Indigenous rights lawyer Louise Mandell says repealing B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act would move the province away from a systemic reconciliation framework.
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Louise Mandell, an Indigenous rights lawyer who has spent decades litigating in British Columbia, says repealing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) would be a step backward for the province.
Mandell’s comments come as premier-designate Lorne Doerkson, whose B.C. Conservatives won a majority on Oct. 24, has said he intends to repeal DRIPA in the spring legislature, arguing after the election that DRIPA “hasn’t solved anything” and has created “more problems to date than anything else.”
DRIPA was pushed through in 2019 and established the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as B.C.’s framework for reconciliation.
Mandell, partner emeritus at Mandell Pinder law firm, said DRIPA provides a framework for making changes that courts have mandated, rather than continuing to enforce standards case by case through repeated permit challenges.
She said she has seen DRIPA as part of shifting away from a situation where “tenures are vulnerable,” and criticized any move she linked to “the status quo of having denied title,” which she described as “largely illegal.”
Mandell also argued there is a lack of education about Indigenous rights and Aboriginal title, saying title is “pre-existing” and “doesn’t derive from the Crown,” and that reconciliation is a constitutional imperative.
She said DRIPA reflects a progression of what the courts have been doing, and noted that settlements involving residential schools emphasized education alongside legal change.
On potential impacts for tenures and energy projects, Mandell pointed to section 6 and 7 agreements in DRIPA, describing them as a mandate for the province to enter into agreements on how free, prior and informed consent is to work.
She said that in 2025 the province signed three section 7 orders with the Tŝilhqot’in, ‘Namgis and Simpcw nations, and later with the Tahltan.
Mandell said those orders show a landscape where legal conflict has been resolved through a process of moving forward, creating “tables working things out” rather than disputes ending up in court.
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