Juno News - Our country is in deep trouble

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juno News. Alexander Brown joining you again for another episode of Not Sorry. Thrilled to

00:00:07.280 have you here. I'm the director of the National Citizens Coalition, writer, campaigner, columnist,

00:00:12.940 big tent guy. It means a lot to be a part of this audience and here with you today.

00:00:17.920 And while you're here, take advantage of our promo code, junonews.com slash not sorry for 20%

00:00:23.720 off. This is becoming a theme here. I talk about Doug Ford a lot and I talk about British Columbia

00:00:29.140 a lot. And British Columbia needs to get it together and get it together fast because the

00:00:33.960 province risks further dragging the rest of the country down with it. BC Premier David Eby is

00:00:39.620 officially worried about growing Aboriginal title issues in the province, well reported on here

00:00:44.480 in Juno News. After mocking private property concerns, Eby is now worried about this Cowichan

00:00:50.760 decision, which potentially risks the land beneath people's feet. There are folks in Richmond now

00:00:58.720 who are receiving letters wondering, uh-oh, am I going to lose my house over this? But the BC

00:01:05.640 government laid the groundwork for that decision. They now claim to oppose it. And this is threatening

00:01:10.560 a real slippery slope nationwide, not just on the left coast. As our guest today, Dr. Caroline Elliott

00:01:16.960 writes in a separate piece, and she's very much been the person to talk to on this file,

00:01:21.360 a city of Richmond letter to property owners of the Cowichan Aboriginal title area recognized by the BC

00:01:27.040 Supreme Court, has brought the judgment's potential impacts into stark reality. For those whose

00:01:32.540 property is in the area outlined in black, the letter had explained, the court has declared Aboriginal

00:01:37.480 title to your property, which may compromise the status and validity of your ownership. While Premier

00:01:43.760 David Eby has been quick to disavow the decision, the reality is his government helped set the stage for it

00:01:49.260 in multiple ways. Worse, it quietly supported a similar outcome in a related case, even after the concerning

00:01:56.080 implications of the Cowichan judgment were well known. The problematic nature of the Cowichan decision has been

00:02:02.640 well established. It marks the first time a court has declared Aboriginal title over private property in British

00:02:09.640 Columbia, and declares certain feasible land, i.e. private property, in the area defective and invalid.

00:02:17.260 Now, you know, scary words. And you'd think the BC Conservatives would be all over this, that this would be a

00:02:24.700 moment for firm and focused opposition. And yet, the BC Conservative board members have called for John

00:02:31.660 Rustad to resign immediately, that this is a party gripped with turmoil right now. That's looking internally and not

00:02:39.020 externally at this moment where British Columbia needs, you know, to allow Alberta pipelines to allow

00:02:47.500 tankers off, Canadian tankers off its shore when American ones are streaming by every day, bound for

00:02:53.980 Washington State or Alaska. BC Conservative leader John Rustad has even said he will not be stepping down. After

00:03:00.140 seven members of the party's board, the party board's management committee formally called on him to resign,

00:03:05.820 citing unprecedented turmoil. And there has been. Candidates are leaving left and right,

00:03:10.140 allegations of impropriety. This is a collapse in party unity since last year's provincial election.

00:03:16.700 In a letter dated October 21st and addressed directly to Rustad, signatories included elected

00:03:22.140 board members. These were Rustad people, Aisha Esty, Troy Lanigan, Mauro Francis, to name a few.

00:03:28.220 Only one board member in total did not sign their name. So with EB benefiting, the NDP benefiting from this

00:03:35.580 unnecessary infighting in the polls right now. Imagine if they were to turn around and turn this

00:03:40.220 into a majority. This is the same party working to block those pipelines. The tankers offshore.

