Image: Conservative Party of BC / Facebook / B.C.’s Conservative leader John Rustad (centre) with Chilliwack Conservative candidate Á’a:líya (A’aliya) Warbus at Cultus Lake on Sept. 30, 2024.

By Don Mitchell

Truth and Reconciliation Day

Governments ‘need to be mapping a very different course’ with Indigenous peoples, Rustad says during Chilliwack stop

Sep 30, 2024 | 12:41 PM

CHILLIWACK – B.C.’s Conservative leader suggested that politicians need to do more for Canada’s First Nations through “economic reconciliation” and “strategically” returning land.

During a stop in Chilliwack on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, John Rustad insisted upon “mapping a very different course” with the country’s Indigenous peoples, saying the “big government approach” over the decades has “been terrible.”

“It’s very … vital that First Nations engage in the economy, that first nations have that opportunity to be able to deliver prosperity for its people rather than what is currently happening,” Rustad said, alongside local Conservative candidate Á’a:líya (A’aliya) Warbus at Cultus Lake on Monday morning.

“True, true reconciliation cannot be achieved without economic reconciliation.”

Rustad said that if the Conservatives are elected in October, they would seek to help communities with housing, clean water, addiction treatment, environmental stewardship, and re-acquiring land.

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Warbus, a member of the Sto:lo Nation and the daughter of former B.C. Lieutenant Governor Steven Lewis Point, characterized the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as “an exciting shift” in government relations with Indigenous people.

She is one of 11 Indigenous candidates vying for seats across 93 ridings this fall, including two Conservatives, seven NDP, and two from the Green Party.