The Open House Is Over. The Land-Transfer Deadline Is Not.

The province held the Tumbler Ridge meeting yesterday. The public record is still open for two more weeks.

The B.C. government’s Tumbler Ridge open house on proposed West Moberly First Nations Treaty Land Entitlement land transfers is now over. The deadline that matters is not. Public engagement on West Moberly First Nations’ Outstanding Lands Phase 1 package remains open until June 30, 2026.

That is the date rural residents, tenure holders, permit holders, adjacent landowners and local governments should be watching. The province says the package contains 13 proposed parcels in northeastern B.C., including one Tumbler Ridge parcel. It says the transfers are connected to lands owed under Treaty 8 and to land accommodation for impacts of the Site C project.

There is an important limit that should be stated plainly: the province says these proposed parcels are Crown lands only, not privately owned fee-simple lands. This is not a story about private homes being seized. It is a story about whether B.C.’s NDP government is giving affected communities enough clear, usable information before public land moves into a different legal and land-use framework.

The official engagement page says the province wants written comments about how people may be impacted by the new proposed Crown land-transfer selections. It also says those interests and concerns will be considered as part of decisions on transfers through Treaty Land Entitlement settlements and Site C land agreements. That is exactly why the public needs more than a Saturday open house and a PDF comment form.

Land decisions in northeastern B.C. are not abstract. Crown land is where people work, hunt, guide, ranch, ride, cut timber, build roads, hold tenures, access recreation areas and plan local economic development. Once a transfer is complete, the practical question for residents is simple: what changes, what stays the same, who decides, and where is that written in language ordinary people can understand?

Premier David Eby’s government likes to talk about reconciliation as certainty. But certainty is not created by telling people to trust the process. Certainty is created by publishing maps people can read, explaining access implications parcel by parcel, identifying affected permits and tenures, answering local-government questions on the record, and showing how public feedback changed — or did not change — the final decision.

The historical context matters. In 2023, B.C. and Canada announced Treaty Land Entitlement settlements with five Treaty 8 First Nations. The province said B.C. would provide about 44,266 hectares of Crown land as part of those settlements. The current West Moberly Phase 1 package is part of that implementation, not a rumour and not a social-media theory.

That makes transparency more important, not less. Treaty obligations should be honoured honestly. Rural communities should not be treated as an afterthought while implementation details are worked out elsewhere. The province has until June 30 to receive comments. Residents have until June 30 to get on the record. After that, the NDP cannot claim nobody asked the questions.