Juno News - October 29, 2025
PROPERTY PANIC — Homeowners fear losing land after court ruling
Episode Stats
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Summary
While they're not giving up their property without a fight, frustrated residents in Richmond, BC are worried about the possibility of having land they thought was theirs taken away. President Trump criticizes a TV ad featuring a voice of Ronald Reagan.
Transcript
00:00:09.320
While they're not giving up their property without a fight,
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frustrated residents in Richmond, British Columbia met for a public meeting last night.
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They're worried and angry about the possibility of having land they thought was theirs taken away.
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A recent court ruling granted title to a portion of land along the Fraser River
00:00:32.880
Now, that ruling is still subject to an appeal, so nothing is confirmed,
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One property owner says he's been living in his home since 1975,
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I'm in my land for more than enough years to know it's money.
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I pay the tax, I bought the place, and lo and behold, I don't own my place.
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Now, residents say that the value of their homes has declined since this whole controversy began,
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the judge's ruling, and they want to be compensated by the city,
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saying nobody warned them there was a title issue until after the ruling came down.
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Now comes word that a First Nations group in Quebec has filed a lawsuit demanding aboriginal title
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Don't expect any miraculous trade news from South Korea between the Canadian and American trade delegations
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Despite some pleasantries over dinner between Trump and Carney,
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the president made it clear he's not in South Korea to talk to Carney.
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For those asking, we didn't come to South Korea to see Canada.
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President Trump broke off trade talk with Canada over a TV network ad featuring the voice of Ronald Reagan
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Carney would not confirm or deny seeing the ad ahead of time, but Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario,
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insists the prime minister was well aware of it.
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Back to the Reagan ad, how do you know the prime minister and his chief of staff saw this particular ad
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Did they express concern when you were with them?
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I'm not going to talk about our private conversation at all.
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It's start a conversation like I've never seen before.
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Ford also wants an apology from the U.S. ambassador to Canada
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for cursing out Ontario's trade representative, David Peterson.
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cursing out your Ontario representative in the United States at a meeting.
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This was related to your advertisement, related to Donald Reagan.
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What's your response to Ambassador Hoekstra's words?
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Pete, you've got to call Dave up and apologize.
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I'm suggesting that, you know, you get hot-headed one day,
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He's referring to David Patterson there, the trade rep.
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U.S. ambassador Pete Hoekstra also said that the deal was almost done,
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and all but there, until the ads came out and ruined everything.
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Independent journalist Wyatt Claypool joins us from Victoria.
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Wyatt, in a way, this whole ad controversy has kind of been a handy distraction for Mark Carney
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because since he got to Asia, there's been really no announcements about any trade developments at all.
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In the meantime, Donald Trump has made several announcements as far as trade goes.
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Well, and now we have also David Eby giving Mark Carney even more cover for having failed on making not only a trade agreement with the U.S.,
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but making substantial trade agreements anywhere else.
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This is, we're replaying what happened in Europe, but now we're doing it in Asia.
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Mark Carney shows up, signs some very vague agreements about how we should cooperate more, and that's it.
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Whereas Donald Trump is signing agreements where countries are guaranteeing to buy certain amounts of American goods,
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and they're eating our lunch at the same time we're pretending our trade agreements are going to mean anything.
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In fact, these countries aren't going to have any money to buy Canadian goods after having signed these agreements with Donald Trump.
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I find it also amazing that people are viewing every single gesture coming out of South Korea involving Mark Carney and Trump
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as some kind of seismic thing that we should all be talking about, you know.
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Here's Trump acknowledging Carney, you know, but then later on they just passed without acknowledging each other or saying hello.
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You know, it's like people are watching this thing so very closely.
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I was watching some of the mainstream media coverage and reading some articles this morning.
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They make it sound like there was, like, substantial gains for Canada in Carney just sitting down at a dinner where Donald Trump was also present.
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I suppose they talked a little bit as if Trump was going to stand up and slap him across the face.
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There's nothing, we didn't gain anything by them sitting in a room together and not fighting.
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And then I think the real story of how this whole tour has gone for Mark Carney is Donald Trump posting on Truth Social,
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I came to South Korea not to talk to Canada because truly he's not there to talk to us.
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And if anything, we seem like a small scared puppy following him around looking for a trade deal.
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At the same time, Mark Carney keeps pulling this thing.
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And then he goes and tries to sign a deal in Asia and the entire time is concerned with what Donald Trump thinks.