00:03:47.340 No one harms Canada like Canada. That is a recurring theme here. Ontario has a much deserved reputation for

00:03:53.340 for dragging the country down with its sputtering economic engine and its propensity towards

00:03:58.300 re-electing liberal and liberal light status quo governments. But BC holds an increasing amount of

00:04:04.620 cards in Canada's economic recovery and in driving more social unrest. Dr. Caroline Elliott joins us to

00:04:11.580 talk about this topic. She's in some ways becoming the leading BC political commentator. We're thrilled to

00:04:17.820 have her here today on Without Diminishment. Caroline Elliott joins the show. Dr. Caroline Elliott,

00:04:22.700 she is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, sits on the board

00:04:28.060 of BC's Public Land Use Society, prodigious BC political figure, commenter, leader. Thanks for

00:04:35.260 joining us. Thanks for having me, Alex. Did you like my preamble? Loved it. It was good.

00:04:41.340 Good. So the Cowichan decision continues to worry many people, the broader implications. You were the

00:04:48.540 person that we wanted to call. What are your latest concerns here? I know even BC's premier is coming

00:04:54.380 out saying that he's concerned by the recent developments as if he didn't play a role in

00:05:00.300 teeing this all up. Yeah, I think teeing it up is exactly what he's done, right? He's done numerous

00:05:06.540 things that kind of, I would say, laid the groundwork for this decision. So he's taking issue with it now. But

00:05:12.780 probably the most important way in which he did it was he actually, he set the policy precedent

00:05:20.940 of overlaying Aboriginal title over private property himself voluntarily on Haida Gwaii.

00:05:27.820 Despite a whole bunch of concerns raised about that by lawyers, by people worried about democracy,

00:05:32.300 people worried about private property. He went ahead and then quietly had his lawyers go to court

00:05:37.580 without telling the public to actually effectively constitutionalize it, meaning that it's kind of

00:05:43.420 out of reach. It was an explicitly stated goal of his to, and the transcripts show this, to make it so

00:05:50.540 that future democratically elected governments can't actually readily undo what he did in Haida Gwaii.

00:05:56.620 And remember in Cowichan, the big problem is that it was the first time the court had overlaid

00:06:01.260 Aboriginal title over private property. David Eby not only did that voluntarily through his own policies,

00:06:06.380 but then went and sought a consent order from the courts that makes it very difficult to undo. So

00:06:11.100 for him to be claiming some level of concern about this is a bit rich, I think.

00:06:15.420 Now, Caroline, you would think at this moment in time, the BC Conservatives

00:06:20.460 would have it all together. They would be standing strongly in opposition, they would be focused,

00:06:25.740 they would be looking outward and not inward. And yet there is now a board in upheaval, a party in

00:06:31.340 upheaval. The timing of this seems terrible on many issues. I think of the threat of the NDP being

00:06:37.820 able to skate on these issues. Heck, call another election. And so BC Conservative leader John Rossetta

00:06:44.060 said he will not be stepping down despite members of the party's board, the management committee formally

00:06:49.500 calling on him to resign, citing unprecedented turmoil. And there has been. There's candidates are

00:06:55.500 leaving. There's arguments about the direction of the party, about the the ethics behind the scenes there.

00:07:01.500 We know that there are good people working for that party and who really want to be a part of change.

00:07:06.140 But this seems to be taken on water pretty quickly. In a letter dated October 21st, addressed directly

00:07:12.540 to Rustad, signatories included elected board members like Aisha Esty, Troy Lanigan, Satya Peter,

00:07:18.860 Moro Francis, who was a great candidate in the lower Maine. What do you make of this? Why are you

00:07:25.340 concerned? I honestly feel very frustrated as a British Columbian. I look at the unprecedented fiscal

00:07:33.740 mismanagement, the debt, the deficits that the government's running, the debt that they're piling

00:07:39.260 up for future generations to pay off. I'm looking at the economic devastation of this province,

00:07:43.740 the lack of investor certainty. And of course, you've got these huge threats to private property,

00:07:49.820 uh, some really clear signals through Couch and in other issues that show that the government's

00:07:55.420 approach to reconciliation is just not going to work. So you have all these issues piling up and,

00:08:02.380 you know, there, there comes a point where you have to ask is, is our party turmoil being the story

00:08:09.260 that getting in the way of being in an effective opposition, holding this government accountable.

