October 13, 2016

Vancouver Sun Editorial-Tsawwassen Mills-"Comments Seem Almost Petty"

tsawwassen-mills1
The Vancouver Sun Editorial Board has published an editorial today with another take on the Tsawwassen Mills Mega Mall. Under the heading “Tsawwassen Mills Mall Symbolizes First Nation’s Independence”  the editorial states:
“Traffic chaos was but one of many complaints levelled against the new outlet mall before and after the opening. Early on, development opponents condemned the loss of what they believed to be arable farmland, and others raised their fists against rampant consumerism. Animal rights activists objected to the display of live fish in the aquarium and the taxidermy collection in the Bass Pro shop. Still others questioned whether the mall, in the absence of public transit and population nearby, offering retail outlets readily available at more conveniently located shopping districts, and on a road to nowhere other than the B.C. Ferries terminal and Deltaport, could be successful. And doesn’t the project seem at odds, one blog post asked, with Metro Vancouver’s goals of density and sustainability?”

The Sun’s editorial goes on to say that Tsawwassen First Nation Chief Bryce Williams called the project “reconciliation in action”, referencing the federal government’s acknowledgment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations. And Shane Gottfriedson, B.C. regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations, added that what the Tsawwassen First Nation accomplished “is what every First Nation would like for themselves.” 

The editorial ends by saying “Tsawwassen Mills is not just a shopping mall. It is a symbol of First Nations independence and growing economic strength. Given the significance of the project, opening just weeks after the Business Council of B.C. and the B.C. Assembly of First Nations signed a formal agreement to help lift indigenous communities out of poverty and build the province’s economy, the complaints seem almost petty.”

The full text of the editorial can be read here.

There is no doubt that this is a tremendously important venture  for all the  First Nations. The question is whether it is appropriate to comment on the mega mall which is contracted to a Quebec owned company and appears to have major regional impacts, including threatening the livelihood of small businesses in Ladner and Tsawwassen. Should the project be treated differently and not commented on?


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Leave a Reply to MBCancel Reply

  1. They’re giving it a shot. We always hear about how malls are dying. Well, let’s see if consumers are really sick of the mall…

  2. I cannot accept that informed folks should not comment on or have an opinion on the wisdom of a real estate development simply because that development involves a First Nation. While the right of that First Nation to undertake the development cannot be questioned, especially given treaty rights and the existence of a treaty between the First Nations and the Government of Canada, the wisdom of the development is fair game for comment and opinion. And the First nation should not anticipate that their development requires any special actions on the part of regional transportation planners.

  3. I think it was a bad idea, but hey, what else could they have done with the land? Probably nothing that would generate income as much as a mall. So, it’s not like the band had a lot of options.
    Look at UBC. UBC keeps expanding and building, building, building. They’ve knocked down trees and relocated farms. They’re growing their own city out there. But, do we get outraged that in doing so, they’ve caused massive traffic congestion? No. Instead, we somehow give them a pass and jump all over ourselves to supply them with more B-lines and Skytrain. SFU is doing the same. Same as Brentwood, Lougheed, etc.
    I know it’s not exactly the same, but something still feels hypocritical to me when I criticize the new mall. Maybe phase 2 will include condo towers, etc. And, then maybe light rail. Anyone know what the future plans are for the area?

    1. Also, people obviously want the mall. So, maybe this is getting into the whole, forever on-going, conversation of urban planners imposing their vision instead of designing what citizens actually want/use.

        1. A super small minority actually want things like bike lanes but that doesn’t stop local governments from shoving them down our throats using our tax dollars. In the case of megamalls, a lot more than “some” people want them.

      1. Density is lacking all over Vancouver, and now that UBC and SFU create density you don’t like it ? Why is that ?
        UBC and SFU are where they are. Planners have to deal with reality and facts not just “wouldn’t it be nice if ..” such as
        a) many people like their car
        b) people like choices of transit
        c) many people will never take a crowded, smelly, wobbly bus
        d) many folks – especially those with kids – prefer a TH or house with a yard over a condo
        e) it rains in Vancouver and it is hilly, and not everyone prefers a bike
        f) some folks have lots of money and some don’t
        g) not everyone buys into the “CO2 taxes are great” and “higher energy costs are great” Vision agenda
        h) UBC and SFU want to monetize their land base and as such leasing land off makes good financial sense to them
        i) etc

  4. The Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations are not restricted to their reserve lands when it comes to development. Look at Jericho and the Heather lands, and the significant fact that the federal Canada Lands Company is involved as a partner. These developments will likely be infinitely more sustainable than a destination megamall and a huge paved container yard could ever be.
    The Tsawwassen FN territory overlapped with the other three nation’s territory, and there could have been off-site development opportunities negotiated that respected the on-site ALR and sustainable urbanism principles. But the influence of Gordon Campbell (remember him?) was deeply channeled toward exporting non-renewable commodities through Roberts Bank, many of them foreign-sourced, and the TFN land stood in the way. Ergo: “Have I got a deal for you!”
    Our ability to grow food for future (emphasis on that one word) generations has once again been nibbled away, and the key precepts of what is actually viable economically and environmentally over the long range have been ignored.
    The only thing sustainable about this situation will be the level of cursing by the children of today’s children, Native and non-Native alike.

