Opposition MLA Mike de Jong asked the right questions during key debates, but the NDP stonewalled him
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VICTORIA — B.C.’s decision to merge its laws with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was a shot-in-the-dark experiment from the outset, according to then-premier John Horgan.
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Horgan was leader of the NDP Opposition in 2016 when Indigenous leaders Stewart Phillip, Terry Teegee and others persuaded him that UNDRIP was the way to go.
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“I told them I was a big champion of treaties,” wrote Horgan in the posthumous memoir published last year. “They said ‘well you’re a real dummy because treaties are not working for us.’”
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The UN Declaration was not an easy sell with the NDP caucus, says Horgan. Eventually he carried the day: “I said the only thing that will work with Indigenous people is changing what we’ve been doing up to now because that hasn’t got us where we need to go.”
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The result was a promise to implement UNDRIP, issued a few months before the 2017 provincial election.
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It was far from the deciding issue in an election fought on the accumulated baggage of 16 years of B.C. Liberal government. Nor could the New Democrats, taking power in partnership with the Greens, claim much of a mandate.
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Still, in their second year of government, they introduced the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) to incorporate the UN Declaration into B.C. law.
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“It wasn’t something we simply pulled out of a hat,” wrote Horgan. “This was a collaborative process with the Assembly of First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the First Nations Leadership Council.”
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The unique collaboration led to a telling exchange during the November 2019 DRIPA debate between B.C. Liberal critic Mike de Jong and NDP Indigenous Relations Minister Scott Fraser.
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De Jong, a former attorney general, wanted to know how the final text of the bill came about. Was it vetted by legislative counsel in the attorney general’s ministry?
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“Yes,” Fraser confirmed, in-house counsel had reviewed the bill as well.
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Then, drawing on his own experience of the role of legislative counsel, de Jong asked two followup questions.
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“Was the bill red-tagged? Was it yellow-tagged?”
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A red tag would mean that legislative counsel had deep concerns about a particular passage. A yellow tag would mean a lesser, but still significant, concern.
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Fraser balked at both questions.
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“Solicitor-client privilege prevents me from being able to answer,” he said.
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It left open the possibility that the government lawyers did have concerns about a bill that was to some degree drafted and imposed from outside.
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Whatever reservations de Jong may have had about the non-answer, he and his B.C. Liberal colleagues decided to give DRIPA a chance. It passed unanimously.
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Two years later, de Jong was back in the legislative fray. The New Democrats, guided again by Indigenous leaders, amended the Interpretation Act to say that all provincial laws “must” be interpreted as consistent with the UN Declaration.
