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Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

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Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#191

Post by AndrewKemendo »

gotoeleven wrote: post #173
amackera wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the point of reconciliation is to accept unequivocally the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. Is it not morally questionable to ignore indigenous peoples' sovereign rights (over fishing, forests, lands, etc.) as we have been doing up until now?

How can this work in practice, though? Wouldn't acknowledging indigenous peoples' sovereign rights over their lands require the formation of entirely new nations with their own borders and laws and military and courts etc etc that would cover the entirety of canada ? If they are have the right of a sovereign over these lands then can't they just tell everyone else to leave?

Yes that’s exactly right

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#192

Post by julienb_sea »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #113
spxneo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building more homes in Vancouver will not result in lower prices because this is not a supply problem it is the financial assetization of home equity that drives higher and higher prices. Blue collar workers turned multi-millionaires rely on the continued rise of home prices to purchase cheap credit which they use to speculate on more homes. When they couldn't find anymore locals they turned to the international mark…

It is a mistake to blame the high cost of housing on market forces. It is largely the product of local housing policy. It is a choice.

Local housing policy only sets housing costs explicitly if they override market forces e.g. via rent control. There are plenty of examples of how the market responds to this type of intervention, by not building more supply, letting existing supply fall into disrepair and constricting uncontrolled supply, resulting in much higher market rate.

In general, housing policy affects supply, and market forces decide the prices. Notably increasing supply doesn't always lower prices as demand is elastic.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#193

Post by Tiktaalik »

nightowl_games wrote: post #172
Tiktaalik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are given special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian citizens have access to > I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others The reason for this is because they are using their rights from signed treaties that define how resources are used on their lands. Persons that are part of First Nations like the Squamish and the Haida are not just "some citizen…

> power over lands that they never legally ceded to British Columbia or Canada. Actually curious about this concept of "unceded land". If it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not Canada? Seems like this "unceded land" concept is only applied selectively?

I dunno there's a lot of layers to "sovereignty" some of which FNs have deemed to test and others they have declined to do so.

It's not just land issues. For example in other areas some FNs have wrestled back control over their child services from the Federal government.

But regarding land, it used to be that you could "pre-empt" "Crown Land" and get permission to build a cabin on it and take ownership of it, but that hasn't been a thing for quite a while, likely because the Crown realized that their foundational arguments for owning "Crown land" was pretty shakey.

At the moment FNs in BC largely seem interested in regaining title over their land and regaining a fair degree of power over how it is used.

It's entirely possible for a jurisdiction to have ownership and control over land and to still be within the context and laws of the State called Canada.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#194

Post by Tiktaalik »

gotoeleven wrote: post #173
amackera wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the point of reconciliation is to accept unequivocally the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. Is it not morally questionable to ignore indigenous peoples' sovereign rights (over fishing, forests, lands, etc.) as we have been doing up until now?

How can this work in practice, though? Wouldn't acknowledging indigenous peoples' sovereign rights over their lands require the formation of entirely new nations with their own borders and laws and military and courts etc etc that would cover the entirety of canada ? If they are have the right of a sovereign over these lands then can't they just tell everyone else to leave?

I don't really see how this is that challenging. It's just another jurisdiction with its own governance structure, just like what happens when you pass between regional districts, provinces and municipalities and the underlying various laws change.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#195

Post by ricardobeat »

TSiege wrote: post #181
extr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that they do not fall under jusrisdiction is a farce and legal contrivance. In reality they have no international standing and do not and would not constitute an independent state under any normal criteria. What's happening here is the government is treating them with kid gloves because there is the perception what happened in the past is unfair (true!) and there is a desire to make amends for it. That's all…

It doesn't matter if they don't have international standing, what matters is that Canada has recognized them as sovereign entities. You can't be sovereign but then be boxed into the laws of another country

Exactly why they wouldn’t be sovereign nations except by Canada’s niceness. You can only be sovereign by having some form of strong leverage, either resources, power, or international support.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#196

Post by nikitaga »

nightowl_games wrote: post #172
Tiktaalik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are given special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian citizens have access to > I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others The reason for this is because they are using their rights from signed treaties that define how resources are used on their lands. Persons that are part of First Nations like the Squamish and the Haida are not just "some citizen…

> power over lands that they never legally ceded to British Columbia or Canada. Actually curious about this concept of "unceded land". If it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not Canada? Seems like this "unceded land" concept is only applied selectively?

