Donna Kennedy-Glans: Paternalistic Indian Act should have been abolished long ago

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew shown holding up his Indian identity card at a news conference Monday October 26, 2026. Photo by Wab Kinew/X

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I’m a lawyer. And I’ve been watching Canadian governments talk about ending the Indian Act for most of my adult life.

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In 1969, Trudeau and Chrétien actually tried it. Their white paper proposed scrapping the statute, ending separate legal status and treating First Nations people as ordinary Canadians. Indigenous leaders called it assimilation and killed it; the paternalistic act stayed.

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Last week in Ottawa, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew held up his own status card and said the same thing. The Indian Act is a race-based form of identification that has no place in a modern country. Abolishing it is overdue; keep the treaties and Section 35 rights, but drop the paternalism. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the act racist, anachronistic and said he is open to reforming or abolishing it — with First Nations, of course.

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That sounds like progress. Then you look at what actually happened in British Columbia.

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In September 2025, the Eby government, the federal government and the Haida Nation went to B.C. Supreme Court and asked Justice Christopher Giaschi to declare that the Haida hold Aboriginal title to the terrestrial areas of Haida Gwaii under Section 35(1) of the Constitution. This was not the end of a long trial; it was a consent order. The NDP had already recognized title by agreement and legislation; they wanted the court to lock it in so a future government could not undo it.

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B.C.’s lawyer, Brent Olthuis, put it plainly: “If the legislature makes a law, it can unmake a law.”

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The Haida lawyer, David Paterson, was more direct: “There are agreements in place, but agreements can be revoked. There is provincial legislation in place, but legislation can be repealed.”

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“There are people,” — he nodded at the politics — “who would like to repeal this legislation. There are people who would like to see this arrangement not succeed.”

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The Haida Nation needed the court to “tie a ribbon” around the deal so nobody would still be arguing about title in twenty years. Justice Giaschi tied the ribbon. The declaration is constitutional; ordinary politics cannot touch it.

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Veteran B.C. journalist Vaughn Palmer has detailed how little the public was told. The provincial and federal governments issued no announcement. Indigenous Relations Minister Spencer Chandra Herbert said he learned about his own government’s intervention after the fact. Attorney General Niki Sharma called a press release a “waste” because it was merely “tying up loose ends.” As Palmer suggests, entrenching title against a possible Conservative government is some loose end.

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This fits a pattern of secrecy that has become the NDP’s default on land. Documents unearthed by Northern Beat and reported by Adam Pankratz show the government planning to hand over roughly 400 parcels of public Crown land to First Nations. Briefing notes labelled confidential were dated just before Eby called the snap election; anyone who wanted to see them had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and stay quiet. The Haida arrangement itself only became public because the nation announced it. Over and over, major transfers of public land happen first and the public is told later — if at all.