(LifeSiteNews) — The Canadian federal government signed three agreements with the Musqueam Indian Band acknowledging Aboriginal rights on a large swath of land that critics say in effect hands control of the entire city of Vancouver to the Band.
The agreements claimed Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) are a major step forward toward reconciliation and incremental implementation of Musqueam’s Aboriginal rights.
The announcement, made February 20 in a statement, agrees to recognize that Musqueam “has Aboriginal rights” on its traditional territories, providing a framework for incremental implementation of rights and nation-to-nation relations with Canada, CIRNAC said.
The second agreement states that the Musqueam First Nation’s knowledge of the area will help it “protect and manage the waters and resources within Musqueam territory.” The third agreement stipulates that the Band and Canada’s government have a “shared decision-making role” regarding local fisheries on the Band’s territories and that the government provide funding.
According to Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty, “Reconciliation is not just words but action — where Musqueam and Canada are working to incrementally implement Musqueam’s Aboriginal rights within their territory.”
Feds did not consult the local provincial government or landowners
British Columbia Premier David Eby said he was not told or briefed about the agreement with the federal government and the Musqueam Band.
Speaking to the media on March 2, he did not address the situation for the millions of legal landowners in the Vancouver area whose land rights may now be in jeopardy.
“I think the lesson that the federal government is learning over the weekend is that there is a heightened environment to these conversations and these agreements right now, and they have to go above and beyond,” he said.
“It’s a lesson that the provincial government is in no position to lecture people on. We’re doing our own work to make sure we’re bringing people along on this as well.”
Conservative Party of British Columbia leader Trevor Halford blasted Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government for making agreements without input from those who actually live on the land.
“Without a word to the nearly two million residents affected, the federal government has formally recognized Musqueam Aboriginal rights and title across Metro Vancouver,” he said March 2 on social media.
“We have seen what happens in the past when these agreements are done in secret, behind closed doors. It creates confusion, uncertainty, and division in BC.”
The Musqueam Indian Band says the agreement gives it a claim over the entire Vancouver area, including West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, New Westminster, Delta, as well as Surrey, the University of British Columbia Endowment Lands, and the land Vancouver International Airport is on.
The Musqueam Indian Band made other agreements last year with the federal government that in essence gives it full autonomy to govern, yet it still gets money from the federal government.
There are many other similar legal battles taking place in British Columbia that, unlike the rest of Canada, has no official treaties in place with local Indigenous peoples but only agreements without legal clarity.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, a recent court ruling in British Columbia affecting property rights, Cowichan Tribes v. Canada (Attorney General), saw the provincial Supreme Court rule that decades-long land grants by the government were not valid and violated a land title held by the tribes.
The ruling affects the area of Richmond, which is a large suburb of Vancouver.
Also, as recently reported by LifeSiteNews, mayor Brad West of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, said he will defend the property rights of residents in light of a recent court ruling that gave a portion of a municipality to aboriginals via a title claim they won in court.
“We have, and will continue to, vigorously defend public ownership of these lands, along with private property rights in our jurisdiction,” he said.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, John Carpay, founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), noted the court “told the people (of various ethnicities) who live in some parts of Richmond, B.C., that the money they paid for their own properties does not guarantee them the right to own and enjoy their own homes.”
When it comes to indigenous relations in Canada, it seems the trend with the current federal government is to capitulate, causing issues affecting everyday Canadians, most of whom were born on Canadian soil.
In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the k’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation recently admitted that its quest to find graves of hundreds of children on the site of former residential schools, which sparked massive arson attacks on Catholic churches across Canada, has come up empty.
However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.
In 2024, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of indigenous children.
