LP_468x60
ontario news watch
on-the-record-468x60-white
and-another-thing-468x60

The province will impose a $90 annual access fee for Kananaskis following a surge in vehicle traffic. Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

Many Calgarians think of Kananaskis Country as their backyard. Starting June 1, it will be more like a city street, with scanner vehicles checking plates and issuing parking tickets.

ParkPlus in the mountains. There is no escape.

The park that the late PC premier Peter Lougheed created in 1978 has always been free to users. Calgarians have boundless affection for this magnificent area.

Now, we have to pay — starting June 1, $15 for a day pass and $90 for a full year.

The UCP could stir up more annoyance, maybe, by selling passes to dig up coal.

There is a serious problem in Kananaskis Country. Up to 5.4 million individual human visits were recorded in 2020, an incoming eruption of families and individuals fleeing COVID-19 for a breath of natural beauty.

That total is one million higher than the entire population of Alberta. It’s also roughly one million more than visits to Banff National Park in 2020.

The hordes weren’t all there at once, obviously, but it’s still an astonishing and unsustainable invasion.

The cars and pickups and campers clogged the roads and parking lots. Many a partier’s cup overflowed, and so did their garbage. What a mess.

Mountain rescues were more frequent than ever before — and expensive.

So, the UCP decided to cut down the traffic and raise money for improvements by imposing user fees.

Related

The NDP immediately pointed out that the Kenney government has effectively raised fees for tuition, utilities, school supplies, camping and much more. “One more betrayal,” said Calgary MLA Joe Ceci.

Visitors will buy day passes or annual passes online. If they whistle through the park without stopping, no pass is required.

But if a person stops to stare at the awesome views, the scanners will be prowling. A ticket could still be avoided by purchasing a pass before midnight the same day.

The $15 day pass allows registration of two plate numbers. Same for a $90 yearly pass.

This would allow visits by two sizable families travelling in convoy. On a per-capita basis, it’s not onerous.

But Environment Minister Jason Nixon pushes his case when he says this pass system is cheaper than Parks Canada admission, which costs about $140 a year for two individuals.

Those passes will get you into 80 national parks from one end of the country to the other. The new provincial pass only applies to Kananaskis.

There is a way to make the comparison more accurate. Just require the pass for entry to all Alberta provincial parks (Fish Creek?). Don’t imagine they haven’t thought of that.

The NDP pointed out that the fees are unfair to low-income people. The UCP said there will be assistance but they’re still working on how to do it.

“Free days” were mentioned. AISH recipients will be exempt from fees. Apart from that, it’s vague.

 The province will impose a $90 annual access fee for Kananaskis following a surge in vehicle traffic. Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

Surprisingly, the province is happy to have 5.4 million people visit the park every year. Nixon said he’d welcome even more.

Vehicles are the real problem. There were 2.1 million vehicle visits last year. The target is to cut the count by as much as 500,000.

But the two goals — more people, fewer vehicles — don’t quite mesh.

Imagine 5.4 million people arriving in half a million fewer vehicles. Now picture a thousand clowns hanging out of Volkswagens.

What this provincial fee will do, I suspect, is cut vehicle traffic by diverting some people to other provincial parks.

The overflow parks will get more crowded. Eventually, that will give the province its reason to expand the pass system.

Nixon said it has cost $107 million over five years to run the Kananaskis area. Money is needed for major improvements and more staff.

Maybe so. But for a Calgarian used to Kananaskis as Lougheed saw it in the 1970s, it’s like taxing air.

Don Braid's column appears regularly in the Herald

dbraid@postmedia.com

Twitter:

@DonBraid

Facebook:

Don Braid Politics


We have created a new newsletter that is so much more than a list of today’s top stories. The Noon News Roundup is a succinct midday wrap written by our team of Calgary journalists to inform and entertain you. It’s an easy way to stay on top of the stories that impact your life. 

Click here to subscribe.