"Unceded land" means that because 100+ years ago the British settled as they wanted without asking for permission, the land actually still belongs to indigenous people, and not to Canadians, not to the people who currently live on it.

"Unceded land" isn't exactly a legal concept, it's more of an activist slogan from people who want to see all public land (e.g. >90% of BC) privatized based on race, or want to hold the threat of that over our heads to get more special treatment based on race.

Legally, Canada does have title to the land, BUT that title is also encumbered by "aboriginal title" – a limited set of extra rights of indigenous people. For example, Canada can't prevent indigenous people from hunting, needs to meaningfully consult with them before approving resource extraction projects, etc.

All of this is very poorly defined – in one paragraph of the constitution, and a couple more in ancient royal proclamations – the rest is being interpreted and re-interpreted by the courts as they wish, largely following the general popculture trends.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#197

Post by cherioo »

chasebank wrote: post #98
mjr00 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This development is being built on the waterfront across False Creek from downtown; it is prime real estate. Given that + being brand new, units will sell far above the Vancouver average. As a guess, studio units in this complex will start at 750k, 1 beds at 1m and 2beds at 1.5m. Maybe higher.

Most people on HN always repeat the sentiment that if you build more housing, prices will fall. I think you're right, these will sell for far above average. We don't have a housing shortage problem, we have a housing turned into a financialized asset problem.

The newly developed housing isn’t meant to be the one that is cheap. What gets cheaper is the old housing people left behind to get into the new housing.

And if a city cannot build as fast as people flowing into the city, then there will never be “housing left behind”.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#198

Post by golergka »

systemstops wrote: post #92

Someone at Westbank is a genius: fund the building of a massive skyscraper project on land that was recently returned to indigenous tribes because of a lawsuit, a project that would never be normally approved because of zoning laws. Then, declare any criticism of the project as racist, thus guaranteeing it will be built. I wonder how much of the money the tribe is actually getting out of this?

Race-baiting manipulation against NIMBY zoning laws. Personally, none of the sides provoke any sympathy.

However, what's important is the law. If they have proved their right to the land in court, that's the only thing that should really matter. And aside from the PR manipulation, a corporation building residential buildings is obviously a positive thing, providing value for everybody involved: their shareholders, land owners and future residents. The only who suffers are their neighbours who tried to prop up their property values by strangling development.

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#199

Post by temptemptemp111 »

api wrote: post #48

Let me see if I got this. 1. Settlers colonize indigenous lands, drive indigenous people into small parcels and reservations and try to exterminate their culture. 2. Settlers decide to start refusing to build enough housing for themselves because they don’t want to alter the “character of the neighborhood” after… uhh… very much doing that. 3. Indigenous people build housing on their remaining bits of land for settler…

[dead]

Re: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and Indigenous

#200

Post by wolfhumble »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #185
crtified wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 2 families solely inhabited (owned) an island, since pre-history, and Family 1 sells the entire island to newcomers, while Family 2 takes no part in the deal or its approval, and does not cede their land to the purchase, then any court in the land will, quite rightly, hear Family 2's case that they are still the owner of their regions of the island. Why would that be different here?

See the Louisiana Purchase for instance. Or the founding of Israel by Britain.

> Or the founding of Israel by Britain.

Jerusalem, City of David, was conquered by David more than 3000 years ago. The founding of Israel was not built out of thin air.

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