Home equity has 'plummeted': Anger erupts at City of Richmond's Aboriginal title meeting
Over 700 people packed into the ballroom for the session, with Mayor Malcom Brodie and the City’s head lawyer Tony Capuccinello Iraci providing a presentation and answering a litany of questions from worried residents stressed over the uncertainty of their property ownership status and the impact on their property values, ability to get mortgages and insurance, and ability to sell the property.
“Your ownership is now in question,” said City lawyer
“This is a real impact. As a landowner, you’re learning about the outcome of this decision and it has negative consequences for you as landowners, for the values of your property, for your ability to get lending or mortgages and all the other things. So unfortunately, that was the court’s decision,” said Iraci during the meeting.
He went as far as to say that “all those negative things, home equity, all that has plummeted. There’s a cloud.”
“When we talk about security of title, what does land title ownership mean? It means you can go to a bank and you can get a loan. It means that insurance companies know that you are the owner. And the problem with this decision is that it says otherwise. It says no. Your ownership is now in question. Now there’s a senior interest that covers your land. Could lenders decide not to lend? Absolutely. I’ve been told that they’ve already begun that,” continued Iraci.
I just left City of Richmond’s public meeting providing residents with info on how the Cowichan Aboriginal title ruling impacts their properties.
City says attendance was 700+ people. Event moved from City Hall to a hotel ballroom due to high interest. #bcpoli #vanpoli #vanre pic.twitter.com/PQatG3iOam
— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) October 29, 2025
City officials urged residents who are having such challenges to directly reach out to the City’s legal team so that this can be added as arguments in the forthcoming appeal. He emphasized the importance of this collaboration with the municipal team.
Ahead of the public meeting, in an attempt to quell some of the angst and address the concerns made by Richmond’s municipal officials, the Cowichan Tribes issued a statement asserting that their land claims in Richmond “has not and does not challenge the effectiveness or validity of any title held by individual private landowners. The ruling does not erase private property.”
However, the City officials emphasized they are fully on the side of residents and their best interests, and said this new statement by Cowichan Tribes is the complete opposite of the judgment and what the First Nation’s legal team argued in court, suggesting these statements by this Vancouver Island-based band — not the City — are misinformation. Reading from a paper passed over to him, an excerpt of the trial transcript, Mayor Brodie said the Cowichan Tribes’ lawyer argued, “Aboriginal title is not symbolic. It is full ownership interest. Once recognized, the Cowichan people will have exclusive right to decide how the land is used, including whether it may be developed, transferred, or accessed by others.”
“They also said, ‘Any disposition of land, whether by the Province or a private party, would require the Cowichan’s agreement.’ So you can see the significance of those statements, and that’s what the Cowichan’s lawyer told the judge when asked about the title being pursued. So this is serious. Trust me,” Brodie told the audience.
Aboriginal title and fee simple title cannot coexist, says City
Iraci said the Aboriginal title “parallels exactly what fee simple is, virtually 90 per cent. The two cannot coexist.”
“When the Crown granted those titles to the first owners and they were transferred over the years and years, the very foundation of our Torrens system is that you are the indivisible owner to the exclusion of all others. So the notion of having Aboriginal title coexist is nonsensical. It really is. We can’t have two owners that have those exclusive ownership rights over the same piece of land.”
City officials stated there is a desire to establish clarity and finish the appeal process as soon as possible to not leave property owners in limbo for years. They warned that the appeal process could take five years, with the B.C. Court of Appeal hearing the matter within a year, followed by some time for an appeal decision to be made. If it is appealed again to the country’s top court, the Supreme Court of Canada, it could take several more years.
“If the City of Richmond’s appeal, along with the appeal of all the other defendants, fails, and the principle of fee simple ownership is not respected, as it said in legislation, then ultimately we will seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, because this decision is outrageous on so many levels,” said Iraci.
Throughout the session, City officials repeatedly sought to reassure anxious homeowners that the City is doing its part to “vigorously contest” their property interests.