The Liberal government’s controversial new amendment to its broadcasting bill that would open up user-generated content on social media platforms to government regulation could find support among some opposition parties.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday he was open to supporting the bill with the new amendment, which critics have said amounts to an attack on free expression rights.

“We will take a close look at the amendments and a close look at the bill before giving our final position,” he said, adding that the NDP supports measures to target online hate. Those measures will actually be tackled in a separate bill, which is set to be introduced by the government soon.

The party’s deputy critic for heritage, Heather McPherson, said in a follow-up email statement that the party’s priority is to “level the playing field between the web giants and Canadian companies.” She added that the “NDP will always stand up for freedom of expression and we will ensure as this bill goes forward that the government presents a strong plan to defend it in the context of the new law.”

The aim of Bill C-10 is to strengthen the Canadian content system by ensuring the CRTC can force online streamers like Netflix to make financial contributions and follow other rules around CanCon, such as making sure a certain amount of Canadian movies and TV shows are offered to viewers. It’s a piece of a multi-pronged strategy by the Liberal government to impose new rules on Big Tech and other online services.

On Friday at the Heritage committee, the government moved to remove a section of the bill that would have exempted social media content from regulation. The removal of that section means user-generated video content on platforms like YouTube can be regulated by the CRTC, though individual users themselves won’t be subject to regulation.

But experts said Monday the fact that government would have control over content posted by Canadians still amounts to an attack on freedom of expression, even if individual Canadians don’t have to report to the CRTC.

That distinction was enough for the Bloc Quebecois. Heritage critic Martin Champoux said in a French-language statement that the party would strongly oppose the bill if it believed it infringed free expression, but that it was satisfied with an amendment exempting “users like you and me” from regulation.

The Conservatives grilled Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault on the amendment in question period Tuesday. Asked by Conservative heritage critic Alain Rayes why the government would want to “attack the freedoms of Internet users on social networks,” Guilbeault pointed out Rayes himself criticized the bill in November for not initially including social media in its scope.

A spokesperson for the Conservatives said Tuesday the party opposes the amendment, and would vote against the bill even if it’s “compromise” amendment to regulate content posted by big film studios or large streamers on social media sites passes. The spokesperson said that amendment would have exempted the “content of the overwhelming majority of social media site users who post on social media sites like YouTube.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, said the amendment on Friday and a followup one Monday to extend regulation to apps took the company by surprise.

“Like many, we were surprised to see the Heritage Committee extend Bill C-10 to include social media and user-upload services and apps. This potentially extends CRTC regulation to all audio and audio-visual content on the internet, which has profound implications for not just social media, but virtually all websites, podcasting, online hosting and much more,” the company said in an emailed statement.

“We remain concerned about the unintended consequences, particularly with regards to the potential effects on Canadians’ expressive rights.”

The amendment to allow the CRTC to regulate social media content wasn’t panned by everyone. A coalition representing the cultural sector, including associations representing the music, TV and film industries said its members were in favour.

The Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions said in an email it “welcomes the rejection of section 4.1 of Bill C-10, which would have excluded social media from the scope of the Act.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Bernhard, executive director of the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said in an interview the concerns about the impact of the amendment on free expression were overblown.

He pointed out the CRTC always regulated broadcasters, which includes broadcast news, and it hasn’t acted as a censor of news outlets. “I do not believe that anybody has ever said that the CRTC’s control over the broadcasting system, for example, has stifled free speech, or reduced the spread of certain perspectives or anything like that,” Bernhard said.


Public Safety Minister Bill Blair has faced criticism for downplaying the role international travel plays in Canada's COVID-19 cases.

Nobody should underestimate the difficulty of governing a country like Canada. Contrary to popular belief, our political leaders are not idiots — at least many of them are not. But they face competing interests that often makes inertia the path of least resistance.

In the case of Canada’s border policy during the pandemic, the federal government is under pressure to relax restrictions from businesses and returning Canadians insisting on their Charter mobility rights. A group of Snowbirds lost a case in Federal Court this week that argued being forced to stay in a quarantine hotel would cause “devastating, emotional, relational and spiritual harm,” a sentiment that will find favour with anyone who has endured an airport hotel breakfast. But no one denies their right of return.

