Re: Caribou Recovery Enguagement
Premier does damage control after 'clumsy' work on caribou rescue plan
VICTORIA — While Premier John Horgan deserves credit for intervening to rescue his caribou rescue plan, the NDP government’s clumsy handling of it damaged community relations in northeastern B.C.
So says Blair Lekstrom, the special envoy recruited by Horgan after belated public consultations went off the rails earlier this month.
“I don’t think that this file has been handled very well from the beginning,” said Lekstrom, citing how provincial and federal officials consulted with First Nations for 1½ years while excluding local government and community leaders.
“I imagine they thought they were doing the right thing for 18 months,” said the former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister, now a councillor in Dawson Creek. “But to have those discussions, without input from the local communities that are directly impacted by this, was a mistake.”
“This has set the relationship back, in my mind, 20 to 40 years,” Lekstrom told host Shane Woodford on radio CHNL in Kamloops. “There’s things being said now that you wouldn’t have ever expected to hear.
“But when people are concerned about their livelihood — and the possibility that they could lose their job over something like this — and have never been consulted, a lot of things happen in their mind.”
Echoing Lekstrom’s concerns about “things being said,” were leaders of the two First Nations involved in those secrecy-laden consultations — Chiefs Roland Willson of the West Moberly First Nations and Ken Cameron of the Saulteau First Nations.
“We denounce racism in every form,” they said in a statement following the premier’s April 15 naming of Lekstrom to oversee a month-long extension on the consultations.
“That includes ‘dog whistle’ statements in social media posts that promote stereotypes or invite others to imagine that there are some concealed motives lurking behind these agreements.
“We welcome the extra time to dispel myths about the agreements,” they continued. “We also appreciate hearing Premier Horgan say that the provincial government denounces the racist comments and conspiracy theories that have been circulating.”
In a followup interview with CBC Radio, Willson told how misplaced suspicions translated into an ugly backlash against Indigenous people.
“There’s Facebook pages popping up with ‘drunk Indians, it’s them that are shooting all the caribou’; ‘All they want is a land grab,’” he told host Sarah Penton. “It’s getting out of hand. People are getting scared to go into town and go shopping.”
Horgan, for his part, expressed regret things had gotten so far out of hand. He took the blame (“my bad”) for excluding local government and community leaders for many months.
“Why I decided to bring Blair in to help me, is that this is clearly an issue that has enraged some people and inflamed passions,” he told reporters in announcing the Lekstrom appointment in Dawson Creek.
“But it wasn’t about exclusion, it was about our constitutional obligations with respect to the Indigenous peoples,” he emphasized.
The premier is right about the obligation to consult and accommodate First Nations, which is imposed by the courts and reinforced by his endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
But as Horgan himself admitted, the government put First Nations leaders in a vulnerable position by involving them in 18 months of closed negotiations, all the while swearing them to secrecy.
“I also want to say, with respect to Chief Cameron and Chief Willson, we had non-disclosure agreements because of some of the sensitive material in question, so they were impaired in their ability to talk to the public.”
When the caribou rescue plan for the northeast was finally released to the public late last month, Willson and Cameron underscored that it was only a draft and subject to revision.
Nor, despite widespread public speculation, did it dictate extensive closures of the back country or the loss of hundreds of forestry jobs.
But not helping allay public suspicions was a rush-job round of consultations, a mere month in total, presided over by provincial officials.
They were unable to address the burning political questions about the long delay in involving the public and whether the belated consultations were themselves a sham.
“We, as a new government, didn’t do enough work to prepare the public for this process,” admitted Horgan in his April 15 confessional.
“We had a constitutional obligation to engage with Saulteau and West Moberly and we did that. We also had a public obligation to weigh in with the community, and that is now going to happen with Blair’s leadership, and the representatives on the regional district, who we met with today.
“We’ve certainly learned a good lesson from this process,” added the premier.
If taken to heart by the New Democrats, that would be good news for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.
Horgan’s endorsement of UNDRIP dates back 2½ years and has been included in the mandate letters for every one of his ministers. The government is now drafting legislation to incorporate the 46 UNDRIP principles into all provincial laws, regulations and policies.
But every time I write about the issue, I’m struck by how little the New Democrats have done publicly to explain their embrace of UNDRIP and address the implications for public policy.
Unless they do a lot more, I doubt this will be the last time the premier has to ride to the rescue of his own government on its dealings with First Nations.
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/col...ou-rescue-plan
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Originally Posted by 338win mag
