Evidence of meeting #32 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was treaty.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Stahl was sitting in that seat. He must have chosen the French channel to help him improve his French. Perhaps it is the French channel.
I will keep on talking, but you are going to take this out of my time, aren't you, Mr.Chair? I am sure that Mr. Russell, Mr. Albrecht and Mr. Bruinooge want to hear me.
Is it working now?
On a lighter note, I wanted to tell you that one of the biggest challenges you face is learning French, given that your spouse is a French-speaker from Quebec. When I see the way in which you negotiated this treaty, I know that you are going to succeed. I do not think that you will have a problem.
More seriously—I can assure you that I have read the treaty and what has been written about it—I would like to know the main challenges you expect when the bill is passed, in the next few days, I hope. If the bill were passed, at the latest by the time we adjourn next week, what would happen? What are the main challenges that your community faces? How about those who are closest to you in the Vancouver area?
5 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
Oh, where do I start?
On a not-so-serious note, maybe my children, who will be going to French school, will teach me French. But on a more serious note, the workload, with the 30 projects we're working on, is quite complex. I told you about the law-making, I told you about the land use planning, but details and issues come uncovered as you drill down into the projects we're working on.
For example, we have a number of what are called “CP holders” in the land use plan, individuals who own land on our reserve. They don't want to be left behind by the economic development opportunities, because the best lands are owned by the nation as a whole. We are getting a facilitator to try to guide discussions to see if there's any way we can work cooperatively so no one gets left behind. That's just one example.
The infrastructure, the physical infrastructure we need to bring to the reserve to be able to develop, is in the range of well over $50 million. So once we negotiate the legal parameters to be able to access services from Metro Vancouver, the regional governance district—that's one big hurdle we haven't been able to cross in 20 years.... At least now the treaty provides for that, so that access to a water source can't be withheld from us legally as it has been for 20 years now, or longer, I should say.
Those are just two examples of the real sorts of challenges we have ahead of us. The workload of implementing the treaty is tenfold compared to negotiating the treaty, but we are making very good progress on all the 30 projects we have listed right now.
We expect the effective day to be next spring, March if at all possible, so we aim to have all this completed before then. There are plenty of challenges. I can't wait for the bill to be passed so it doesn't distract my team from the real work that lies ahead.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
How many people live in the community of Tsawwassen at the moment? Do you expect the number to increase in the coming months or the coming years?
5:05 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
Right now we have about 380 members. A little over half of them would be on the reserve right now. Many members have said they would like to come back if there were land for housing or employment or economic opportunities, I think it's safe to say. Earlier on in treaty negotiations, we did population growth projections that showed, based on our current rate of growth, that our population will increase dramatically. So when we negotiated this treaty, it was with a 100-year horizon in mind as far as land use needs and the like.
We have no idea what it will turn out to be. We don't have a crystal ball. But we've exceeded those projections that were done about six years ago. We're a very youthful community from the demographic perspective. A majority of our members are, I'd say, under the age of 40, certainly.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Chief Baird and Councillor Cassidy, for coming. This is a very important day in British Columbia. I know that many people have talked about the B.C. treaty process and the diligent work you and your community have done to bring this treaty to this place. It needs to be recognized, but it also is some hope, I think, for other communities that are involved in treaty negotiations that a community can move forward.
Monsieur Lemay was saying perhaps you could speak French at some point. When we come back, perhaps on a nation-to-nation basis, we could expect some of the committee members to speak Hul'qumi'num as well, which would be good progress. I have been learning some Hul'qumi'num.
I also want to say that earlier when the minister was here I talked about Penelakut, and I wanted to reiterate that in their letter they actually had talked about the fact that they had met with you, Chief Baird, and that the meeting was very positive and that you had jointly identified a number of issues to work on together. I just wanted on record that the Penelakut people themselves have said they've had a positive working relationship and it was really more a question to government about whether they were going to provide adequate money for other nations who have overlapping territories.
I know you've been working with Sencoten and Cowichan as well, and those people are saying very positive things about the spirit and intent of moving forward. So I think that's an important thing.