    1. As a reminder, al of BC’s first nations claim over 110% of BC as their land.
      Perhaps if we actually treated them what they really are, namely municipalities with a common ancestry indigenous population, then we can manage our Canadian land more properly for the benefit OF ALL. These people groups are not nations but bands of people (same as high as 20,000 and some as low as a few dozen) who share a common ancestry in very small parcels of land. Just because one guy roamed 100 km once to kill a buffalo does not give them a land claim onto the entire territory between their village and the 100km away kill site ! Many claims are false as you cannot carry even a deer more than a few km. As such I have no problem giving the native bands their municipal land and they can manage it as they see fit. Who else gets free land in this country anyway?
      As to growing food for 8B people: it makes sense to do that on an industrial scale and not on condo roofs or community gardens. This is just a green illusion. 80%+ of the population now lives in cities. Food as such has to be brought in, from close by and from afar. Some apples are branded “local” but they are actually from the Okanagan, 400 km away. Isn’t an apple from Washington state which is 50km away more “local” ?
      Our ALR needs a thorough review as some land is very fertile and is being ploughed over in some cases (such as this mall) and some ALR land is very marginal and could easily be removed. But with anything native no politician has the guts to speak the truth, hence the approval of this mall on the Metrovan level. Idle no more I’d say ! Canadians have rights too and if we bring in 300-400,000 per year they too have rights. We don’t allow discrimination on gender, age or even sexual orientation, but do by ancestry. Is this weird, or what ?

      1. “Many claims are false as you cannot carry even a deer more than a few km.”
        Another bizarre and inaccurate claim from Mr Beyer, whose record of same grows still longer. Most offensively in this instance, he is basically calling First Nations peoples liars because of overlap in claims of what land belongs to whom. The entire history of the Western world reads like a litany of such claims. Does ‘the Sudetenland’ ring any bells?
        Average person today can’t draw an English longbow from a few centuries back. Who can say how much weight an indigenous person could carry back when it would have been a regular part of their experience? In the present day, how many people backpack for days with a 50 lb pack without having any lifelong training for same?
        That’s not even mentioning the fact that people probably hunted in groups, and would not necessarily have had one animal per person to carry, and many indigenous people would have belonged to groups that resided in various locales on their territory according to the season. A few hunters together could easily carry a full-size deer between them.
        “Soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely carry between 60 and 100 pounds of gear including body armor, weapons and batteries.”
        http://www.npr.org/2011/04/10/134421473/weight-of-war-soldiers-heavy-gear-packs-on-pain

        1. I really don’t think your constant distasteful goading and rambling is appropriate.
          Using contemporary war theatre notes to bolster an ancient legend is farcical.
          Do you think the Beringia descendants have a claim to Alaska too?

      2. Says the guy who posts images of nautical accidents in a thread on pedestrian safety?
        Do you think the Beringia descendants have a claim to Alaska too?
        Are these descendants you invoke involved in current discussions on same in the present day? Otherwise your fantasy is nothing more than a pointless distraction. Thomas made claims about what is impossible and bases his opinion on same. As noted, those claims are suspect.
        Why would one find an expectation that discussions cleave reasonably closely to reality as we know it to be distasteful? Sort of puts the kibosh on just making stuff up and repeating erroneous statements doesn’t it?

  5. When it comes to consulting aboriginals and facts, Thomas chooses to ignore both.
    The overlapping claims dictum suits the exaggerated narrative of those who place private property rights over justice. This narrative has been tested in court twice now and utterly fails.
    The eventually successful Nisga’a claim originated in 1880, but only caught everyone’s attention when Frank Calder took the government to court in 1967. That process took 30 years to resolve, culminating in the historic Delgamuukw supreme court decision of 1997 where 1,930 km2 of Nass Valley land was granted exclusively to the Nisga’a along with $190 million.
    That result puts the cheap shots and fear mongering about overlapping claims to rest because the Nisga’a property occupies a tiny fraction of their traditional territory. Further, the Nisga’a are taxed on that property and are now 20 years into an effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency.
    To further put it in perspective, the first settlement of native land claims involves an area only 68% of the area of Metro Vancouver and 15% of a single city annual budget. The Tsilhqot’in decision of 2014 likewise gave outright title to 1,900 km2 to an indigenous people, and it represented about 1/3 of their total claim. The court through Justice Henry Vickers committed to an extremely painstaking process of compiling empirical evidence of long-term occupation of the land, and was irrefutable.
    The combined Nisga’a and Tsilhqot’in claims occupy only 47% of the 8,000 km2 of land literally stolen from aboriginals on Vancouver Island which quickly formed into the E&N Railway land grant given to Robert Dunsmuir along with hundreds of thousands in government cash. In essence, the coal barons were bribed to complete confederation with this final railway link.
    This is important because that land was instantly privatized, and as Thomas should well know, private land is not subject to Native land claims, though there may be good legal justification to try. This is almost one quarter of the entire Island pulled out without compensation, let alone legal representation, while at the same time the Natives were shoved into reserves, basically postage stamp parcels surrounding the ancient village sites. It goes on to 140 years of rampant exploitation and high-grading to the point that forests on their third rotation have very little soil left to send roots into. What is logged is shipped today as raw logs overseas unprocessed by local mills, with very little value-added economic return to local communities and BC. This is all sanctioned by both left and right-leaning governments. First Nations have largely been left out of the jobs and economic benefits that were extracted from their original territory just before residential schools came along to pummel First Nations culture and well-being.
    Thomas’s opinions may get published here on this topic several times, and he is entitled to them. But we are also entitled to our rebuttal of their racially-tainted timbre, their factual errors, the countering of his arch-conservative myths with the historical record, and the extreme degree of laziness regarding research. If 8,000 km2 of land was stolen from any other regional group today without compensation, my guess is that Thomas would leap to their defense.
    Lastly, this episode and most indigenous issues are not taught in BC schools to any great extent. That is a bloody shame.

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