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And then there's the whole fuzzy situation around who knew what, when, in terms of this ad, you know,
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where you've got the questions being posed to Mark Carney, you know, did you see the ads ahead of time?
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He didn't really answer, didn't want to go there.
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You've got Ford saying, wow, he was with me at the time, so he most certainly saw the ads.
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It would have been the most well-kept secret on the planet if Doug Ford's PC government was able to put out this ad without Mark Carney knowing about it.
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The capital is in the same province as Ontario, and somehow nobody in the Ontario government had let them know that this ad was going to go out.
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Even now we have Premier Doug Ford saying that Mark Carney already knew about it and didn't stop him.
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And I think maybe it's Carney was being smart and thinking that, hey, if Ford screws this up, I was already not going to get a trade deal signed.
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But now Ford can take it on the chin as being the reason for why this all happened.
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And he can be the controversy and I can kind of sit over here pretending I'm accomplishing anything.
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In the meantime, Ford is spiking the football over these ads, which led directly to torpedoing of a deal that was fairly imminent.
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He says, well, Americans weren't really aware of the issue, but they're aware of it now.
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Does that justify having imploding this deal that was on the table?
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I mean, according to Pete Hextra, you know, this was a done deal.
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Well, and now this morning we have Doug Ford posturing it again and demanding an apology for one of the trade envoys from Ontario being yelled at by either the ambassador or somebody else.
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But now we're trying to pretend, hey, we also have things to be offended by.
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And sometimes people end up getting bogged down in the narrative, going back to the substance of the ad that Ford was running.
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Well, was he right about what Reagan thought about tariffs?
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This entire trade dispute has had this annoying kind of chattering going on in like the media and on social media.
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Well, are the Americans wrong for what they're doing?
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What are we going to do to get to a real trade deal?
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And this is why we've not gotten to a trade deal.
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People don't really know this like commonly right now.
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But Mark Carney has been drawing lines around issues that Dominic LeBlanc and Melanie Jolie, as our trade representatives, are not allowed to talk about.
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So when you're not allowed to talk about Canadian media laws, when you're not allowed to talk about supply management, other duties that we have, other regulations that they want gone, how are you going to sign a deal?
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Because we don't have any demands we can really make because we are not willing to give any concessions.
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And we sort of sit there wondering if they're just going to let us off the hook.
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From like, I don't know, a moral perspective or something, it doesn't really matter.
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And we're basically whining about the fact things are happening.
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And the idea that Ford thinks, well, the deal that was on the table apparently didn't include autos.
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It was really all about steel, aluminum, and energy, which is fine.
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You know, that would have provided relief had that deal have been announced and signed.
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That would have provided relief for those three sectors.
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But in Doug Ford's world, hey, it didn't include autos.
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Well, let's upend the chessboard and start from scratch.
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Meantime, they've spent, I don't know, $75 million.
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He says it wasn't that much, but still it is an extraordinary amount of money.
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And who knows how long it'll take for us to get trade talks back on the rails, Wyatt.
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And this is the same thing that Premier David Eby is doing in British Columbia,
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that they are using the tariff situation as an excuse for why the auto industry in Ontario
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and the softwood lumber industry in British Columbia are collapsing.
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They were collapsing long before any of the trade issues started.
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But now they're acting as if the tariffs are what's hurting the auto industry.
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Oh, the tariffs are what's hurting the softwood lumber industry.
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I was just messaged by somebody who works at a Port Alberni sawmill yesterday saying that
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they still import American fiber because it's so restrictive.
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The industry is so restrictive in B.C. that you can't cut down enough trees to even meet
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your fiber needs, even though it is an entire province of trees.
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They could easily do it, but they still, in the middle of this trade dispute, import American
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fiber because of just how much the NDP government locally has hamstrung the industry.
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Yeah, I just don't know if Ford and others really understand the dynamic of our relationship
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I mean, clearly we need a deal much more than they need one.
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And so, I mean, that immediately is going to push you behind the eight ball.
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They don't really have to have, I mean, they appreciate it.
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They certainly sell stuff out here, but that accounts for about 12% of their economy.
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So that dynamic alone should suggest that the sense of urgency should be on our side
00:12:03.740
Because as you heard Trump say, I can live with what we have, you know?
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And the biggest lie of the past year was Mark Carney running in the general election
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as the guy who knows how to negotiate with a man like Donald Trump.