At the same time, as varieties of concern have proliferated, there have been competing demands to tighten borders, a call Ottawa has done its best to ignore by pointing to data that suggest the risk from travel is low. To do otherwise would be to concede that it failed to protect Canadians with an effective border shield early in the pandemic. When other countries like Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam closed their borders, Canadian cabinet ministers argued that such moves were counter-productive and laid out the welcome mat. Having made such a catastrophic error, policy has been designed to cover the government’s tracks.

Bill Blair, the public safety minister, said on Twitter that international travel is responsible for less than two per cent of COVID cases, a statistic taken from the Public Health Agency of Canada, which concedes that its numbers “underestimate” the spread of the virus by returning travellers.

The statement was a lightning rod for criticism, satirized by one online wit, who pointed out that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand accounted for less than one per cent of all shots fired in the First World War.

But there is a serious side to having fun with numbers. Winston Bharat, a Toronto-area doctor, offered a stark example of why the government’s data cannot be trusted, based on the deaths of 70 residents at the Roberta Place long-term care facility in Barrie, Ont., last January.

An employee at the facility contracted the U.K. variant from a returning traveller who was quarantining in the same household. It quickly spread through the residence, infecting 220 people and killing 70 residents and one caregiver. Tragically, Roberta Place’s allotment of Moderna vaccine was diverted at the last minute to other care homes before it could be administered.

When the cases were classified by the local health unit, few, if any, were designated as being travel-related (Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit noted 3,430 COVID cases between Dec. 20, 2020, and Feb. 28, only 48 of which were travel-related. Of the 48, only eight were from the 50-plus age group).

This makes a nonsense of the idea that Canada has reliable information on which to base border policy decisions. The Public Health Agency admits that not all jurisdictions report exposure history — hence its concession that cases attributable to travel are under-counted.

This is not a semantic point but one over which the government remains in denial.

James Cudmore, Blair’s director of communications, said that since Ottawa imposed restrictions last year, the number of cases attributed to travellers declined from a monthly average of 22.3 per cent in March 2020 to 0.4 per cent in March 2021. “There is no reason to doubt these data,” he said. “These facts show our approach is working. As the pandemic evolves, so too will our response.”

That interpretation of the chain of infection is hardly holistic and is partial to the government’s view that border measures are, and have been, adeptly handled.

Minimizing the problem allows Ottawa to argue that the risks from travel are low and stronger restrictions are not required. If there is nothing to see here, the Trudeau government does not have a case to answer.

It was only because of the public outcry — including from MPs, provincial and regional governments — that the Trudeau government announced a temporary ban on flights from India and Pakistan late last week. The government has known for weeks that flights from India accounted for 20 per cent of passengers but 50 per cent of infections.

Trudeau and Blair have touted Canada as having “amongst the strongest border measures in the world” — a fine example of this government’s belief that information is based on repetition (say it often enough, loudly enough, it becomes true in the public mind).

It’s true that Canada’s testing and quarantine requirements have become more stringent in the past three months in airport arrivals and at land borders.

It is equally true that Ottawa has been ill-disposed to act from day one of the pandemic — and when it has, the response has often been ad hoc.

Mandatory pre-flight testing was not required until January and mandatory quarantine measures were only introduced in February. Even now, travellers are side-stepping restrictions by landing in the U.S. and entering Canada by land to avoid obligatory quarantine. Some are paying $3,000 fines, rather than spending $2,000 on quarantine hotels.

All governments face competing interests but the overriding duty is to protect citizens. An Australian-style travel ban in January would have saved countless lives, including in Roberta Place, and possibly averted a third wave.

Tighter rules now — vaccinating truckers, reducing the number of border crossings, beefing up quarantine enforcement for land travellers, and grounding domestic and international flights temporarily — would ensure we don’t have to endure a fourth wave. But doing so would acknowledge a problem the government insists does not exist.

• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter:


OTTAWA — The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a long-delayed technological revolution in Canada’s courts, but judges and other legal experts told MPs on Tuesday that in-person trials must still be resumed as soon as possible.

When the pandemic halted court proceedings in March 2020, hearings were gradually held with a heavy reliance on video streaming and teleconferencing — a massive change for courts across the country that were still largely dependent on paper and fax machines.

But Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Mona Lynch, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Superior Courts Judges Association, told the House of Commons justice committee that while some of the technology reforms are long overdue and helpful, the virtual proceedings have also caused a range of new problems.

“A colleague of mine was conducting a family hearing by phone, and one of the parties said, ‘Oh, just a minute,’” Lynch said. “There was silence. And then she heard: ‘Can I have a medium double-double?’”

She called the incident amusing and “quintessentially Canadian,” but said it also reveals “the lack of respect and attention participants pay when the court proceedings are not in-person, in the courtroom with a judge.”

While access to justice has been improved in some ways by virtual proceedings, Lynch said it also causes problems for those who don’t have good internet access — such as people living in poverty or in rural areas.

And then, of course, there are the kids.

“Not everyone has child care and is able to concentrate solely on a court proceeding when they’re in their home,” Lynch said. “We learned very quickly that when a young child wants a parent, the judge is no longer in charge of the proceeding.”

Furthermore, she said virtual proceedings “do not allow the same back-and-forth with lawyers, and some of the non-verbal cues are missed.”

“So while we want to keep the good (of the technology), we want to stress that in-person hearings are fundamental to the justice system,” Lynch said.

Justice Kristine Eidsvik of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench told the committee that courts have been experimenting with different set-ups during the pandemic, with the biggest challenge being the space requirement for socially distanced jury trials.

“In most jurisdictions now, courtrooms have been built in theatres, convention centres, concert halls, community centres, or like in Calgary, the stampede grandstand,” Eidsvik said. “Rarely are we completely in-person anymore. We have witnesses, complainants, interpreters, and even the accused appearing remotely.”

Jody Berkes, a lawyer speaking on behalf of the Canadian Bar Association, told MPs that despite all the difficulties, the pandemic will have an enduring positive change on the courts.

“There is no turning back from the pandemic-fuelled modernization of the criminal justice system,” he said. “The move to digital courtrooms has enhanced the access to and openness of the justice system.”

As one example, he cited the June 2020 livestream of Ontario Justice Joe Di Luca reading out his ruling that found Toronto police Const. Michael Theriault guilty of assaulting Dafonte Miller, a 19-year-old Black man.

“Over 20,000 people watched that decision,” Berkes said “Such widespread, first-person access to the justice system would never have occurred pre-pandemic.”

Still, Berkes said the Canadian Bar Association also believes the courts must return to in-person proceedings as quickly as possible.

He said it’s true that conducting hearings over Zoom has some advantages, such as reducing client costs relating to travel and allowing lawyers to assist more clients in different locations. He also said the expanded ability to do electronic filing of documents has reduced costs, increased efficiency and reduced paper waste.

“Despite these efficiencies, civilian witness testimony represents a major drawback of virtual hearings,” Berkes said. He said police and other expert witnesses are at least trained in how to give court testimony, making it easier to do it from different locations. But he said civilian witnesses have a much tougher time giving testimony by video.

“Courtroom testimony requires formality, accuracy and solemnity as opposed to engaging in everyday conversation,” he said. “With the pivot to Zoom trials, witnesses’ courtrooms occur in the same place they have casual conversations with their friends or relatives, such as the dining room table.”

He said even testifying from a controlled environment such as a police station doesn’t have the same effect as doing it from the formality of a courtroom.

“Allowing witnesses to testify remotely is a necessary evil of the pandemic,” Berkes said. “The alternative would have been to shut down trials for over a year.”

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter:


I'll confess I am at a loss about the mishigas occurring with paid-sick leave in this country.

