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Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm honoured to have been asked to talk to you today. My understanding is that the committee, as part of its work, is seeking a better understanding of the key issues and challenges related to first nations land and environmental management on reserve.
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee The advantages and disadvantages are fairly apparent. The work that's been led by Manny Jules and company is bringing those issues forward. My own view is that this is a false debate. There are some first nations who clearly want to move in the direction of the legislation that's
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee The key point is that whatever their status or to whomever they were sold, they would remain first nations land. My concern is that this initiative is going to serve, at least in the short to medium term, very few first nations. It's been designed for very few first nations. The
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee I hesitate getting into that because that's a political discussion with the first nations. I think you should ask them. My problem is that the instruments, short of fee simple and the kind of legislative initiatives being proposed, have never been used properly to begin with.
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee Let's take leaseholds as an example. There's no reason you can't lease land on reserve, for example. There are whole parts of the world where corporate and foreign interests can only lease land.
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee Downtown London, England.
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee It's crown land. You can only lease it. I haven't done a detailed study on this. This is just what I've heard in discussion with people who should know. There are parts of New England in the United States, a good part of Southeast Asia.... They're former Commonwealth lands. They
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee My impression is that in Canada we've fallen into a little bit of a false debate. I think, originally, as a straw man it was posited that all the efforts have gone in to make the reserve system and the Indian Act, or however it's been touted by the speaker, work, but it doesn't w
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee In dealing with an antiquated process, a process that doesn't have any other comparison outside of this environment...the federal government actually has to take ownership of the land to make it reserve, to transfer it, to worry about third-party interests and all that. These are
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee It's the whole process. I don't think you can single out any one part of it. My own opinion is that the department is spread far too thin. I really like the way the participants in the reserve land and economic development study, those first nations that I quoted at the end, pos
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee Not that I'm aware of, but I think there are other ways of making the third-party interest issue easier to deal with. The specific example I'd use is to think of yourself as the third party. You have some right on the land. The land is going to be purchased by someone else, in t
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee The issue here is that it's difficult for many first nations to find land for the purpose they're looking for it that doesn't already have some kind of encumbrance on it. That encumbrance can be a hydro line, it can be a railway right of way. Some of it's not even registered on t
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee It gets a little difficult, depending on the situation and the cause of the contamination, but as a general rule it's a federal liability. It's federal land. It was under federal watch that the lands were contaminated, even if the contaminant is often a federal undertaking. The m
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson
Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee At the point of the first nation taking over responsibility for land management under FNLMA, that is where the federal liability ends. Anything that happened before that is a federal liability. There is a federal obligation under the FNLMA to clean that up. I would have to check
May 1st, 2012Committee meeting
Warren Johnson