Twenty years ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted the draft text of a document known as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—widely known by its (unfortunate) acronym, UNDRIP. Like many utopian UN manifestos of this type, it set forth a catalogue of aspirational principles that were easy to applaud but difficult to implement.

Article 19, for instance, instructs signatory states to “consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples” to obtain their “free, prior, and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.” Since pretty much any law on the books “may affect” anyone, UNDRIP effectively gives Indigenous communities veto power over everything government does—right down to setting and enforcing speed limits.

This is why Canada opposed UNDRIP when it was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2007, noting that this language is “overly broad, unclear, and capable of a wide variety of interpretations, discounting the need to recognize a range of rights over land and possibly putting into question matters that have been settled by treaty.”

The three other dissenters at the UN that day were New Zealand, the United States, and Australia, all democracies that have their own large Indigenous populations. Even Justin Trudeau, who had difficulty saying no to any Indigenous demand during his tenure as Canadian PM, balked at implementing UNDRIP. His Justice Minister at the time, an Indigenous woman named Jody Wilson-Raybould, bluntly told First Nations leaders that the idea was “unworkable,” in part because it would require Canada to “rip up” laws that had been around since the nineteenth century.

None of this deterred the provincial government of British Columbia, however. On 24 October 2019, B.C.’s left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) enacted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act—known by the (equally unfortunate) acronym “DRIPA”—requiring the government to take “all necessary measures” to ensure its laws are consistent with UNDRIP. British Columbia thereby became the first jurisdiction that not only endorsed UNDRIP in the abstract (as Trudeau and other national leaders had done) but actually cemented its guarantees into law. In 2021, the province added a further legislative amendment explicitly requiring that “every Act and regulation must be construed as being consistent with UNDRIP.” 

Behind the scenes, then-Premier John Horgan and his cabinet were telling legislators that the law would simply ensure that B.C. took advice and guidance from Indigenous groups. But as judges would (predictably) conclude, that’s absolutely not what the law says.