The federal government unveiled a "Canada Response Sickness Benefit" that works as income replacement if someone has to be off sick.  In and of itself, that is not paid-sick leave in the traditional sense of the term.  The provinces have complained that the programme is complicated, backdated and… not paid-sick leave in the traditional sense of the term.

Despite these protestations, here in Ontario the government of Premier Doug Ford has repeatedly voted against Opposition bills and motions to establish paid-sick leave by amending the labour laws.  Strangely, in the discussion as it stands, the actual reform to labour laws is left out, with the discussion entirely about the funding of a paid-sick leave programme as no elected official to this columnist's knowledge is claiming that pandemic paid-sick leave should be paid by the employer.

Paid-sick leave is a two-part process in this pandemic: first, change the labour laws; second, create the funding to take the bill off the backs of the employer.  It's only complicated if one refuses to engage with A and goes straight to B.

Throughout the past few years, I've joined the Arlene Bynon Show on Sirius XM Tuesday mornings.  I've joked that during the pandemic, it's like a group-therapy session with my co-panellist, eminently reasonable Tory Jamie Ellerton.  This week, Arlene asked if part of the concern about paid-sick leave is the fact that, like Obamacare, once it is given, it is hard to take away.

To that astute question I answered that, well, that does seem to be the plan with employee-wage subsidies already.  There are those fighting to ensure that the CERB programme remains in place, and is transmogrified into a basic income.  But, as a basic principle, the federal government has made clear that there are emergency-response measures that will wind down with the emergency.

To that end, the governments of this country could make clear from the get-go that paid-sick leave will be ten days during the pandemic, but perhaps could be wound down to a smaller number, such as five, or they could leave the number of days the same, but remove the funding so that post-pandemic, this would be a new employee benefit paid by employers.  There are various ways to address this concern.

My greatest frustration right now is how various proposed measures are being dismissed as ineffective in and of themselves as if we are introducing measures in isolation!  Our public-health responses are like a sieve layered onto a sieve layered onto another sieve; no one measure will save the day, but taken together, we get to a high level of protection.

So, yes, that means we need paid-sick leave so essential workers can stay home if they are unwell.  It means closing down businesses where there have been more than five reported cases, as Peel Region in Ontario has done.  It also means closing the border entirely to all non-essential travel.  It means deploying vaccinations equitably, which in our present case means surging them to hot zones and targeting them for essential workers.

Explaining why things are difficult or complex is political hot air, not a reasonable excuse to avoid doing anything.

And to the pedantic twits who think they're being smart by pointing out jurisdictional challenges put a lid on it.  Our federation requires flexibility to work in times of crisis, and collaboration between levels of government is not a vice.  You may feel smug and self-satisfied to show that you've read the constitution (or, more accurately in all likelihood, its Wikipedia entry) but any lawyer will tell you that the law is a living body, not an ossified statue to worship the gods of stasis or rigidity.

Over a year into this pandemic, Canadians know that there are no single silver bullets, even vaccines.  What we want instead is competent government that layers sensible measures together to keep us safe, and works collaboratively to do so.  And, like anything in politics, we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but likewise we cannot be satisfied with measures that show their flaws.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


As Ontario continues to remain on fire with COVID, you would think that a reasonable government would do something to address the situation they find themselves in ­ but you'd be mistaken.  Are they doing something about implementing paid sick leave?  Of course not.  Are they prioritizing vaccinations for hot spots and industrial workplaces where we know that spread is happening?  Not really, because they prioritized a number of postal codes that aren't hotspots but which coincidentally happen to be Conservative-held ridings.  So just what has Doug Ford and his band of incompetent murderclowns been doing to control the pandemic?  Well, they'd be busy trying to win the communications game, deflecting attention to variant cases coming across the border, and insisting that the federal government do something about it.

