VICTORIA, B.C.: Scott McInnis, MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke and Official Opposition Critic for Indigenous Relations, issued the following statement today on the Business Council of British Columbia’s member survey on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act: 

“The NDP government promised DRIPA would deliver investment certainty. Seven years later, the people who invest in British Columbia have rendered their verdict, and it is unanimous. 

“Ninety-eight per cent are very concerned with the government’s handling of DRIPA. Seventy-four per cent are pulling back investment because of it.  

“The numbers are clear. You get them when an entire business community has reached the same conclusion at the same time – DRIPA isn’t working.  

“The NDP government answer is to consult for another six months. To punt the file to the fall. To tell employers, workers, and First Nations alike to wait, again, while permits stall and capital walks out the door. 

“That is not leadership. It is paralysis dressed up as process. 

“This government has now publicly admitted that they have been moving ‘confidently in the wrong direction’ on this file. British Columbians agree. Yet even after that admission, the NDP government still appears unwilling to take meaningful action to restore certainty and confidence in British Columbia.” 

“British Columbians want both reconciliation and a province that works. This government is delivering neither. They deserve better, and they deserve it now, not in the fall.” 

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