From Resource Works

Gitxaala has changed all the ground rules in British Columbia reshaping the risks around mills, mines and the North Coast transmission push.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal’s decision in Gitxaala v. British Columbia (Chief Gold Commissioner) is poised to reshape how the province approves and defends major resource projects, from mills and mines to new transmission lines.

In a split ruling on 5 December, the court held that British Columbia’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act makes consistency with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples a question courts can answer. The majority went further, saying UNDRIP now operates as a general interpretive aid across provincial law and declaring the Mineral Tenure Act’s automatic online staking regime inconsistent with article 32(2).

University of Saskatchewan law professor Dwight Newman, who has closely followed the case, says the majority has stretched what legislators thought they were doing when they passed the statute. He argues that section 2 of British Columbia’s UNDRIP law, drafted as a purpose clause, has been turned from guidance for reading that Act into a tool for reading all provincial laws, shifting decisions that were meant for cabinet and the legislature toward the courts.

The decision lands in a province already coping with legal volatility on land rights. In August, the Cowichan Tribes title ruling raised questions about the security of fee simple ownership in parts of Richmond, with critics warning that what used to be “indefeasible” private title may now be subject to senior Aboriginal claims. Newman has called the resulting mix of political pressure, investor hesitation and homeowner anxiety a “bubbling crisis” that governments have been slow to confront.

Gitxaala’s implications reach well beyond mining. Forestry communities are absorbing another wave of closures, including the looming shutdown of West Fraser’s 100 Mile House mill amid tight fibre and softwood duties. Industry leaders have urged Ottawa to treat lumber with the same urgency as steel and energy, warning that high duties are squeezing companies and towns, while new Forests Minister Ravi Parmar promises to restore prosperity in mill communities and honour British Columbia’s commitments on UNDRIP and biodiversity, as environmental groups press the government over pellet exports and protection of old growth.

At the same time, Premier David Eby is staking his “Look West” agenda on unlocking about two hundred billion dollars in new investment by 2035, including a shift of trade toward Asia. A centrepiece is the North Coast Transmission Line, a grid expansion from Prince George to Bob Quinn Lake that the government wants to fast track to power new mines, ports, liquefied natural gas facilities and data centres. Even as Eby dismisses a proposed Alberta to tidewater oil pipeline advanced under a new Alberta memorandum as a distraction, Gitxaala means major energy corridors will also be judged against UNDRIP in court.

Supporters of the ruling say that clarity is overdue. Indigenous nations and human rights advocates who backed the appeal have long argued that governments sold UNDRIP legislation as more than symbolism, and that giving it judicial teeth will front load consultation, encourage genuine consent based agreements and reduce the risk of late stage legal battles that can derail projects after years of planning.

Critics are more cautious. They worry that open ended declarations about inconsistency with UNDRIP will invite strategic litigation, create uncertainty around existing approvals and tempt courts into policy making by another name, potentially prompting legislatures to revisit UNDRIP statutes altogether. For now, the judgment leaves British Columbia with fewer excuses: the province has built its growth plans around big, nation building projects and reconciliation framed as partnership with Indigenous nations, and Gitxaala confirms that those partnerships now have a hard legal edge that will shape the next decade of policy and investment.

Resource Works News

From the Fraser Institute

By Tom Flanagan

The new book Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong is a follow-up to Grave Error, published by True North in 2023. Grave Error instantly became a best-seller. People wanted to read the book because it contained well-documented information not readily available elsewhere concerning the history of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) and the facts surrounding recent claims about “unmarked graves.”

Why another book? Because the struggle for accurate information continues. Let me share with you a little of what’s in Dead Wrong.

Outrageously, the New York Times, one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers, has never retracted its absurd headline that “mass graves” were uncovered in Kamloops, British Columbia. Jonathan Kay, the North American editor of Quillette, exposes that scandal.

The legacy media were enthused about the so-called documentary Sugarcane, a feature-length film sponsored by National Geographic, which was nominated for an Academy Award. The only reporter to spot the dozens of factual errors in Sugarcane was independent journalist Michelle Stirling; Dead Wrong includes her analysis “The Bitter Roots of Sugarcane.”

In the spring of 2024, the small city of Quesnel, B.C., made national news when the mayor’s wife bought 10 copies of Grave Error for distribution to friends. After noisy protests held by people who had never read the book, Quesnel city council voted to censure Mayor Ron Paull and tried to force him from office. It’s all described in Dead Wrong.

Also not to be forgotten is how the Law Society of B.C. forced upon its members training materials asserting against all evidence that children’s remains have been discovered in Kamloops. As told by James Pew, B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie was expelled from the Conservative caucus for daring to point out the emperor’s lack of clothing.

Then there’s the story of Jim McMurtry, suspended by the Abbotsford District School Board shortly after the 2021 Kamloops announcement about “unmarked graves.” McMurtry’s offence was to tell students the truth that, while some Indigenous students did die in residential schools, the main cause was tuberculosis. His own book The Scarlet Lesson is excerpted here.

Historian Ian Gentles and former IRS teacher Pim Wiebel offer a richly detailed analysis of health and medical conditions in the schools. They show that these were much better than what prevailed in the Indian reserves from which most students came.

Another important contribution to understanding the medical issues is by Dr. Eric Schloss, narrating the history of the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton. IRS facilities usually included small clinics, but students with serious problems were often transferred to Indian Hospitals for more intensive care. Schloss, who worked in the Camsell, describes how it delivered state-of-the-art medicine, probably better than the care available to most children anywhere in Canada at the time.

Rodney Clifton’s contribution, “They would call me a ‘Denier,’” describes his experiences working in two IRS in the 1960s. Clifton does not tell stories of hunger, brutal punishment and suppression of Indigenous culture, but of games, laughter and trying to learn native languages from his Indian and Inuit charges.

Toronto lawyer and historian Greg Piasetzki explains how “Canada Wanted to Close All Residential Schools in the 1940s. Here’s why it couldn’t.” For many Indian parents, particularly single parents and/or those with large numbers of children, the IRS were the best deal available. And they offered paid employment to large numbers of Indians as cooks, janitors, farmers, health-care workers, and even teachers and principals.

Finally, Frances Widdowson analyzes the charge of residential school “denialism” used by true believers in the Kamloops narrative to shut down criticism or questions. Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan in 2022 persuaded the House of Commons to give unanimous consent to a resolution on residential school genocide: “That, in the opinion of the House this government must recognize what happened in Canada’s Indian residential schools as genocide.”

In 2024, Gazan took the next step by introducing a private member’s bill to criminalize dissent about the IRS system. The bill failed to pass, but Gazan reintroduced it in 2025. Had these provisions been in force back in 2021, it might well have become a crime to point out that the Kamloops ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey had identified soil anomalies, not buried bodies.

While the wheels of legislation and litigation grind and spin, those who wish to limit open discussion of residential schools attack truth-tellers as “denialists,” a term drawn from earlier debates about the Holocaust. As the proponents of the Kamloops narrative fail to provide convincing hard evidence for it, they hope to mobilize the authority of the state to stamp out dissent. One of the main goals of publishing Dead Wrong is to head off this drive toward authoritarianism.

Happily, Dead Wrong, like Grave Error, has already become an Amazon best-seller. The struggle for truth continues.