00:08:14.540 And I think that's what's happening. Uh, so it doesn't really matter. I don't think, um,

00:08:19.500 you know, how hard you've worked or how good of a person you are, or, you know, how much you might

00:08:25.020 feel you've earned that leadership position at some point there, you know, there really is a point

00:08:29.740 where you have to think about the province because this is, this is existential for the province.

00:08:34.140 If the NDP continues down this path, we've got to get back in control of, of what's happening here.

00:08:40.300 And I think that's not going to happen, uh, under the current, uh, under the current circumstances.

00:08:46.060 Yeah. And I think of, this is a moment, even if you were putting aside Cowichan and, and all those

00:08:52.700 concerns, some of the issues with, um, there's of course, well-meaning reconciliation and then a

00:08:59.500 reconciliation kind of industrial complex that, that I think folks have reasonable concerns about

00:09:04.140 is this is a moment to be getting those pipelines to the Pacific Northwest coast. This is a moment to

00:09:09.020 be amending tanker bands when American ships are passing our shores every darn day, you know, bound

00:09:15.100 for Alaska or Washington state, but we're, you know, continuing to cut off our nose to spite our face.

00:09:20.780 And it brings to mind to me as well, that the situation federally right now, where we're seeing a

00:09:26.460 little bit of conservative infighting in these sort of warring consultant camps, this unbecoming behavior

00:09:31.980 when the carny start is something that we should be litigating, litigating for young people. We're

00:09:37.260 seeing same old, same old on so many files. And so on that same old, same old and, and wishing for

00:09:45.820 better. Ginny Roth in the hub, uh, this morning wrote a terrific piece that sort of described large

00:09:51.260 swaths of the conservative scene in Canada right now. Uh, and here's looking at you on

00:09:56.220 Ontario and Atlanta, Canada as amorphous status quo ism that such an approach is better at holding

00:10:02.780 power than winning power. We're in a moment of culture shift on the right. Some of the old guards

00:10:08.060 seem to take issue with some of the younger rabble ourselves included. Uh, where do you fall in this

00:10:14.060 cultural moment? Do you want to see a bolder kind of common sense conservatism or, or just a safe

00:10:21.500 conservatism that, that continues to play nice on these files? Well, I think there's an old guard who

00:10:26.860 really is committed to the idea that we can keep talking about things like fiscal discipline and

00:10:31.020 economic development and deregulation and tax cuts and somehow set this province in this country back on

00:10:39.100 the right path. And those things are important. Of course they are right. Nothing does better with a

00:10:44.220 bad economy. You can't leave, you know, future debts for, for our kids to pay off. Like that's all,

00:10:49.740 it's incredibly important, but there's a whole shift, I think, in terms of the motivating factor

00:10:54.140 of the new right in understanding the impact that a decade or more of progressive policies just being,

00:11:01.580 just, just, uh, kind of making their way into our courts, our legislatures, our institutions,

00:11:09.500 universities, schools, elementary schools, where that actually has an impact too, in terms of how

00:11:14.060 we see ourselves as a society, right? How we, how we relate to one another as British Columbians or

00:11:19.020 Canadians. And I think that's a really important piece that some of that, that older guard, if I

00:11:23.740 can call them that, uh, are missing. And it's, you know, we, we have a whole generation of kids going

00:11:29.180 through an education system that tells them they have to become active decolonialists. You have them

00:11:35.420 being told that the land they stand on isn't theirs. You have them being told, you know,

00:11:39.100 you have, you have parents being treated under the banner of, of SOGI as though they're kind

00:11:43.100 of a problem to be solved and not as the, the, the, the absolute authority on the best interests

00:11:48.460 of their children, because that's what actually motivates parents. And I think that people don't

00:11:54.220 realize how important these things are to regular folks going about their lives. And they say, well,

00:11:58.700 people only care about pocketbook issues. You know, they only care about these, they actually care

00:12:03.180 about society and the fabric that kind of holds us together.

