Canadian Public Art Indigenous Consultation Policy in BC

What to take away

Canadian public art Indigenous consultation policy shifted after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action in 2015. Three of them speak directly to public culture: Call 79 asks for a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration, Call 80 for a statutory day to honour residential school survivors, and Call 81 for a residential schools national monument in Ottawa. An arts writer who covers these selection processes can learn the peer assessment rules through Canada Council Project Grant.

Who sets the consultation duty

Provincial governments hold the main legislative power for public art on provincial land. Municipalities pass their own public art policies under provincial authority.

British Columbia's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, SBC 2019, c 44, requires provincial laws to align with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Province's own summary sets out the core sections. Section 3 mandates the government to bring provincial laws into alignment with the UN Declaration. Section 4 requires the Province to develop and implement an action plan, in consultation and co-operation with Indigenous Peoples, to meet the objectives of the Declaration. Section 5 requires regular reporting to the legislature, including annual reports tabled by June 30 each year. The resulting Declaration Act Action Plan is a five-year, cross-government plan.

The Act binds the Province. It does not itself lay down a consultation procedure for a mural or a sculpture, which is why the working rules for a public art call come from the funder and the municipality.

The older legal layer is the duty to consult. The Province's guidance on consulting with First Nations states that the Province has a duty to consult under section 35 of the Constitution Act (1982) when established or asserted Aboriginal treaty rights could be adversely impacted by Crown conduct. Its approach is set out in a document titled Government's Procedures for Meeting Legal Obligations When Consulting First Nations, and the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation provides advice and guidance on consultation. In British Columbia the provincial funder is the BC Arts Council, and in Manitoba it is the Manitoba Arts Council. Both publish program guidelines that set out the consultation and documentation expected of applicants, so the funder named in a call for proposals is the one whose rules apply.

The consultation duty usually lands on a public art coordinator or selection committee. A numbered sequence shows how the duty works in practice:

The federal Canada Council for the Arts runs dedicated programs for First Nations, Inuit and Métis artists, including Creating, Knowing and Sharing, which shapes how institutions approach consultation.

What a compliant disclosure contains

A compliant disclosure is a written statement attached to the public art selection file. It names the Indigenous Nations or communities consulted. It gives the dates of each meeting or written exchange. It records specific comments and shows whether the design changed in response. It identifies who led the consultation and who approved the final record.

The length of the consultation window is set by the call for proposals, and it grows with the number of Nations involved. In many municipal policies, the disclosure appears in the selection report rather than in a separate register. Reporters can ask for the consultation log under provincial freedom of information law, in British Columbia the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The Province publishes a sample Proponent: First Nations Engagement Communication Log, a tool for tracking engagement communications, which shows the shape such a log takes.

A public artwork with a live or performance element still carries the same consultation duty; only the coverage of the performance itself follows separate rules.

Records to keep

Public art administrators keep a set of records to show the duty was met. A checklist for the file includes:

These records become the evidence if a project is challenged. They should be stored with the selection file for the life of the artwork, or for the retention period the commissioning body's records schedule sets. Public art on municipal land usually follows a formal commissioning process, which is why these records are tied to the selection file.

What happens if you skip consultation

The concrete consequence varies by province, but it is never just a reputational concern. A project that bypasses required consultation can be sent back to the selection committee. A provincial funder may withhold payment or rescind approval.

In British Columbia, as elsewhere, a council decision taken without the consultation its own policy requires can be challenged by judicial review. Public art selection differs from museum collection decisions in the same way that legal rules differ by place. Museum deaccession rules show a similar patchwork logic for another arts governance area.

Where the rules differ by place

The table below outlines the main provincial and municipal variations.

These differences mean that a disclosure acceptable in one province may be incomplete in another. Reporters should always check the specific public art policy named in the call for proposals. The City of Vancouver's Public Art Policy, revised in 2019, requires consultation with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations for civic art commissions. Where no province-wide act applies, the duty comes from the municipality's own public art policy, and that policy is the document to cite.

The same document checks used to verify an arts institution's filings apply to a consultation disclosure: name the record, its date and who signed it.

Common questions