DRIPA’s problem is not its goal. It is its design: Jerome Gessaroli for Inside Policy – MLI
May 12, 2026
A workable system should reduce uncertainty as rights are recognized. The current model increases it.
Within weeks, British Columbia’s government moved from considering amendments to DRIPA, to proposing a suspension of key provisions, to dropping legislation for the spring session. That sequence exposes a deeper problem in how the province makes major public decisions.
DRIPA – the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act – is BC’s law to align provincial legislation with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Ottawa has enacted similar federal legislation, though it has not produced the same immediate legal exposure. But BC is where the immediate governance problem is now most visible. The Gitxaała court decision has already turned DRIPA from a broad alignment statute into a live challenge to existing provincial approval systems.
