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) published some important data over the weekend with respect to Indigenous female victims of crime. This is perhaps the most-discussed group of crime victims in recent Canadian history, culminating in the 2019 report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). And yet, the IJB analysis found, their criminal assailants tend to get off easier than when the victim is non-Indigenous.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service acknowledges its past investigating of Indigenous people has left a legacy of mistrust that persists today, but officials at the spy agency say the organization is mending its ways.
That’s the main message two CSIS officials, speaking on the condition they not be identified, impressed on CBC Indigenous during a recent sit-down discussion at the agency’s Ottawa headquarters.
Long gone are the days, they said, of CSIS’s expansive “Native extremism” program, in which CSIS officers labelled Indigenous activists as domestic extremists and potential terrorists in sweeping countrywide investigations.
The University of Toronto’s Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) wants you to think our criminal justice system cares less about victims when they are Indigenous women than when they are white or other non-Indigenous races.
The IJB wants to reinforce the frequently made “progressive” assertion that Canada’s justice system is systemically racist.
Indigenous women and girls are killed at rates six times higher than non-Indigenous women — yet the perpetrators are frequently convicted of lesser offences than those guilty in the deaths of non-Indigenous victims.
In virtually all cases involving Indigenous women, the victim and accused knew each other.
Canada’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations was reprimanded for breaching an Act of Parliament for sealing records on the yet unproven residential school grave claims and has now been ordered to release records.
Recently, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty was mandated to release files it has pertaining to the 2021 claims by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, who said it found graves of 215 children at a former residential school. It has thus far tried to seal “confidential information” records it has on the matter.
In British Columbia, property rights are in turmoil. But not just in B.C.—across Canada, land is susceptible to the threat of Aboriginal rights.
This property upheaval has two distinct sources. The first is Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The second is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). B.C. is particularly susceptible to both, but the rest of the country is not immune from either.
Courts control Section 35. Governments and legislatures control whether UNDRIP applies in their jurisdictions.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was a resolution adopted by the UN in 2007. Canada was still under sane governance at the time and was one of the few UN members that voted against it. Canada shed the pretenses of sanity in 2015 and fully endorsed UNDRIP in 2016. The nation is paying a terrible price for the endorsement today. While UNDRIP is not legally binding, its principles have contributed to the indigenous policy catastrophe Canada is enduring.
(Incognito)
The federal government is not revealing whether it will act on calls to pass a law that would criminalize denying that Indigenous children suffered abuses in Canada’s residential school system.
The issue has bubbled in the background of Canadian politics for several years and gained prominence after several First Nations announced they had located potential unmarked graves at former school sites.
My friend Neil Gabriel, a self-employed, successful tradesman and Mohawk warrior from the Kanesatake Reserve in Oka, Quebec, is humorously skeptical of the claims and exemptions abundantly supplied by our Native populations. Many of these indigenous tribes are committed to challenging national jurisdictions and dismantling the historical structure of the country in a torrent of land-claims and legal negotiations.
Neil is having none of it and puts the matter to rest with a joke that is solidly anchored in reality. “If we want to know what kind of winter we can expect, we look at the white man’s woodpile.”
In September, the British Columbia Supreme Court threw private property into turmoil. Aboriginal title in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, is “prior and senior” to fee simple interests, the court said. That means it trumps the property you have in your house, farm or factory. If the decision holds up on appeal, it would mean private property is not secure anywhere a claim for Aboriginal title is made out.
David Eby’s government in British Columbia is reeling after two recent court decisions put private property rights in jeopardy.
In August, the B.C. Supreme Court’s Cowichan Tribes decision declared that titles to certain properties in the city of Richmond are “defective and invalid.” Adding to Eby’s headache is the Court of Appeal’s ruling in Gitxaala v. British Columbia (Chief Gold Commissioner) , which held that every law and regulation in B.C. must align with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Attend a public event in Canada and you will likely hear it open with a land acknowledgment. In the city of Vancouver, for example, the script might read:
“This place is the unceded and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and has been stewarded by them since time immemorial.”
I’ve been present for many of these recitations, which are common in liberal areas of the United States too. They are usually received by their audiences as a Christian invocation might once have been: a socially required ritual in which only some believe, but at which it would be rude to scoff. After all, what harm does it do?
(David Frum Warning)
An Indigenous group in northern B.C. has attempted to use Aboriginal title to claim the airspace above Crown land, expelling a local helicopter company and B.C. government forestry officials.
The conflict, which occurred over the summer, grew to involve the federal and provincial governments, before Ottawa declared in writing to four B.C. cabinet ministers in a Dec. 12 letter that Aboriginal title cannot be used to restrict any flights in Canadian airspace.
It’s the latest in a series of escalating, and confusing, interpretations of Aboriginal title in British Columbia.
Imagine if we abolished the Indian Act and removed special legal status for indigenous peoples.
Then, treaties were terminated, and federal responsibility for indigenous affairs was transferred to the provinces.
What if we eliminated “Indian Status” and assimilated indigenous peoples into mainstream Canadian society as equal citizens?
RICHMOND, British Columbia—Harry Hogler has a deep attachment to his land. He grew up a farmer, and when he founded a golf course here 30 years ago, his favorite part was moving dirt around what had once been a peat bog.
In October, Hogler received the shock of a lifetime: He is going to have to share ownership of his land.
British Columbia’s Supreme Court had ruled that a group of indigenous tribes, the Cowichan Nation, has a “senior and prior” right to private land on a roughly 730-acre tract in Richmond, including his Country Meadows Golf Course.
The court order could leave private property in 95% of British Columbia vulnerable to claims from indigenous groups that have been seeking to reclaim ownership of land taken from them scores of years ago, said government officials and property lawyers.