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He clearly doesn't because he doesn't understand the value of trying to get to a win-win agreement.
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He just thinks like, oh, Trump plays hardball, so I'm going to play hardball too.
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It's like, no, you are negotiating with a country with more economic power than you.
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You need to kind of generate a media, a rhetorical win-win for you both so that Trump feels happy
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You could actually make Canada better off in this situation.
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But the thing is that the elbows-up rhetoric, the way that the liberals pitched themselves
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in the election, has basically precluded them from actually coming to a win-win that
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would actually get Trump on board, that would actually get a better deal for Canada, because
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we're trying to pitch this as, we're just trying to get the best deal for Canada, screw
00:13:03.560
We could have basically softened supply management, maybe cleaned up some of our media laws, and
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then invited the Americans along to get to a zero-tariff situation where, how about
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we gang up on China, you need Canada to basically, to basically help you like fight back against
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China, except that at the same time, we're negotiating and failing to get to an agreement
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We're actually being far nicer to the Chinese who also have tariffs on us.
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I've got to ask you about the situation in Richmond, British Columbia, and Juneau News
00:13:42.160
Obviously, residents there in South Richmond, I guess, are quite concerned, understandably
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so, after this judge's ruling, basically allocating a portion of property along the
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I mean, I've lived here since 1975 or whatever.
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Some of those people actually still have mortgages.
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And the lenders are saying, you know what, we can't renew your mortgage because of this.
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We're seeing property values diminished as a result of all this uncertainty.
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And then add to that, now we've got a band out in Quebec saying that there's portions
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As soon as this stuff hit in Richmond, other bands, and I don't blame them, are looking
00:14:32.340
Well, and what you also have going on is the secret deals behind the scenes as well.
00:14:38.300
The Cowiches ensued because it was, frankly, a ridiculous ask that you were going to have
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Aboriginal title recognized over an already built up urban center.
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But there's been tons of other deals in British Columbia, and this is where the government,
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the NDP government, just has no leg to stand on.
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They've been happily signing away land elsewhere.
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They signed over Haida Gawaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands, 100% to the Haida ban to the point
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where people had their houses bulldozed by basically the ban council, and they couldn't
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do anything about it because it's now the ban's land.
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And the thing is about all this is that it's kind of gross because it's always these lawyers
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and consultants and ban council activists pretending they are doing this because we need to help
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the individual First Nations person, even though this is actually not helping any of them at all
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Because on Aboriginal title land, they can't own private property just like anyone else can own
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These act like mini Soviet states within British Columbia, and this can absolutely happen elsewhere
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And remember, just in BC alone, I think there's over 150 bans who would be eligible to also pursuing
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The Cowichan could do this again on other parts of Vancouver Island or along parts of
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the mainland where they could just simply, frankly, make up that we used to have an area
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around here that could have been a fishing village or whatever, and now we want it back.
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You cannot have law being based on oral testimony of what you owned and what you didn't own,
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where you are supposed to be the end-all be-all in terms of the authority over who owned what.
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And you would think that some of these judges would count for that.
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You know, I mean, I understand that they've got to base it on law and what's on the books
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and all that, but considering the amazing amount of upheaval as a decision like that brings
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Well, this is the, there's a legal idea of reasonableness, and this has been incompletely
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The idea that you're going to argue that well over 100 years ago, this could have been
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a fishing village, and that's why you now need to own the dirt out under everyone's
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And yes, now actually the Cowichan, they already got a portion of the land given to them and
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transferred over to Aboriginal title that the government's appealing.
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But the Cowichan themselves are appealing and saying that, no, no, no, we actually own
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everything in this green drawn lined area, because if you ever see the map, there'll be
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a small little area, not exactly small considering a lot of people's homes are there, but a smaller
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area that the courts had ruled are under Cowichan Aboriginal title, but then they just want basically
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And unless you actually extinguish, legally extinguish Aboriginal title in this area, it's
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And this is also bringing up a lot of controversy, rightfully so, that maybe we need to actually
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either completely get rid of or modify Section 35 of the Constitution, because that and laws
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like UNDRIP or DRIPA in British Columbia are effectively making it so that, yes, while
00:18:00.280
many of these judges seem like activists, technically, is this legally sound?
00:18:05.480
Well, maybe based on the really stupid laws that our provincial governments have on the
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How much of this is about land acknowledgements?
