Judith Sayers and Ben Parfitt

Judith Sayers holds the Visiting National Aboriginal Economic Development Chair at the University of Victoria. She served as Chief of the Hupacasath First Nation in Port Alberni for 14 years. Ben Parfitt is resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of True Partners: Charting a New Deal for BC, First Nations and the Forests We Share.

BC forest bill shafts First Nations, small communities

Feb 202013
 
 Canadian politics
Natives in forest.

Perpetual Tree Farm Licences in effect privatize land still under land claims negotiation.

by Judith Sayers and Ben Parfitt
 
It wasn’t so long ago that the British Columbia government was investing lots of political capital in striking a more productive “new relationship” with First Nations.
 
Which makes it all the more disturbing that in the midst of the very short upcoming legislative session the provincial government intends to introduce a bill that could result in the single largest giveaway of public forestlands in our history — a bill that would unnecessarily drive up the costs of resolving outstanding aboriginal rights and title issues to the financial detriment of all British Columbians.
 
This most decidedly is not what British Columbians deserve on the eve of a provincial election.

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