00:12:05.900 No. And I've been surprised by that. Even out here, I'm in British Columbia with you

00:12:10.060 too. And I'm in a neighborhood very much filled with, uh, yuppies and go along to get along types

00:12:15.740 and wonderful people, you know, crunchy granola moms, but they're really worried about this stuff

00:12:19.820 too. You talk to them in the park, you, you, you bump into them on a run in the grocery store

00:12:24.700 and, and they'll tell you about the, the, the radical posters that are hanging in their kids'

00:12:29.580 schools that are teaching these kids to hate themselves and hate their identities about these,

00:12:35.420 these indulgences and, and endless acknowledgements that, that warp their very minds of, of an

00:12:42.300 inappropriate encroachment, uh, from seemingly politicized institutions because we're letting

00:12:48.540 into our great institutions or, or training people to enter them who hate them. They hate their very

00:12:54.060 existence. Our, our friend, Jeff Russ wrote a piece this morning where he, he talked about the,

00:12:59.420 the Oxford union president who has since been given the boot. And it came out in, in personal missives

00:13:06.620 that the reason he actually ran for the position was because he hated it. He wanted to be, to sort of

00:13:13.020 eat it up from the inside. And so I, I think of your, your previous articles and videos on, on say,

00:13:20.140 park closures to non-indigenous visitors. You, you highlight these understandable concerns about,

00:13:25.900 about true equity and access. You're not afraid to say the obvious thing. I mean, how would something

00:13:31.740 like, you know, restricting access or, or, or making folks worry about the, the land beneath their feet,

00:13:39.260 how does that reflect sort of broader tensions in conservative culture regarding, you know,

00:13:44.540 reconciliation efforts? What difficult questions should Canadians be allowed to ask about balancing

00:13:50.060 indigenous rights and reconciliation efforts with the public interest, even the very confidence

00:13:55.660 of concerned taxpayers and owners? Yeah, it's, it, that's such a good question because I think

00:14:01.580 for a long time, parties on the right have been actually afraid to talk about these things in a

00:14:08.380 way, but that's good policy comes from constructive, critical discussion. Right. And I think that this has

00:14:15.420 gone, this particular file has gone unchallenged for so long. Like if you look at the UN

00:14:19.820 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which I personally believe needs to be repealed,

00:14:23.180 it's behind a lot of the problematic policies that the government has implemented in BC.

00:14:28.780 That was unilaterally, sorry, not unilaterally. It was unanimously voted on the BC legislature,

00:14:34.460 and that was done at a time when it was kind of considered unorthodox to venture outside those

00:14:38.860 boundaries. And we've done that so many times. Look at mass immigration federally, right, where it went

00:14:43.420 unchallenged for so long. And now it's a, it's, it's gone so far that, that it's going to be very,

00:14:48.620 very hard to walk back in terms of its impacts on young people, especially, but, but others as

00:14:52.460 well, including newcomers who come here under this great promise of Canada, and then realize like,

00:14:57.420 it's, you know, horribly expensive and, and difficult for a whole range of reasons. So

00:15:02.940 that, that's the product of not fighting these battles. And I think that's where this, this new

00:15:08.380 right, very much a younger new right of, of conservatives are coming forward and saying,

00:15:13.020 no, let's actually talk about these issues before they become like this. And we'll get to a lot

00:15:17.020 better place in here. And, and politics is, is downstream from culture. Like in a, and I think

00:15:22.860 of another aphorism, which is, you know, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is

00:15:27.020 interested in you. This all stems from somewhere, right? There's been a kind of cultural abdication.

