On NDP's 3rd Crack at Heritage Conservation Act, We Still Have Same Concerns

Today we sent our third formal submission to the BC government on the Heritage Conservation Act Transformation Project. Our third. Since 2023, we've been fighting this thing.

To be fair, the government has made some real concessions. "Intangible heritage" is out of the bill. Heritage Management Zones are gone. Mandatory engagement records dropped. Credit where it's due, and we said so in this third letter.

But every time you pull back a layer, there's another layer underneath doing the same thing with different words.

Consent is out of the permitting criteria — but the paper explicitly enables what it calls "joint or consent-based decision-making agreements" that govern permit exemptions and modifications. Intangible heritage is gone — but "cultural practices" just walked in through the definitions section. Heritage Management Zones aren't in the legislation — but the regulatory authority to create them is still sitting right there.

We've been flagging this pattern since 2023. The answer keeps being: trust us, it'll work out in regulation. That's not good enough when we're talking about million dollar fines for builders — while the same document proposes permit exemptions for equivalent activities on Crown land. One rule for some, another rule for everyone else isn't heritage protection. It's a two-tier system.

And through all three rounds of this, nobody has answered the basic question: with a shortage of archaeologists and busy bureaucrats, how is a Heritage Branch going to deliver the faster, simpler system they're promising?

We'll keep pushing. Our letter is HERE.