“It is hugely unfair that you as a landowner now face all the negative consequences of this decision. And the real injustice is that the implications of what you just described can apply to any feasible owner in British Columbia,” said the City’s head lawyer.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie; City of Richmond’s public meeting for residents on the impact of the Cowichan Tribes’ Aboriginal title claim on Oct. 28, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)
Provincial and federal governments accused of half-hearted defence
Iraci said for the forthcoming appeal proceedings, all three levels of government, as defendants, must argue for “extinguishment” — that existing fee-simple title conventions override Aboriginal title considerations.
He said the federal government initially pleaded extinguishment, but abandoned its reliance on such a defence in its amended response to the civil claim by the Cowichan Tribes filed in November 2018. More troubling, he says, the provincial government never pleaded extinguishment.
In fact, says Iraci, the City was the only party at trial arguing that fee simple title extinguishes Aboriginal title.
Both the provincial and federal governments have been accused of “pulling their punches” during the trial in protecting the ownership of private and public property — delivering a half-hearted defence to uphold broader reconciliation principles. The B.C. Attorney General’s directive undermined the provincial government’s ability to adequately defend the fee simple titles, stipulating that provincial lawyers cannot advance arguments based on the “unilateral extinguishment of Aboriginal rights.”
“It was the obligation of both [Canada and B.C.] attorney generals to vigorously and fearlessly defend private property rights, not to handcuff their lawyers and say, ‘hey, you can’t argue this, you can’t argue that,'” said Iraci.
The City’s head lawyer also revealed that because his team, and only his team, argued for extinguishment in the trial, this case can still be fully appealed to nullify Aboriginal title claims.
“You deserve the Province to fearlessly defend your rights. And the City of Richmond did. The only reason this is a live issue on appeal is because the City of Richmond argued extinguishment. If that hadn’t occurred, there would be no prospect of the court finding extinguishment,” said Iraci.
Both Brodie and Iraci implored impacted property owners and members of the public to demand that the provincial and federal governments argue for extinguishment in the appeal.
Defending the provincial government’s approach, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma told the audience that “we take this issue very seriously.”
She highlighted that the Province was the first of the defendants to announce their decision to appeal in early September 2025, and also shared that they are potentially working with other defendants on a stay application to at least temporarily pause the enforcement of the court’s decision.
Sharma also explained why the provincial lawyers did not argue for extinguishment, painting a picture that this was not necessarily a powerful nuclear option for the defence.
“Lawyers will have different arguments, but our arguments got to the same place. We argued displacement and suspension of Aboriginal title when there’s a fee simple title. So we argued that the fee simple ownership and our land title system in B.C. was a paramount legal structure that all of you landowners need to have — that legal certainty when you have your fee simple,” she said.
“The province has never been successful on a unilateral extinguishment claim for decades. Our arguments were based on what we thought would get to private landowners’ protection through the case law that was developed in the courts up until today. I just wanted to assure you of that when I make my decisions about how to represent British Columbia, we may land in different spots than the City of Richmond, but we make them to make sure that private property rights were upheld and recognized by the court as being a major part of our legal system. That being said, we both lost on those arguments.”
Notably, perhaps reflecting the mood in the room, Sharma did not begin her address with a land acknowledgement — a practice that local officials have observed for years at gatherings both large and small.
Property owners angry over being kept in the dark for years
Audience frustration boiled over repeatedly throughout the evening, with the anger directed towards municipal officials in the room. Mayor Brodie’s moderation of the question-and-answer period often devolved into heated exchanges.
Several impacted residents accused the municipal and provincial governments of failing to notify them about the litigation, which has been ongoing since 2014. Many only found out earlier this month — less than two weeks ago — when letters by the City were sent to over 150 fee simple titles within the claim area, informing them of the risks and the scheduled public meeting for further information.
