Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to an issue of great concern to every British Columbian, which is the impact of the B.C. Supreme Court decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada and its effect on private property rights across British Columbia.
It is the first time in Canada's history that a court has declared aboriginal title over non-Crown lands, privately owned lands. There are 150 private landowners, farmers, homeowners and business owners in Richmond who discovered that their titles were now in conflict with aboriginal title designation. This is not a matter of reconciliation. It is a matter of confusion. It creates tension. It does not create a path forward.
The Business Council of British Columbia conducted a survey of its members on the current uncertainty regarding B.C. property rights and found that 98% of respondents are very concerned. They are not a little concerned, but very concerned. We have already seen financing for job-created projects, including those for indigenous communities, pull back.
Reconciliation remains the goal of every British Columbian I speak with, whether they have called their province home for a few years or for a few millennia. Let us not forget that our indigenous peoples own a huge swath of private property in British Columbia. They too are left in confusion by Cowichan.
Our province wants to prove that the stewardship of British Columbia's many indigenous communities, both on their lands and in many projects of prosperity they are engaged in, can be a model for the nation. What we are not calling for today is for the government to appeal this decision, as it has already, and rightly, said it will do so.
What we are asking for is that the federal government engage with British Columbians straightforwardly throughout what will likely be a long judicial process. We ask it to engage with British Columbians who are confused as to whether their private property is still theirs in full and whether their property rights, long an ancient feature of our legal traditions stretching back centuries, are still theirs. We ask it to decry those who use an error of the court to spread hate, and we seek to understand those who do not know if the home, business or property in their name will remain theirs.
The decisions of the courts will not be swift. Uncertainty will persist so long as Ottawa remains in court and Victoria remains deadlocked. A very real and local example of this uncertainty is occurring in my riding in the community of Okanagan Falls.