On February 20th, 2026 the federal government signed a Rights Recognition Agreement (“RRA”) with the Vancouver area Musqueam Indian Band, recognizing the Musqueam’s Aboriginal title over the entirety of the Greater Vancouver area.
This was a profound act of State self-emasculation on the part of the Mark Carney government.
The RRA declares that the implementation of the Agreement will be “an ongoing process that will be pursued through a nation-to-nation relationship between Musqueam and Canada where future phases are aligned in the spirit of cooperative federalism”.
The RRA is a consequence of many years of constitutional and legislative events, the first being the 1982 enactment of section 35 of the Constitution recognizing and affirming the rights of the “Aboriginal peoples” of Canada, followed by the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2004 Haida Nation decision, which invented the Aboriginal consult and accommodate obligation, and then its 2014 Tsilhqot’in decision affirming the constitutional legality of Aboriginal title. These decisions were endorsed by the federal government’s UNDRIP legislation, which was then paralleled by B. C’s DRIPA.
Altogether, these legal events have constituted an unprecedented devolution of State power to “Aboriginal peoples”, effectively amending the Canadian Constitution by making them a third order of constitutional power in relation to matters affecting them, virtually co-equal in these matters with the Federal Government and the Provinces.
The RRA has many other problematic aspects.
Normally, a proper legal agreement seeks to achieve certainty and finality in relation to its subject matter. For many reasons, the RRA achieves neither.
The RRA opens with a three-page “Musqueam Narrative” entitled “Our Ancestors’ Ways Continue”, which claims many things to be objective fact, but which are in fact purely subjective and highly debatable assertions: Physical places are allegedly “storehouses” for Musqueam “teachings” and “place-based knowledge”; the Musqueam allegedly have a distinct, pre-contact-like “land-based” culture which land they have the right to “steward and control” and whose “sacred laws and teachings…are alive and thriving to this day”; the Musqueam supposedly have an independent “legal system”; the Musqueam allegedly have “inherent rights” independent of rights created by the Canadian State or recognized by Canadian law.
The Musqueam Narrative is not formally a part of the RRA. It precedes the Preamble and is not incorporated by reference into the RRA. It is essentially Musqueam self-serving propaganda. Accordingly, it being clearly outside the four corners of the RRA, it should not physically be in the RRA document at all.
In the event of a dispute the fact that Crown negotiators permitted it to be included in the RRA will most certainly be used by the Musqueam and their lawyers as evidence of the Crown’s agreement with its contents.
The defined Musqueam Aboriginal title area includes areas over which the Squamish, the Tsawwassen and the Cowichan also claim Aboriginal rights. In fact, on August 7th, 2025 the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the Cowichan Tribes are the Aboriginal title holders of certain lands and waters in Richmond.
The Cowichan trial lasted four years and was preceded by years of pre-trial proceedings.
Canada’s position in that case was that the most that the Cowichan Tribes might be legally entitled to in their claimed area of Richmond was the possible Aboriginal right to fish on the south bank of the Fraser River, but only if the Court ruled that the Cowichans never needed the permission of the Musqueam to fish there.
In retrospect, as evidenced by the RRA, one sees that, at some point in the many-years duration of the Cowichan proceedings, Canada had secretly decided that the Musqueam, not the Cowichan Tribes, were the proper Aboriginal title holders of the claimed Richmond area.
It was unethical for Canada not to have advised the Court of this, and a breach of its fiduciary and honour of the Crown duties not to have advised the other Aboriginal litigants of this, especially the Cowichan Tribes. The Cowichan legal proceeding might have gone an entirely different way had Canada been straight with the Court and with all the other parties about its secret, unequivocal support for and its unfolding plans with the Musqueam.
And now Canadians see the bizarre and inexplicable spectacle of Canada blindly acknowledging Musqueam Aboriginal title to an area that just six months ago the Supreme Court of B.C. ruled belongs to the Cowichan Tribes. We also see the confusing spectacle of Canada heedlessly acknowledging Musqueam Aboriginal title over other Greater Vancouver areas that are subject to rival claims from the Tsawwassen and the Squamish.
In this regard the RRA will not settle anything. It will only create more, endless litigation, which Canadian taxpayers will end up paying for.
In the RRA Canada expressly recognizes that the Musqueam band has Aboriginal “Rights and Title within the Musqueam Territory”.
It took a 20-year litigation process before the Supreme Court of Canada granted Aboriginal title to the Tsilhqot’in band over a 1900 square kilometres portion of (former) British Columbia Crown land situated in the middle of the province. The Cowichan case took at least 11 years from start to finish.
But inexplicably, with respect to the Musqueam claim, Canada threw in the towel without a fight. No court action or judicial ruling was considered necessary. No formal proof of claim was required. The negotiations leading up to the signing of the RRA, as stated, were conducted in secret. Neither the Province of B.C. nor the Vancouver area municipalities, both of which have vested interests, were ever advised or consulted.
All this is highly significant because the consequences of an Aboriginal band being ceded Aboriginal title, as the RRA does, or of a judicial ruling declaring it, are profoundly disruptive, especially in an urban area like Greater Vancouver.
This is so because once Aboriginal title is recognized or ceded in relation to a particular area, the Aboriginal expectation is that “the Crown will gradually vacate “jurisdictional space” and (Aboriginal) law will govern…the land is no longer Crown land…”
The Aboriginal title holder will have the exclusive, “prior and senior” right to use and control the land and enjoy its benefits, including the right to grant official permissions for others to use the land upon payment of compensation, the latter being what is obliquely referred to in the RRA where it declares that “lands held pursuant to Aboriginal title have an inescapable economic component and other attributes.”
