May 1, 2026
It looked initially like exactly what the NDP government needed—a good news story on the Indigenous relations front.
There’s been increasing anxiety for eight months about the importance of two major court decisions.
One asserted that First Nations title supersedes existing property rights in some cases. The other declared the provincial mineral claim regime is invalid because it doesn’t align with the NDP’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
The enormous ramifications of those rulings moved the reconciliation initiative outside many people’s comfort level.