Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Each and every negotiation table is managed independently. We monitor the work and the progress at the table, and we do it with the first nation as well because we want to get to a settlement by such a time. All the work at the table is focused on achieving that settlement, so if

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The reporting centre allows you to do that. It's very flexible. You can press “print” and you'll get all the specific claims that are in our process right now. They give you the status, where it is, what the specific claim is. You can do it by province. It's quite versatile, and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The “automatic” is there, but it's not ours. At the three-year mark the first nations can leave the process and bring their claim to the tribunal and we can be still sitting at the table, so it's up to the first nation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As part of our negotiation process, we do extensive consultations, especially when there's a land component, or an ATR component, to that. Our teams often have town meetings. They go and brief, meet with the officials, the municipalities, the mayors. They have town meetings to ma

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From what we've seen in the press, when they talk about “take it or leave it” offers on the table...I guess our negotiation process differs a bit from other negotiation processes in that we have worked with the first nation to arrive at what we believe could be the value, or how

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For most cases, we present the fullest offer we can make to them, so we leave ourselves very little room to manoeuvre. That's because we want to get to the settlement sooner rather than later with the first nation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  After the three years of negotiations, they can go to the tribunal.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Of course they can.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, in the course of the negotiations, once we've established that we have an understanding of what the claim looks like and how we're going to be compensating, and once we put a value to what the claim is, we come in to get a mandate to settle these claims. Then, once an offe

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I guess from the first nations' point of view, it's getting used to the concept that we come in and this will take three years. It's been a difficult adaptation for everyone when it comes to the pace and how we need to focus more at the tables. The first nations sometimes feel

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As I indicated, some of the claims at the tribunal have not necessarily left negotiations to go there. They're claims that either have not been accepted by the department...so they never made it to the negotiation process at all.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Do you mean to conclude negotiations or...?