I wanted to ask you two questions about something you had said. One was when you were talking about the land use plan. You were talking about how very tight the timeframe was, and I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that, whether it was the complexity, or the resources, or whatever.
The second piece I wonder if you could talk about is the water situation, because many Canadians may not know that Tsawwassen is butted up against the largest municipality in British Columbia. Perhaps you could talk about what the state of water is in your community; that's a reflection of what it must be like for other communities as well.
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
On the land use planning, part of the difficulty has been that we didn't really know what land base we could plan for until the treaty was ratified. Since the treaty was ratified, we moved right into trying to start a land use planning process, but because so much hinges on water pipe sizes, what is the future sewer infrastructure going to be? How should we plan our roads, with what level of industrial versus commercial versus residential versus park? All those sorts of issues need to be sorted out.
We don't have the luxury of a long period of time if we want to get work done prior to the effective date. There are provisions within the treaty that our land use plan would be deemed to be compatible with the greater Vancouver livable region strategy, which is a significant sort of support in the treaty for what needs to happen. Otherwise it would have required 100% of the municipalities to approve our land use plan, and we weren't optimistic about that.
I guess that's a good segue into the next topic, which was water and the difficulty we've had to access water for economic development purposes. We have a service agreement with the Corporation of Delta that provides for domestic water supply, but there's been a great deal of controversy and disagreement over expanding that water supply for economic development. The residents of Delta aren't very keen about growth in the region; to no avail have we been able to access water through agreement.
The treaty resolves that as well, in that we have the same standing as a municipality in the Lower Mainland, so that when we join Metro Vancouver, there's no legal way to prevent us from accessing water as other municipalities do.
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
It's been longer than 20 years, but certainly the last bit of struggle has been since we developed the Tsatsu Shores Condominium in the early 1990s.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
With the land you now will have, once everything is finally signed off, and your projections on population growth, are you going to be able to accommodate your projections on population growth?
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
It depends how far we go and how densely we build. We are preserving land for community housing purposes. We still have to plan certain parameters. We have to look at how many people it will provide housing for over what period of time. But for sure, it's a land use planning priority.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
When you talked about CP holders, certificate of possession holders, are they integrated into the land use planning process?
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
Yes. Not all of them are integrated quite willingly, but we're doing our best to come up with a land use plan that everyone can support.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
They could be an important part of the commercial development, right?
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
Yes. They want to realize economic opportunities on their lands as well. We need to have zoning in place so that pig farms don't go up beside residential areas and those sorts of things.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
So when you're looking at zoning--I used to be a municipal councillor—you'll have a compatible land use plan that will reflect compatible municipal zones.
5:10 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
It will be an official community plan for zoning, similar to what municipalities have.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
So you'll have designated land uses and then any changes to the land use will require an amendment to your OCP.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
If you were going to describe in a couple of words what you think your community will look like in 10 years' time, what would be your vision or your passion? The chair is indicating that you have one minute.
5:15 p.m.
Chief, Tsawwassen First Nation
I don't know; I think, as I stated earlier, we will be fairly close to economically self-sufficient for the programs and services we deliver to our community. I hope we'll have closed the gap on employment and education. Some of these issues are very long-term, though, so we're going to work as hard as we can to ensure that we close those gaps. I don't know if we can fix them in 10 years, but we certainly can make great strides towards that goal. We'll have a fully operational governance structure that's different from the Indian Act system, running smoothly, and I think our community will be transformed.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Chief Baird and your team, not only for the hard work you've done over the last number of years but also for your eloquent summary of your perspective on the agreement. I especially noted the phase, “foundation for success”. You outlined a number of the different areas where you noted potential for improvement in culture and social fabric as well as in environmental and educational outcomes.
Then you used the phrase, “shifting from dependency to autonomy”. Certainly self-sufficiency for first nations is always a priority when we're negotiating modern treaties.
I wonder if you could highlight for me some of the economic benefits that you see arising from this legislation. I'm not from that area. I know a bit about the fisheries, I've travelled on the ferry, but that's about it. Could you give us a summary of some of the other economic benefits that might be achieved? I especially liked your phrase, “climate is contagious”.
Could you give me a picture of what types of businesses might benefit?
