Declaration Act Secretariat

In 2022, the B.C. Government established the Declaration Act Secretariat, a central agency within government to guide and assist the Province to ensure provincial laws align with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PDF, 150KB) (UN Declaration) and are developed in consultation and co-operation with Indigenous Peoples, as set out in Section 3 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (Declaration Act).

The focus of the Secretariat is to support Section 3 of the Declaration Act by:

• Providing assistance, support, and guidance to ministries to meet consultation and co-operation obligations in development and reform of legislation, and ensuring alignment of legislation with the UN Declaration.
• Developing cross-government processes, standards, practices, methodologies and measures to support the Declaration Act and Section 35 obligations.
• Informing government’s legislative agenda.
• Engaging with Indigenous Peoples to gather input on priorities for legislative alignment and learnings from legislative collaboration/alignment efforts.