British Columbia then joined the four-year-old Confederation and became the sixth province ofCanada on July 20, 1871. The confederation agreement was based on terms of union negotiated in the Canadian capital ofOttawa between theColony of British Columbia (on the west coast ofNorth America, bordering thePacific Ocean) and the new Dominion of Canada, extending its territory and reach continent-wide, coast to coast. TheTerms of Union agreement document consists of 14 articles.
For British Columbia, financial concerns were at the top of the list in negotiating union with Canada. The Dominion assumed BC's debts and liabilities, provided BC with a generous subsidy and an annual per capita grant, based on an inflated population figure. Canada also agreed to pay salaries of supreme court and county court judges, and pensions of previous colonial civil servants whose positions might be affected by the union with the Dominion of Canada. Other articles dealt with parliamentary representation, postal services, customs tariffs, interprovincial trade, lighthouses and facilities such as a quarantine medical station and a criminal penitentiary. The terms promised a trans-continental railway and a first-class graving dock for ship repair of a port on the Pacific Ocean coast atEsquimalt.[2][3]
TheTerms of Union also addressed Indian land policy in a manner that would effectively perpetuate BC's pre-Confederation practices, through "a policy as liberal as that hitherto pursued by the British Columbia Government shall be continued by the Dominion Government after the Union". Post union, Canada would learn that the policies of British Columbia with regard to lands and Indigenous peoples were not at all "liberal".[2][3] This foundational ambiguity related to theIndian Land Question, settlement and occupation of unceded lands, is a defining characteristic of BC in Confederation and has ongoing implications for society and economy.
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