David Eby confident Indigenous MLAs will vote to pause B.C’s DRIPA legislation

British Columbia Premier David Eby says he’s sure his government will retain the legislature’s confidence and pass his plan to suspend sections of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act that he says pose a legal peril.

The B.C. NDP holds a single-seat majority in the legislature, but Eby has told an unrelated press conference in Kelowna, B.C., that his caucus is “strong and united” about the need to pause the legislation known as DRIPA for up to three years.

Some First Nations leaders have condemned the plan, and Eby says the issue is “incredibly challenging” for the three Indigenous MLAs in his government.

But he says they understand the “very serious litigation risk” flowing from the so-called Gitxaala ruling last year, that says DRIPA should be “properly interpreted” to incorporate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into B.C. laws, with immediate legal effect.”

Robert Phillips of the First Nations Summit has called on the Indigenous members of Eby’s caucus to either stand down or vote against the pause.

One of those MLAs is Joan Phillip, whose husband, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, has said that Eby’s efforts to change DRIPA represent an “absolute betrayal” of the “evolving relationship” with the NDP over the last decade.

Eby last week backed away from a plan to amend DRIPA and now says the suspension to give time for the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an appeal on the Gitxaala case is the “least invasive” way of mitigating the ruling’s impact.