Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
Premier John Horgan has halted his government’s plan to rebuild the Royal BC Museum, citing public concerns about the $789 million expenditure and declaring their project “the wrong call.”
Horgan’s May announcement of the massive rebuild project prompted backlash among both the general public and other provincial politicians, with one former NDP cabinet minister calling it “tone-deaf” and the BC Liberal Party declaring it Horgan’s “vanity project.”
Issues of home affordability and family doctor shortages across the province prompted 70 per cent of British Columbians polled by Angus Reid earlier this month to indicate that they were opposed to the project, with 42 per cent saying they were “strongly opposed” and only four percent saying they “strongly supported” it.
Now, Horgan says that his government have taken the opposition to heart and acted according to the stated wishes of their constituents.
“I always try to act in the best interests of British Columbians,” said Horgan in his party’s June 22 statement on the change. “That involves always listening, and taking responsibility when you make the wrong call. This is one of those times.”
“We’re going back to the drawing board. The museum will continue operations and will not be closing this fall. The RCBM has agreed to begin a new engagement process. All options are on the table and British Columbians will determine the next steps.”
In response to Horgan’s announcement, BC Liberal opposition leader Kevin Falcon – who had previously claimed that “the NDP really have signed their own death warrant” with the museum project – expressed his concern that Horgan’s “crazy boondoggle of a project” hadn’t really been taken off the table.
“[Horgan] is already sculpting what [future plans] will look like by saying that a renovation will not be considered,” said Falcon at a press conference. “I’m very concerned that this sounds like ‘let’s kick this down the road until the temperature cools down, and then we can proceed as we intend to do.’”
BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau commended Horgan’s actions and willingness to accept fault in her own party’s statement, but went on to say that “the announcement of the billion-dollar rebuild was an indication of how out of touch the BC NDP is.”
“Health care in B.C. worsens every day, communities continue to suffer from climate emergencies, and the affordability crisis is intensifying,” said Furstenau. “It should not have taken weeks of massive public outcry and political calculations for them to realize that the public has other priorities.”
Adam Olsen, a Green Party MLA and member of Tsartlip First Nation, said in the same statement that “[having] the premier continually refer to this project as ‘safeguarding our collective history’ is painful and completely undermines the living, breathing Indigenous Peoples.”
Green also called the original announcement’s references to reconciliation “out of touch and hurtful, especially when Indigenous Nations have been saying for years that their goal is to repatriate their items and ancestral remains.”
Indeed, the issue of repatriation was another source of public criticism after the provincial government’s initial announcement. Tŝilhqot’in Chief Joe Alphonse told CBC at the time that “they have stolen artifacts that belong to Indigenous groups and First Nations and have not expressed the intention of returning them or asked how we would like to display them.”
The Nuxalk First Nation also sought to have canoes, masks, regalia, and one totem pole currently on display at the Royal BC Museum returned to them earlier this year, stating that the items had been taken from them or sold to colonial forces under duress in the early 1900s.
“The spirit of my great grandfather is stuck there, trapped in that museum,” Hereditary Chief Snuxyaltwa told the Vancouver Sun at the time. “The pole must be brought back to free his spirit and for the next generations of our people.”
Despite the Nuxalk nation receiving support from the United Nations’ International Federation for the Protection of the Rights of Ethnic, Religious, Linguistic and Other Minorities, these items currently remain in the care of the Royal BC Museum.
Locally, Boundary-Similkameen MLA Roly Russell said in a statement to the Times Chronicle that he was proud of Horgan for recognizing “when we need to step back and rethink our own direction. It’s how most of us operate in our personal lives, and it is how good governance ought to work, in my mind.”
He also expressed excitement that the decision would give the government more room “to explore options about regionalization of something as important as education about our shared history, including both natural and cultural history.”
“I’ve certainly heard that this is important to our constituents, especially from interior communities like ours, and I look forward to future conversations and engagement about something that’s as important as what a new Royal BC Museum looks like for all of us.”
