By Jerome Gessaroli, May 12, 2026
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.
Premier David Eby said the ruling could expose the province to significant legal liability and that more than 20 notices of claim or other legal claims against the government had already been amended to incorporate the Gitxaała decision. The consequences may not stop at BC’s borders. Major resource infrastructure of national importance, including pipelines, LNG terminals, and critical mineral projects, depends on approvals in British Columbia. Approval uncertainty in BC can therefore have direct national economic consequences.
After the First Nations Leadership Council warned of “collective resistance” in an open letter to the BC Legislature, the government said it would not introduce suspension or amendment legislation in the spring session.
This is not accountable governance. How much influence over major public decisions now sits outside institutions accountable to voters? The current framework leaves authority, accountability, and decision-making rules unclear.
The province faces a clear task. It must recognize Indigenous rights because those rights already exist under section 35 of the Constitution and have been developed through case law. It must also remain accountable to voters and provide a predictable basis for major economic decisions. The province’s approach does not meet these requirements.
British Columbia should stop trying to fix DRIPA through ad hoc amendments or temporary changes, and build a new system for Indigenous rights, public accountability, and major project approvals from first principles.
DRIPA was meant to guide provincial law and decision-making. Instead, it has made both harder to manage when clarity is most needed.
DRIPA added a broad provincial layer on top of existing constitutional rights. It did not clarify how decisions should be made. It left key issues to future alignment, negotiation, interpretation, and litigation.
The Gitxaała ruling revealed this weakness. In that case, the Gitxaała Nation challenged BC’s mineral claims registration system, arguing it allowed claims to be staked on their territory without meaningful consultation or consideration of Indigenous rights. The BC Court of Appeal agreed, finding that DRIPA is binding law and that the mineral claims system conflicts with it.
That finding puts other statutes and approval systems at risk. First Nations are already using that ruling – citing it in challenges over a mine expansion at Copper Mountain, south of Princeton, BC, a forestry licence on the province’s central coast, and a hydroelectricity dispute south of the popular resort town of Whistler.
The government’s response reflects this uncertainty. It moved from amendment to suspension to retreat. DRIPA and the decision-making system built around it leave basic questions unanswered. It remains unclear which laws are exposed, how quickly they must change, who has final authority in disputes, and how the province should govern in the meantime.
A workable system should reduce uncertainty as rights are recognized. The current model increases it. Any approach that does not define roles, timelines, and decision authority will weaken both public accountability and British Columbia’s competitiveness. Patching DRIPA will not fix this. The province needs a framework grounded in constitutional obligations, democratic accountability, and the conditions required for a competitive economy.
Any replacement must be based on clear first principles.
Rights constrain governments. Governments must answer to those they govern. This governing system must work in practice. A system built from those principles would produce clearer rules and more durable outcomes than one that starts from UNDRIP’s aspirational language and then asks courts, officials, and negotiators to turn it into specific rules for provincial laws, permits, and major project approvals.
That foundation points to three requirements.
First, decision processes must reflect Indigenous rights already recognized by law.
Second, an elected government must retain final responsibility for major public decisions. Indigenous participation can be strong and, in some areas, go beyond consultation. But responsibility for decisions with broad consequences must remain clear.
Third, the system must be predictable. Governments must be able to make and implement decisions. Investors must be able to assess timelines, costs, and approval conditions in advance. Known costs and delays can be assessed and priced. Far harder to price is uncertainty itself: whether delays will arise, how complex the process may become, or what conditions might ultimately be attached to approval. The framework must give investors reasonable ex ante confidence about these factors, not by eliminating burden, but by making it assessable.
These requirements are reconcilable. But the framework must be clear enough to define who decides, how, and when. Without that, the result will continue to be conflict, uncertainty, and policy reversals.
DRIPA’s core weakness is its structure. It starts with a broad international declaration and attempts to align provincial law to it. UNDRIP was not designed as an operating framework for a province. This forces the province to work backward from general principles to specific rules.
A better approach would start from the ground up by requiring meaningful Indigenous participation where those rights apply, maintaining clear public responsibility for major decisions, and creating a process that governments can manage and investors can assess.
It would define roles and decision points early, distinguish between local or rights-specific matters and decisions with broader public impact, and clarify where stronger Indigenous authority applies, where the elected government decides, and how disputes are resolved.
The result would be less uncertainty for governments, Indigenous communities, businesses, and the public about how decisions will be made and who controls them.
The strongest case for DRIPA is that earlier and more structured Indigenous participation may, in some cases, produce more stable outcomes. The Eskay Creek mine is the clearest example. But better outcomes in some cases do not resolve the broader problem. A framework can work in individual cases and still fail as a governing model if it remains too broad, too uncertain, and too weak on accountability.
First Nations must be partners in designing any replacement framework. That includes genuinely engaging with those who regard DRIPA itself as the meaningful expression of their rights and making the case that a clearer, more workable framework can better deliver that recognition. But those negotiations should begin from clear conditions: meaningful recognition of Indigenous rights, preserved democratic accountability, and a system that maintains the province’s economic competitiveness. Without those conditions, the result will either fail to provide stability or fail to gain acceptance.
The province also needs a transition plan. It should not repeal DRIPA in a way that creates legal or administrative gaps. Instead, it should narrow DRIPA’s immediate legal effect to reduce exposure in ongoing cases and keep existing decision processes except where courts have ruled them unlawful. It should then work with First Nations to develop a replacement framework. This would limit disruption and reduce the risk that court rulings, rather than legislation, drive broad changes to provincial law, delaying projects, disrupting approvals, reducing revenues, and weakening investment.
Recognizing Indigenous rights and maintaining clear, accountable governance must be reconciled. The current framework leaves key questions unresolved. Will elected government remain accountable to voters? Can the province sustain a competitive economic environment? These are not only BC’s questions. How Canada manages Indigenous rights within a framework of democratic accountability and economic viability is a national challenge. BC is bringing it to a head. Without clear answers, governance becomes uncertain and investment becomes harder to sustain.
British Columbia needs a replacement framework built for its own conditions – one that is clear about authority, specific about process, and measured by results. Reconciliation and economic performance can align, but not under a system that leaves decisions uncertain and accountability undefined.
Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and leads the Sound Economic Policy Project.
