Chilcotin ranchers and tourism operators in the Chilcotin are going deeper into debt as they wait to see hat happens with grazing permits and their businesses within the new Tsilquot’in Title Lands.
That from Petrus Rykes, the President of the West Chilcotin Tourism Association.
He says nothing has really happened for a while.
“Government isn’t really doing much, I mean government didn’t sit until this month so, and who is the Minister ?  Who do you hold accountable ?  So for a while there, for about half a year or so, everything was sort of throw the bath out the window sort of thing.”
Before that it was COVID that slowed things down to a crawl.
Rykes says some people are taking things into their own hands.
“I hear through the grapevine, and this is just recently, rumblings of First Nations and some of the tenure holders and people that have businesses trying to work out a bridge deal, but that’s something that is temporary.  It’s not going to solve anything, government has to get involved for this whole thing to work, to make it for a long term proposition.”
Rykes says they’re hoping that the provincial government will get more involved now that the house is sitting once again, and that there is a new Minister in place.
Murray Rankin has taken over from Scott Fraser as the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.
Rykes says his group still wants a seat the table when these things are negotiated.