There is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the border, and no, this is not solely the federal government's fault.  Yes, they should have implemented hotel quarantines sooner, and they should probably have insisted on quarantining for the full two weeks in those hotels rather than letting people go home once they have a negative test more akin to how this was managed in Australia.  There are added complications around this, however, considering space limitations (Australia basically has a waiting list to enter the country), and there were instances of private security hired to enforce it running amok, but they were effective in enforcing quarantine.  There are very real questions about what is happening at the land borders and the lack of requiring hotel quarantine for those travellers except that with many of our land crossings, there aren't many nearby hotels (unlike at airports), so it makes it harder to implement consistently.

The federal government, while not blameless, has been trying to weasel out of their own culpability for the entry of variants into the country, citing that less than two percent of cases are related to travel.  Well, yes, but in most parts of the country, contact tracing has mostly collapsed, and that more than half the cases are untraced, and community spread started from a travel case at some point.  What also has not helped are the constant demands for exemptions from quarantine rules particularly hotel quarantine and many critics are unable to pick a lane demanding tougher quarantine rules, while also demanding the hotel quarantine be ended after some of its early problems (while admittedly serious).  Quarantine only seems to mean quarantine when it's convenient, apparently.  It's also difficult to think of an appropriate mechanism that can be better used to police what is and what is not "essential" travel.  Closing the borders to "non-essential" travel seems incredibly difficult considering that there is such a lengthy list of exemptions that it seems futile much of the time.

This having been said, fault cannot solely be laid at the feet of the federal government because when it comes to enforcing the Quarantine Act once the federal government has invoked it, that falls to the provinces and municipalities.  There is no federal force that swoops in to enforce these orders the RCMP is short-staffed as it is, and you do not task the military with acting like a police force.  You.  Do.  Not.  That is how police states happen.  That means that when provinces start complaining that these variant cases are getting in because people are breaking quarantine and we do know that there are cases of travellers who simply pay the fine at the airport and avoid hotel quarantine (meaning that the fine obviously is not high enough) the responsibility actually belongs local police and public health officers, who are empowered to do the enforcement work.

Of course, a big part of the problem here is that provinces consistently refuse to accept responsibility for what is clearly under their area of jurisdiction (see: paid sick leave), and they have been grasping at straws to blame the federal government for everything.  This includes vaccine procurement (apparently scarcity doesn't exist, nor do supply chain issues, and vaccines don't take any time at all to manufacture), and what has been happening with the borders, where provinces haven't taken up their responsibilities for enforcing quarantine.  And even more to the point, they are now treating this like a communications game, where they have decided that they don't need to actually do better they just need to ensure that blame gets shifted entirely to the federal government, much like the joke about needing to only outrun the other person when you're both being chased by a bear.

There is a lack of shame going around on all sides.  The federal government, while weaselling about how much culpability they really hold, will offer the platitude that they are always looking to do more, but never do, and even then, measures tend to be either too late, or mostly theatre (and yes, closing the border to direct flights from certain countries is theatre because as public health data has consistently shown since long before this current pandemic that people will find ways to circumvent those border closures and then lie about it when they import a virus, thwarting contact tracing).  For the provinces, and in particular those west of New Brunswick, they refused to implement proper lockdowns, didn't invest in expanding testing and tracing capabilities, re-opened too early, wouldn't enact measures to increase ventilation in schools, wouldn't deal with industrial workplace spread, and once again, did not enforce the quarantine measures that were their responsibility but hey, it's all the federal government's fault.

Absolutely nobody is blameless here, but simply trying to divert attention and shift blame to the federal government is not only dishonest, but it's blatantly immoral, because it's being used as cover for provincial inaction.  Provinces trying to cast this blame should get their own houses in order, and actually enforce the Quarantine Act as they are responsible for doing, rather than simply trying to point fingers.  We need all levels of government to pull their weight, and we need actual lockdowns that are properly enforced if we are to end this pandemic once and for all.

Photo Credit: CTV News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Then-NDP candidate and now Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin arrives at his campaign headquarters in Victoria on Oct. 19, 2015.

VICTORIA — The B.C. government should prepare the public for the coming “big shock” when “fairly large chunks” of provincial Crown land are recognized as actually owned and controlled by Indigenous Nations.

