Conversations That Matter: Living with UNDRIP
Credit to Author: Massey Padgham| Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 15:00:53 +0000
Last year, the province brought in legislation to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, also known as UNDRIP. The stated purpose is to ensure that all laws in B.C. conform to this convention affirming the rights of Indigenous peoples.
The law passed unanimously with a caveat, that being concerns voiced by Ellis Ross, the Liberal MLA for Skeena and a former chief counsellor for the Haisla First Nation. He questioned the meaning of the declaration’s guarantee of “free, prior and informed consent” to First Nations over land and resource development within their traditional territories and the need to introduce the legislation.
Ross asked, “If there are two parties at the table (First Nations and the Crown), and the First Nation doesn’t agree, what happens? … Does the Crown still go ahead and make a decision based on the interests of B.C. as a whole? Or do they just withhold their decision? Making no decision is still a decision.”
Ross went on to ask, “Isn’t that a form of veto?”
We invited Ross to join us for a Conversation That Matters about UNDRIP, what it means, its implications and the path forward. This is the first in a series of more than 10 conversations that we recorded at the “Finding a Path to Shared Prosperity Conference” in mid-January that you can find on the Conversations That Matter YouTube channel.
Conversations That Matter is a partner program for the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. The production of this program is made possible thanks to the support of the following and viewers like you. Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge here.