Many important federal and provincial laws may no longer apply in the Greater Vancouver area, or at a minimum, there will be many conflicts of laws disputes.
Regardless of Aboriginal assurances to the effect that they “are not going after” private property, the fact is that Aboriginal title is senior and prior in nature to fee simple title.
The effect of Aboriginal title ceded or declared over an area, as evidenced by the alarmed reaction to the Cowichan decision, is to create a permanent cloud over all private property titles in that area, including government lands, which is evidenced by the fact that Vancouver land appraisers are now expressly excluding the effects of Aboriginal land claims on their opinions of value.
And the Aboriginal title holders can always change their minds about “going after” private property, if only for the purpose of extracting more compensation monies from governments in the inevitable “reconciliation” negotiations that follow a finding or acknowledgement of Aboriginal title.
For Aboriginals living within the Aboriginal title area, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be able to be freely abrogated by band Chiefs and Councils.
Great confusion, fear and legal chaos naturally results from any area becoming subject to Aboriginal title.
The RRA blithely skates over all these adverse consequences.
The RRA boldly declares that “the existence of Musqueam’s unextinguished Rights and Title…is not dependent on recognition by court declaration or any agreement.”
This is legally impossible.
Legal rights do not emerge out of thin air. There are no such things in law as “natural” or “inherent” rights. Legal rights must be created or recognized by a State or a State institution, like a court. Rights aren’t legal rights if there aren’t State institutions and mechanisms to enforce them.
If Musqueam rights were not dependent on recognition by court declaration or agreement, then there would be no point to or need for the RRA.
The fact of the Musqueam entering into the RRA belies their statement that their rights exist independent of court declaration or agreement.
This is why the both parties to the Haida Nation Aboriginal title agreement thought it fit and necessary to have it judicially confirmed.
In the Cowichan case the court ruled that because the Cowichan Aboriginal title was never extinguished, the Crown never owned the land that it purported to issue Crown patents for, so the titles to all private property holdings in the Aboriginal title area, to the extent that they exist at all, are junior and secondary to the senior and prior Cowichan Aboriginal title.
Following this logic, given Canada’s voluntary acknowledgment of Musqueam Aboriginal title over Greater Vancouver, it can reasonably be said that no Crown and no private property owner now or in the past ever owned any land in Greater Vancouver. It has always been “owned” by the Musqueam. It follows further that the RRA is superfluous and unnecessary because Canada, never having had a Crown interest in the land, has no legal status to concede, give up or acknowledge anything, and no right to purport to do so.
Underlying the RRA is Canada’s acknowledgment that it has always been a legally illegitimate presence in Greater Vancouver, and in fact an illegitimate presence in all of non-treaty B.C., which in its entirety is subject to Aboriginal title claims similar to the Musqueam claim.
The RRA states that Aboriginal “Rights and Title” includes “self-government rights”, which Canada acknowledges as part of its “nation-to-nation, government-to-government approach” to “reconciliation” with the Musqueam Indian Band.
But a key provision in the RRA completely belies the notion that the Band is an independent nation capable of truly dealing with Canada on a “government-to- government” basis.
This is so because the RRA declares as a “fundamental principle…that the overall fiduciary relationship between the Parties shall continue as circumstances dictate”, and that “the fiduciary obligations of Canada to Musqueam shall be as determined by jurisprudence respecting fiduciary relationships and fiduciary obligations”.
The reality underlying any fiduciary relationship is a special relationship characterized by complete dependency, weakness and vulnerability on the part of one party in the relationship to the overwhelming, superior, discretionary power of the other party in it.
The RRA describes and treats the Musqueam Indian Band as if it were a nation state, like Canada.
It’s not.
It’s a wholly dependant, 1300 member “Indian Band”.
Legitimate nation-states have hierarchical, coherent governing structures and rules-based orders developed organically over centuries. They are capable of providing and maintaining law and order. They are supported by independent institutions and organized bureaucratic systems interacting with each other on an impersonal, secular basis.” They have a functioning economy and a large, educated population to maintain it.
None of these basic state characteristics are possessed by the Musqueam Indian Band, or in fact, by any First Nations reserves or “self-governing territories” in Canada.
It is not realistic to describe the RRA as a “nation-to-nation, government-to-government” agreement.
The RRA declares it to be an agreed-to, historical fact that “Indigenous peoples have suffered historic injustices as a result of, among other things, colonization and dispossession of their lands.”
Aside from this being a foolish admission against interest on the part of Canada, like land acknowledgments, which will haunt Canada in future court cases brought by Aboriginals, this is a highly debatable proposition.
It’s strongly arguable that the lives of individual Aboriginal Canadians have net-benefited from the civilizational effects of colonization.
As well, the fact of the RRA acknowledging Musqueam Aboriginal title belies the assertion that the Musqueam have been dispossessed of their land. A consequence of the RRA is that it is in fact non-Aboriginals in Greater Vancouver who are losing their hitherto fully established land rights, a consequence which threatens all non-Aboriginals in non-treaty areas of British Columbia, which comprise most of the province.
Finally, the RRA declares that “naca?mat ct” is a fundamental principle guiding Musqueam and Canada in the implementation of the RRA, which term is stated to mean “we are all one”. B.C. Chief Robert Joseph in his recent book calls it “Namwayat”.
Again, the very existence of the RRA, which by its terms purports to legally and socially divide Vancouver residents on the basis of race, and which purports to allocate and divide power and resources on the basis of race, ensures that Vancouverites, and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians generally, will never be “one”.
This is the fundamental, illiberal tragedy of Canada caused by section 35 and the legal events described above, which the Canada-Musqueam Indian Band RRA only perpetuates.
Peter Best
Sudbury
April 1, 2026
thereisnodifference.ca