So says Jack Woodward, the lawyer who won the case that resulted in the first declaration of Aboriginal title in B.C. and who is taking another title case to court next year.

“Much of the Crown land in B.C. isn’t Crown land — it is owned by Indigenous people,” says Woodward, drawing on his reading of history, constitutional law and the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decision in the Tsilhqot’in title case in 2014.

“Over the next generation we’re going to see a replacement of ownership of large parts of the province. It is going to be a big shock and a big change and a big adjustment for the system to get used to.

“There’s going to be a different landlord — not for the entire province … but fairly large chunks of it.”

Woodward laid out his assessment of the shape of things to come for Crown land and Aboriginal title in an hour-long presentation last month organized by The Campbell River Mirror. Woodward, who is based in Campbell River, has posted the entire presentation on his Facebook page.

The overview was a prelude to a case set down for the B.C. Supreme Court in March 2022. Woodward represents the Nuchatlaht First Nation, which is asserting title over Nootka Island on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

While Woodward is confident of another win, it will be up to the court to determine whether the case is as solid as the earlier proceedings, where the SCC declared Aboriginal title over more than 1,700 square kilometres of land in the Chilcotin.

But the implications are clear, based on the B.C. government’s own briefing notes on the Tsilhqot’in case, prepared after last fall’s provincial election for the incoming minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.

The SCC decision means the Tsilhqot’in-speaking Xeni Gwet’in First Nation “effectively own the land — they have the right and responsibility to manage and control how it is used,” says the recommended response for the incoming minister should he be asked about the case. “Similar to private property, Aboriginal title means the Nation owns the lands and resources in the declared title area” — i.e., the 1,700 square kilometres recognized by the court.

Shortly after the briefing note was drafted, Murray Rankin, the former NDP MP for Victoria and newly elected MLA for Oak Bay, was named minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.

The recognition of Indigenous ownership has generated anxiety among holders of Crown-granted tenures — ranchers, guide-outfitters — and owners of private property in the affected area.

“Since the SCC did not lay out a clear path on how to implement the decision, tenure-holders and property owners within the declared title area have expressed concern about how the decision impacts them,” the briefing note acknowledges. “The province, federal government, Tsilhqot’in Nation government, Xeni Gwet’in and tenure-holders are all working together to achieve predictability for everyone affected by the decision. Tenure-holders should continue to engage with the Tsilhqot’in national government and the Xeni Gwet’in as this work moves forward.”

The province encourages the First Nation to buy out tenure-holders and property owners and to that end it has provided some funding “to support acquisition at a fair market value.” B.C. insists that “there are no secret negotiations — the province is committed to transparency and is in regular contact with stakeholders.” Not everyone in the region agrees and the government acknowledges receiving “a large volume of correspondence from concerned citizens.”

Woodward, in one of his more provocative comments, suggests that where Aboriginal title is recognized, a Crown tenure is “a worthless piece of paper.” The province will probably have to provide some sort of compensation for tenure-holders. The end result, says Woodward, will be local control by First Nations, as opposed to forestry and other tenures being held by multinational corporations.

The government, for its part, says the costs and complications of the Tsilhqot’in decision “illustrate why issues of rights and title are best resolved through negotiation rather than litigation.” Woodward says treaty talks tend to lack firm mandates, leading to an endless go-round at the bargaining table. Whereas a judge can clarify what is and is not on the table.

Granted, it took more than 300 days of court proceedings to complete the Tsilhqot’in case, not counting appeals. But as Woodward notes, the deliberative process means that the government has time to prepare the public for the ownership transfers to come. There are more than 200 recognized First Nations in B.C. but many don’t yet have the resources or the inclination to proceed to court.

The question of title arises because Europeans settled B.C. for the most part without the treaties that clarified ownership in other parts of North America.

“A mistake that now has to be fixed,” he calls it, while suggesting that British Columbians take pride that the recognition of Indigenous ownership is “being implemented in an orderly, sensible, legal way.”