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We've had years of this sort of thing now, this kind of woke sense of, you know, we are
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here on the traditional lands of the so-and-so band, is that what started it and got people
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thinking and got these bands, you know, thinking, well, if you're acknowledging that it's our
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You know, from there, one thing leads to another.
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Next thing you know, it's in the courts and they get a decision in their favor.
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These things actually have been going on since the 80s.
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There is a notorious law firm, I'm not going to name them, but in British Columbia, they've
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So this predated the land acknowledgement kind of craze that's gone on over the last
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The problem, though, with the land acknowledgements is that it obviously is a sort of way of grooming
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The idea is that we, every single day, repeat the mantra that we don't really own any of this
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and it's unseeded and even though, like, it's the wilderness when you show up in British
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It's kind of ridiculous that now 200 years later we're going to be saying that, no, actually
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you needed to sign something for that land that, frankly, nobody was using.
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Does there need to be cooperation with First Nations people in certain instances?
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But the whole idea that we're effectively in a state where 115% of the entire province
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could be owned by a First Nations band is kind of silly.
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That's not how land ownership has worked anywhere else in history at any other time.
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And the land acknowledgements are something that needs to be ended.
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Even in Richmond, the mayor of Richmond, Mayor Brody, even had to say that we can't do land
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acknowledgements while this case is proceeding because we're now in a legal situation.
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And I cannot repeat something saying that this isn't ours because it absolutely is.
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People paid money for the land that their house occupies.
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We're not going to be repeating anything that undermines that right anymore.
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And if it comes down to compensation, either to the band or possibly landowners, because
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many of the property owners in South Richmond are saying, well, if we're going to lose title
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to our property, we want to be compensated with a city to compensate or maybe the province.
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I mean, once you start factoring that across the country, you're into the tens of maybe
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hundreds of billions of dollars considering how much territory, how much property we're
00:20:43.180
talking about, especially all that expensive property in places like Vancouver and Toronto.
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And there has to be, even in the current legal framework, there has to be a just reasonable
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You can't wait until things have been heavily built up and now the property has a lot of
00:21:01.040
value and now you're going to be challenging it based on there being no agreement for you
00:21:07.720
The whole point is that they even admit, well, it's unseeded.
00:21:10.260
Well, it wasn't ever seeded by the original group in the first place.
00:21:13.960
They're just a story that they used to potentially want to use it.
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That doesn't then equal that you have legal rights to it or else we would own a lot of
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things by simply having existed around it long enough.
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And it's very, I think, telling that this is now happening in large urban centers where
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they know that the local governments have a lot of money that they could potentially bill
00:21:39.960
out if the if the band council is able to win the lawsuit, because, again, this has
00:21:44.240
nothing to do with the average First Nations person.
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This is band council officials, its consultants and its lawyers.
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It has nothing to do with the average person who in many First Nations communities are still
00:21:55.660
living in poverty because you can't create wealth on First Nations land because it's not
00:22:04.540
If you wanted to start a sawmill, if you wanted to start a mine, if you want to start a
00:22:07.940
small business as a First Nations person, band council can veto it because it's not yours.
00:22:12.120
And they can tell you that you're not allowed to do it because it's, you're effectively a
00:22:15.200
ward of the state if you're First Nations person on reserve land.
00:22:19.400
And what implications are there for the resource sector?
00:22:21.660
You know, you want to build Northern gateway 2.0 or whatever out to the coast, you're
00:22:29.000
I mean, my understanding is when that project was being discussed, a lot of the bands were
00:22:35.180
Oh, well, remember what's happened with the wetsuit weapon is then suddenly we found the
00:22:40.180
hereditary trees to try and kill the, kill the project because all this is legal horseshoes
00:22:45.460
Anyways, even if you get the band on side, activists can always basically nominate people
00:22:50.680
to pretend as if they actually have the real authority around here, which is truly the most
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racist thing I've ever seen in my life that, uh, you know, you're trying to build a pipeline
00:23:00.240
and the band council who can be obstructive at times, even they said, yes, but suddenly
00:23:05.980
we found the real king of the land to come out and say no to it.
00:23:09.240
It would be like, uh, you know, it was like if you, uh, if you're trying to build some sort
00:23:13.700
of a piece of property in, in Norway, and then somebody after the local council approves
00:23:18.880
that someone throws on a horned helmet and says, actually, I happen to be the patriarch
00:23:23.080
of this area and you're no longer allowed to build.
00:23:27.940
Wyatt, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:23:35.220
And that is it for this edition of straight up.