Did Premier David Eby have an ulterior motive in thanking his attorney general?
>VICTORIA — Premier David Eby was quick to credit Attorney General Niki Sharma this week for the last-minute agreement that avoided an imminent showdown with Indigenous leaders over the DRIPA legislation.
>“She came to me and told me that she believed that there was a route to be able to reach an agreement,” Eby told reporters. “I want to thank the attorney general for tapping me on the shoulder and creating the space for this conversation to be able to happen.”
>Eby thus gave welcome credit to Sharma. She has been taking heat from Indigenous leaders for her own role in the plan to amend or suspend the legislation that made provincial laws subject to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
>Some speculated Eby was tagging the attorney general as a preferred successor in the event being premier doesn’t, you know, work out for him much longer.
>Then again, consider the possibility that Eby was simply letting everyone know who to blame if the agreement doesn’t work out.
>The agreement calls for the province and Indigenous leaders to spend the next few months — before the Oct. 5 start of the fall legislature session — discussing the government’s concerns with the legislation.
>Just last week Eby laid out the “significant risks” of putting off action until the fall.
>He says some 20 Indigenous claims against the province have already been amended after a Court of Appeal finding that B.C.’s mineral claims legislation was incompatible with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
>Already, one court decision “directly impacts government’s liability in class actions, another the Freedom of Information Act, and we expect those decisions to start to come with greater frequency,” said the premier.
>“The other challenge is we have statutory decision-makers throughout government in a whole array of fields from the resource world to permitting and licensing. We have to provide instructions to them about the policies and so on that they need to deal with, and how to interpret the legislation that we have charged them to apply when they’re doing their work,” the premier continued.
>“We’re talking about tens of thousands of people across the province that do this work. The enormity of what would be required in order to reposition the public service to avoid significant additional litigation risk is very significant.”
>The prospect is not hypothetical. Already there are reports that decision-making across government is stalled as public servants wrestle with how to reconcile the broad public interest with the UN Declaration.
>Eby: “That’s just a few examples of why we feel a sense of urgency around this, why we think sooner is better than later, and some of what’s informing that, obviously, is there’s not a clear benefit to waiting and there are very significant risks in delaying.”
>So said the premier on April 13.
>When reminded of those concerns this week, he maintained that they had not gone away.
>“Our concerns, my concerns about the legal exposure of the province are serious,” Eby told reporters on Monday. “They need to be addressed. And it’s my hope that we’ll be able to address it through this process with Indigenous leaders.”
>Yet he also acknowledged “there is no guarantee that come fall” they will have reached a permanent agreement to resolve government concerns.
>The caution is warranted. First Nations have conceded nothing regarding the government’s concerns and have threatened to meet any legislative changes with “collective resistance.”
>So a little voice in the back of Eby head may be saying if this doesn’t work out, well it was Sharma’s idea, not his.
>In which case we may have seen her return the non-favour during question period Tuesday.
>B.C. Conservative MLA Peter Milobar asked about the Interpretation Act, the DRIPA-related piece of legislation that said all provincial laws “must” be interpreted as consistent with the UN Declaration.
>Could Sharma explain what the Court of Appeal got wrong in accepting the literal meaning of the word “must” in overturning the province’s mineral claims legislation?
>Sharma replied that the province had laid out its argument in seeking leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. The high court has yet to rule on whether to accept the case.
>However in delivering that businesslike reply, she also managed to slip in that when “we” (meaning the NDP) introduced the Interpretation Act, it was the work of “the premier as attorney general.”
>Perhaps that’s her way of playing the game of shared credit and blame. Eby crafted the legislation that got the province into this mess. All Sharma did was come up with a plan to maybe get the government out of it.
>Meanwhile, amid the finger pointing, the B.C. Conservatives are readying a bill of their own calling for outright repeal of the DRIPA legislation.
>It has no more chance of passing than any other legislation introduced by the Opposition.
>But if further DRIPA-related court action is as imminent as Eby suggested last week, it would allow the Conservatives to say we warned you not to delay.