00:15:32.700 And in that, in that sort of space, you know, you feel all kinds of bad ideas and bad trends. I, I even

00:15:38.940 think coming out of the pandemic where the federal conservatives, as you mentioned on immigration,

00:15:43.980 like they were going to bat reflexively for the army of foreign students. We, we started to want

00:15:50.060 to send home because they were in attendance at fraudulent schools. Like we were, there were,

00:15:55.820 there were MPs, federal MPs, maybe well-meaning who were, who were going to bat for, for schools

00:16:01.180 that are, you know, strip mall colleges where you study business management or illegal trucking,

00:16:06.300 and you're, you're making everybody unsafe on the roads. And so there, there has to be a kind of

00:16:11.180 correction, a kind of continued home for, for these sorts of conversations, these,

00:16:16.540 these spaces that grow. I think of the terrific work here at Juno news where I get to have regular

00:16:22.140 conversations with, with well-meaning people and, and not be worried about getting canceled. And so

00:16:27.980 my question to you would be this, it, the, the criticism of your kind of response and our comments

00:16:35.980 and, and this, this new right has been, well, winning is first and foremost, the most important

00:16:42.940 thing, but you can't, you can't win that way. Can conservatives win also waging, let's say the

00:16:51.980 kind of culture war that's worth having? Well, look, I think not only can the conservatives win

00:16:57.500 in part by fighting some of these more cultural battles, but it's actually essential to its success,

00:17:03.420 should they win and moving forward in terms of actually bringing Canada and British Columbia

00:17:07.900 along to where they need to be. So, you know, I, I think that there is out there a quiet, but very

00:17:14.140 strong majority who are just common sense people who understand that you can't have things like

00:17:20.940 mass immigration go unchecked and putting pressure on, on, on housing prices and services and so on.

00:17:27.660 They understand that you can't have private property rights thrown into question,

00:17:32.140 right? They understand that people need to be speaking up on these things. I can't tell you

00:17:35.420 just from the work that I do, how many moms come up to me at the, you know, at school when I'm picking

00:17:41.340 up my kids and say, I completely agree with you. They may whisper it, but they say it because they feel

00:17:45.740 it. And I think it gives them license to, to say it out loud themselves. So I think people really

00:17:50.620 underestimate that aspect of it. The other thing I would say is I do believe that a lot of these culture,

00:17:55.820 culture kind of issues, culture coded issues are actually very much linked to the pocketbook

00:18:02.540 economic issues that, that the, that the older guard, um, that prioritize like things like,

00:18:10.060 um, you know, this, this idea of replacing equality of opportunity, which everyone agrees with in our

00:18:14.940 movement with things like social justice drive equity, right? That there's no way that doesn't lead

00:18:20.940 to an acceptance of higher taxes and redistribution and, and a lack of investor confidence and unchecked

00:18:27.260 spending on programs. Like these things are actually linked, like the cultural enablement,

00:18:31.580 or sorry, the enablement around the drug culture, uh, this idea that your ethnic background has

00:18:37.340 something to do with your level of culpability with a crime that you might commit. These have things,

00:18:40.700 these have direct links to public safety and disorder that people are concerned about just at a

00:18:47.100 basic level. So many of these issues that, that people think are kind of less relevant to, to

00:18:52.940 regular people are actually having an impact in their day-to-day lives. Uh, and I think that's,

00:18:58.220 the land issue being a significant one when it comes to, um, ensuring that there's a level of

00:19:03.020 certainty, uh, for, for a good investment climate and therefore a strong economy. Like these, there's so

00:19:07.900 many linkages between these things. I think it's, it's people really oversimplify it by saying we should

00:19:12.780 talk about one or the other. They're in many cases, the same thing. It sure feels that way.

00:19:17.900 Dr. Caroline Elliott, thank you for joining us. There, there's so much to fix. There are,

00:19:21.740 let's say conservatives who, who need to get it together. Thanks for joining us today.

00:19:25.580 Thank you for having me.

Juno News - October 25, 2025

Our country is in deep trouble

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