Justice Young made the controversial landmark ruling in early August 2025, ending a trial that first began in September 2019 — deemed to be the longest in Canadian history. In early September 2025, the City, Province, and Musqueam First Nation announced they would appeal the decision.
Multiple speakers demanded to know why homeowners were left uninformed for more than a decade.
“You’re the mayor. You’re supposed to know everything that’s going on in Richmond. I pay my taxes to you. Why did you not reach out to us?” said Kal Mattu, who has owned his home in the now-disputed area for half a century.
Iraci said typically, whenever a lawsuit is initiated, the plaintiffs, the Cowichan Tribes, are supposed to provide notice of their claims to the affected landowners. The municipal, provincial, and federal governments took issue that the Cowichan Tribes chose not to, with the judge later rejecting a request made by all three governments. “Ultimately, it was the court’s decision” to keep private property owners in the dark, he said.
Another resident said they are the “victims” in this situation, as they cannot even defend themselves in court.
Answering a question from Mattu, the City’s head lawyer emphasized that impacted property owners are still the registered fee simple owner — at least for the time being — and that they still need to pay municipal property taxes.
Repeatedly throughout the session, the mayor called for order as the crowd grew restless, emphasizing that he would not engage in a debate.
After the event, when asked by media, Mayor Brodie said that he fully empathizes with the concerns of property owners and said they have every right to be angry. If he were in their shoes, he said, he would share similar concerns and sentiments.
“They’re entitled to feel the way they feel. I’d be very angry if I was one of those landowners and found that I woke up one morning and found that there was this Aboriginal title which affected my property,” said Brodie.
He also said they are entitled to be angry at the City for not informing them of this matter well in advance.
From the outset, the Cowichan Tribes sought an area of 1,846 acres to be designated under their Aboriginal title. Although Justice Young deemed about 40 per cent of this area to be under Aboriginal title, the Cowichan Tribes are launching their own appeal process to expand the declared Aboriginal title area that covers the entire green area in the map — all 1,846 acres, an area equivalent to nearly twice the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, instead of 732 acres.
This area covers not only residential properties, but also major commercial and industrial businesses, farmland, and property owned by the municipal, provincial, and federal governments, including port facilities and a recently-built jet fuel facility for the region’s main airport.
“In the business sense, it could be even more complex and worrisome than that, when of course the businesses, they rely on financing for their livelihood to keep going as a business, and all of a sudden maybe the financers, the companies who make the loans, are all of a sudden questioning the validity and the credibility of the underlying land security,” said the mayor.
City of Richmond
Cowichan First Nation’s claimed area in southeast Richmond. (Google Maps)
This case is being closely watched. If the appeal processes prove to be unsuccessful, it would set a precedent to have Aboriginal title land claims override private and public property across the province.
There are over two million fee simple titles in B.C. that are potentially susceptible to claims by other Indigenous groups for declarations of Aboriginal title.
Shortly after ruling in favour of the Cowichan Tribes, another B.C. judge granted the Haida First Nation Aboriginal title to the entire Haida Gwaii archipelago.
The surge in land-claims activity now confronting property owners comes on the heels of the BC NDP-led government’s decision in 2024 to abandon its proposed overhaul of the Land Act, which would have controversially established joint management of Crown lands with First Nations.
For a more recent example, earlier this month, the Province also proposed eliminating the referendum requirement in Vancouver for transferring parkland to First Nations — one of the several key conditions for the City of Vancouver to abolish the Vancouver Park Board, raising questions about democratic safeguards around land transfers.
As well, the provincial government has proposed legislation to enable municipal governments to hold secret meetings and negotiations with First Nations for confidential matters and cultural sensitivity purposes.
Together, these developments cast fresh doubt on Premier David Eby government’s style and approach to reconciliation: while the rhetoric emphasizes partnership and Indigenous rights, the decisions suggest a more top-down, less transparent process that leaves many local residents, businesses and landowners feeling sidelined, and drastically hinders B.C.’s economy and investment climate, and the provincial government’s ability to raise revenue to sustain the services expected.
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