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Photo by Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images

Now it appears as though the Liberals are offering to withdraw the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory, along with a commitment to “negotiate” the wording of the UNDRIP bill with First Nations leaders. For the latter, this is an offer that’s too good to refuse.

Earlier this month, Canadians were finally given an authoritative high court ruling that the judicially created “duty to consult” does not create an Aboriginal veto over major infrastructure projects, such as the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Predictably, this ruling has been widely denounced by Indigenous leaders, who assumed it did. So you can be assured that their number 1 priority in influencing the wording around any new UNDRIP legislation will be to restore that veto.

An UNDRIP veto over pipelines and other major infrastructure projects would be a dream come true for Indigenous militants and their climate change allies. But it would be an economic disaster for Canada. The second-biggest losers would be all 10 provinces and three territories, which would see all major infrastructure projects on their lands subject to Aboriginal vetoes and the financial blackmail that would inevitably ensue.

Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

But the biggest losers will be all Canadians — including Aboriginals, especially those living in remote, rural regions where new pipelines would create permanent jobs in the local economies — who will watch capital investment leave Canada and their jobs and standards of living slump, as we grind into permanent gridlock.