The financial case for First Nation-first access to BC's parks

British Columbia’s Crown land and parks belong to all the people of BC. This fact—or notion—lies at the centre of some outrage that two busy provincial parks will be closed for several weeks over the summer to allow access to local First Nations for cultural uses.

The idea that “non-Indigenous” people aren’t allowed in certain parks has been called racist by a few people. And when the situation is phrased like that, you can kind of see the complaint.

There are imporant ethical and logistical reasons for these new arrangements. But even for those who want BC to shirk its moral obligations, there are a couple big problems with a reactionary response to temporairly closing parks to the general public.

One is linked to identity. The other is financial. The first is that the matter isn’t about race or identity, at least as most people perceive it. It’s about ownership. The parks aren’t being turned over to people who click “Indigenous” on a census form, but to specific First Nations for their members to use for specific traditional practices. The nations receiving access are those that have a historic (and solid) claim on the land in question.

Which brings us to the other problem with the most reactionary response. It imagines that British Columbia indisputably owns all the land it says it owns.

Now, legally if not morally, that idea is broadly true across much of Canada, where First Nations and the Crown signed treaties regarding the ownership of the land. Those treaties weren’t always signed under fair conditions. But they continue to govern land rights and have generally been accepted as legally binding.

The interpretation of the treaties has shifted, but not the idea that they govern land ownership across the areas in question. Just last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Ontario government had breached its obligations to First Nations that had signed a set of treaties 175 years ago.

British Columbia is different. There are no treaties across the vast majority of the province. It’s why you hear the words “unceded land” so often. Unfortunately, many people still don’t realize what that means—and not just morally.

If one is thinking like an accountant, BC’s land ownership comes with fairly significant liabilities and risk.

Many First Nations continue to engage in protracted land claims talks. In those talks, most are seeking to recoup some sort of compensation for the land unilaterally expropriated by the government more than 100 years ago. And, as we have seen elsewhere, settling those claims comes at a cost.

As it should.

In my non-Indigenous family, lore has it that an ancestor once owned much of Sea Island—which is now home to Vancouver International Airport—but traded it for what amounted to a handful of beans in the form of land in the Cariboo. I can imagine how wealthy my family would have been if my relative hadn’t made that trade.

But BC’s First Nations can’t blame their descendants for trading away their land. Instead, the immensely valuable land they used and owned was indisputably taken from them. And it was taken not by oblivious Europeans who couldn’t imagine having to actually buy land. The treaties across the rest of this country show that Canada’s governments frequently made deals with Indigenous nations to acquire land. But the BC land was just seized and never paid for.

As British Columbians have come to realize that the province forgot to actually ask for the land it took, they have used moral language and arguments to discuss that history. But that moral discussion has obscured the real financial implications of those long-ago expropriations.

On BC’s financial statements, Crown land carries a listed asset value of $1. Calculating the real value—and changes in that value—of the province’s land is almost impossible. But clearly the land isn’t worth just $1. It has actual, immense monetary value. And as land claims proceed and are settled, some of that value will need to go back to the nations from whom the land was taken.

That value can be returned in the form of money. But it can also be shared by collaborating on its use—including providing access.

You can do the math on this. Surely our governments have. If there is a 10% (or 1% or whatever) chance of a court ruling a First Nation deserves to be paid for parkland it once owned, it will be vastly more affordable for BC’s government to grant that First Nation 10% of the use of that park rather than pay out the monetary value of that priceless scenery.

There are important ethical and moral reasons why BC’s provincial governments have returned land to First Nations and worked with them on developments and other projects.

But those ethical concerns don’t persuade everyone in our society. Some people just want to “move on.” That’s much easier said than done when the actual legal ownership of most public land in BC still hasn’t been settled. It’s worth talking not just about this province’s abstract debt to those who once controlled the land, but the real legal and financial implications that are still a matter of debate—and still lurking just off BC’s balance sheet.