BC first nations & China
Indigenous organizations in British Columbia have openly articulated a desire for direct, state-level relationships with Chinese mining and resource interests — explicitly bypassing Ottawa. The First Nations Energy and Mining Council launched its “First Nations and China: Transforming Relationships” strategy in 2011, establishing trade desks in Vancouver and China and dispatching a ten-day trade mission to Beijing that same year.
The goal of this strategy was to promote collaborative development between First Nations and China, particularly Chinese businesses and state-owned enterprises involved in natural resource development in Canada.
“First Nations communities in British Columbia are being approached by numerous Chinese private companies and state-owned enterprises that are interested in gaining access to their traditional territories. Some companies are very proactive and doing the right thing by talking to First Nations communities at the earliest stages; others are unfamiliar with the existence of Aboriginal title and rights and Treaty rights within our respective traditional territories. A properly resourced First Nations-China Strategy will ensure First Nations are prepared to respond to the variety of requests and will increase the opportunities for positive benefits. “
https://www.asiapacific.ca/sites/default/files/filefield/chinastrategy_final.pdf
The rhetorical dimension of Beijing’s strategy is, in some respects, the most audacious. As far back as 2012, the Yinka Dene Alliance — a coalition of six British Columbia First Nations — sent an open letter to then-Chinese President Hu Jintao, asking him to raise Canada’s human rights record regarding Indigenous peoples with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during an official visit.
Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, in a Top Secret 2019 report obtained by The Bureau, found that Beijing was already targeting First Nations leaders through intelligence operations disguised as tourism. The goal, a People’s Republic of China Embassy official acknowledged in intercept reports reviewed by Canada’s intelligence watchdog, was never cultural exchange.
The tourism invitation extended to a national-level group of Aboriginal leaders, the report says, was merely “beipian” — Mandarin for “to be fooled.” The true purpose was to pursue Aboriginal-controlled natural resources. Chinese intelligence, the report notes, conducted research on each delegate before they arrived, seeking to identify their “potential usefulness.”
https://www.thebureau.news/p/china-clandestinely-targeting-first
The Canada China Business Council’s 2022 Dentons report — which encourages direct China-to-Indigenous resource dealings — explicitly invokes it, asserting that Chinese and Indigenous Canadians share “a history of marginalization and cultural similarities,” and that there is evidence Chinese explorers first interacted with Indigenous communities on the coast of British Columbia “hundreds of years before contact with Europeans” — a contested historical claim — adding that “instead of colonization, there was mutual trade and respect.” The Musqueam Nation in Vancouver does have a documented history of Chinese-Indigenous relations, rooted in the Chinese market gardeners who lived and farmed on Musqueam reserve land in the early 20th century.
Under British Columbia Premier David Eby, the pace of Indigenous land title recognition and rights expansion has accelerated dramatically.
The provincial government’s implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, combined with a series of landmark court decisions confirming Aboriginal title over specific territories, has rapidly altered the legal landscape governing resource extraction in western Canada.
More land is now subject to Indigenous control. More projects require Indigenous consent. These are, in principle, corrections to historical wrongs. But they also mean that the pathway to Canada’s most strategically valuable resources — lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, timber, and liquefied natural gas — now runs, in many cases, directly through First Nations governments. Beijing, acutely interested in North American court procedures, has obviously noticed.
The pace of that transformation was thrown into sharp relief on February 20, 2026, when the Musqueam Indian Band and the federal government signed three landmark agreements recognizing Musqueam Aboriginal rights — including title — within a traditional territory spanning much of Metro Vancouver: Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, parts of Delta, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, the University of British Columbia campus, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Surrey, and the land beneath Vancouver International Airport. The agreement, which was secretly negotiated and presented as a done deal with zero public knowledge or input, covers some of the most strategically critical infrastructure in Canada, including the Port of Vancouver — the country’s largest and busiest port, and a longstanding focus of The Bureau‘s reporting on Chinese transnational organized crime and Belt and Road Initiative maritime penetration. Even Premier Eby, who attended the signing ceremony, claimed afterward that he had “no line of sight” on the agreement.
The Canada China Business Council — a trade lobby with deep roots inside the Liberal Party of Canada, whose leadership has over the years included figures with close proximity to multiple prime ministers — published a report in March 2022, co-produced with Dentons, explicitly advising Indigenous businesses on how to enter the Chinese market, attract Chinese investment capital, and build direct relationships with Chinese state-linked enterprises.
The Dentons connection carries its own weight.
Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien joined Dentons as counsel in February 2014, where he has worked since. Chrétien’s ties to the Canada China Business Council run deeper still. Paul Desmarais Sr. founded the Canada China Business Council in 1978, and Chrétien’s daughter France is married to Desmarais’ son André — a familial bond that has long placed Chrétien at the intersection of Canada’s most powerful pro-Beijing commercial network. A member of the Desmarais family continues to chair the Canada China Business Council today. In his writing on Chinese influence operations in Canada, scholar Dennis Molinaro has described Chrétien as an “old friend” of China and linked the Council to Beijing’s broader soft power apparatus, including the United Front Work Department. The Council’s advice to First Nations leaders, read against the intelligence picture obtained by The Bureau, takes on a different character: perhaps not merely commercial guidance, but plausibly, an elite channel through which Beijing’s resource interests might be advanced, at arm’s length from Ottawa.
Mark Carney’s government has spoken of strategic partnerships and economic engagement with China as though the principal risk to be managed is the tariff environment.
That is simplistic.
The deeper risk is that Canada’s critical mineral wealth — the very resources that Carney has identified as central to Canadian economic sovereignty in a multipolar world — could be traded away through channels that Ottawa has limited control over. Canada’s public has not yet recognized or reckoned seriously with the fact that Beijing seeks to negotiate directly with Indigenous peoples worldwide, from Australia to Taiwan, seeking to undermine states sovereignty.
Now everything is becoming clear about who is behind Indigenous bands, reconciliation, UNDRIP- DRIPA , and court judgments on land claims in British Columbia—China, a country run by the Communist Party.
As Justin Trudeau said in 2013, while serving as Liberal Party leader, he had ‘a level of admiration’ for China because he believed its ‘basic dictatorship’ allowed it to turn its economy around quickly and implement policies like green energy investment without the constraints he associated with democratic processes.
Based on that, it seems like the direction of Mark Carney’s Canada {Chinada} is clear.
NN, DB