Still, as Woodward also notes, recognition of Aboriginal title over large tracts of the 95 per cent of B.C. that is now (perhaps mistakenly) referred to as Crown land would entail “a huge transfer of wealth.” However inevitable that wealth transfer might be, I doubt any elected government would find it easy to admit that much to the public.

vpalmer@postmedia.com


Premier Jason Kenney on Monday, April 26, 2021.

Behind the surging third wave of COVID-19, there are signs of hope — even in severely stricken Ontario.

The case numbers in all the big provinces are so daunting that it’s hard to see anything remotely positive going on. But a recovery — the third one since last spring — does appear to be taking shape.

You’d never spot this from the performance of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose PC government projects uncertainty bordering on panic.

On Monday, he asked for federal help to deal with the disease, after first refusing it.

The problem is huge there, no question. There are 877 suffering souls in intensive-care units.

A 13-year-old girl died at home.

But there is a ray of light even in Ontario. New cases declined from 30,950 for the seven days ending April 17 to 28,356 in the week that ended April 25.

The province reported 3,510 new cases Monday. Sustained over the next seven days, that would be a further drop to 24,570, well down from the highest level.

Hospital and ICU admissions trail new cases by about two weeks. The case numbers will have to drop much lower before that pressure gradually fades.

And yet, new Ontario cases are starting to fall just as vaccinations are increasing.

The third wave, in fact, seems to have peaked everywhere except Alberta.

Our infection rate is even higher than Ontario’s. Alberta cases are still climbing, from 9,562 the week ending April 17 to 11,011 last week.

But AHS and Alberta Health officials hope the surge is levelling off and may soon start to drop.

There are early signs. The province announced 1,495 new cases Monday. Over seven days, that would be a decline of about 600 from the preceding week.

The move to vaccinate 15,000 workers in meatpacking plants, announced Monday and

long overdue

, will certainly help lower infections.

Tight restrictions to visiting seniors in care homes will be eased

, allowing four people to be designated visitors, rather than two. This move is supported by powerful evidence that immunization is preventing illness in these settings.

Youngsters aged 12-15 with serious health issues will now be eligible for vaccination. Premier Jason Kenney said Monday that measures are planned for

Wood Buffalo

, where infections have surged at work camps.

Every such expansion of the vaccine drive will help blunt the current COVID surge.

Kenney noted that Alberta’s restrictions are much like B.C.’s. He argues that there’s no built-in reason why the two provinces shouldn’t have similar results over time.

B.C. is currently doing very well, relatively speaking.

New cases there dropped from 7,284 for the week ending April 17 to 4,718 last week. They had also fallen in the week ending April 10.

The B.C. decline seemed to stall Monday with somewhat higher three-day weekend numbers, but the overall direction remains positive.

Quebec is also trending sharply downward, from 10,760 new cases the week ending April 17 to 7,856 last week.

Alberta is an outlier in the national picture. But it’s very likely we may only be lagging slightly behind other provinces.

Kenney said that Alberta infections now come mainly from people’s homes and socializing without following health measures. He pointed to work camps in the oilsands as an outbreak source, as well as dorms in the

Banff area

for young seasonal employees.

But the province is near the point where it can target such clusters for vaccination. Kenney promised that when vaccine is available to all Albertans in June, there will be a big public campaign to combat hesitancy.

Meanwhile, there is good evidence that the current onslaught of COVID-19 is starting to ease.

Eventually, the new recovery will lead to the next big question: With high levels of immunization finally achieved, will there be a fourth wave?

That would be shattering.

Don Braid's column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.

dbraid@postmedia.com

Twitter:

@DonBraid

Facebook:

Don Braid Politics


We have created a new newsletter that is so much more than a list of today’s top stories. The Noon News Roundup is a succinct midday wrap written by our team of Calgary journalists to inform and entertain you. It’s an easy way to stay on top of the stories that impact your life. 

Click here to subscribe.