Evidence of meeting #10 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was regulations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Member, Wesley First Nation
Former Chief Wesley was a co-chair about four or five years ago, I believe.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Okay.
How would you characterize your participation, or the role of the Stoney First Nations, in all of this? Would you say that, at the very least, you've had numerous, ample opportunity--at the Indian Resource Council, at AGMs, tribal council meetings, and various symposiums--to participate consultatively, if not having direct impact on, what this legislation might look like?
Member, Wesley First Nation
The involvement with the Indian Resource Council and IOGC in this process has been one of review. Usually we receive documentation, draft notices or draft legislation, and then we're asked to review that, but that's usually at a later date. You make it sound like we're involved in the creating of agendas and these sorts of things. A lot of our input or participation has been responding to a lot of things that are coming at us.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Would you agree or disagree, then, that Stoney First Nations appears to have played a significant leading role in facilitating the modernization of the Indian Oil and Gas Act? Would you agree with that statement?
Member, Wesley First Nation
I may have a problem with that statement, because there are other first nations that can say that. Siksika First Nation is a leader. White Bear First Nation is a leader. There are others, including Horse Lake.
The FNOGMMA bands, essentially, are the leading bands right now.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Do you recall having met with the IOGC in late January for some discussions?
Conservative
Chief, Wesley First Nation
No. I'm the only one on the board, so....
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
So the IOGC didn't meet with the Stoney consultation committee in late January?
Member, Wesley First Nation
That would have been one of our other committees. We have a consultation team. They are not represented here today. That team has been mandated by the chief and council of the three first nations to deal with preliminary legislation, policies and whatnot, coming down from the province. That team has also been recognized to meet with IOGC. At that time, they wanted to meet.
Conservative
Member, Wesley First Nation
The Stoney oil and gas committee met with them at a later date.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
That might have been on the 29th. There were a couple of days there, I believe.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Were there any concerns, to your knowledge, raised around the provisions of Bill C-5?
Member, Wesley First Nation
The meetings at that time were information meetings. We met with Mr. Dan Stojanowski and Mr. John Dempsey. Those were information sessions. They were to be coming back in the spring, I believe, to receive our comments, which we had identified to be in March, April. We have not met yet.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
These concerns are substantive. Did you not, informationally at least, raise some of those concerns at those meetings?
I'm interested in hearing from the chiefs.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Mr. Rickford, we're a little over time here right now.
A brief response would be great, Mr. Snow.
Member, Wesley First Nation
Over the period that we have been involved--I became involved in 1999--a lot of these issues were recurring and we had been bringing them up before in previous administrations. When we did prepare a package, that crystallized when the legislation was introduced.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Thank you, Mr. Snow.
Members, we started somewhat late so we are going to take one more question, which will go to either Monsieur Lévesque or Monsieur Lemay.
Monsieur Lévesque, vous disposez de cinq minutes.
Yvon Lévesque Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for coming to meet with us, gentlemen. Since my legal knowledge is limited to industrial relations, you'll understand why I'm occasionally a bit lost.
I respect you as a nation and as human beings, and I also respect your claims. On the other hand, I notice that you occasionally say that the land belongs to every human being when that suits you.
I know that the Canadian government is responsible for trans-Canada highways. Every other highway built between the various communities is built by the respective provinces. With respect to hospital care and education, everything comes under provincial jurisdiction.
Today, you've just said that you would like it if the provinces no longer had a say about the resources on your lands. I know they are on first nation lands, but they are also part of a province and a provincial territory. What I understand from that is that this could take revenue that these raw materials could generate away from the provinces.
In my riding, for example, two-thirds of the population lives around James Bay. These people are Cree. Had it not been for the province's clear-sightedness, the Cree would not have had rights until last year, when Canada agreed to acknowledge the rights acquired under the James Bay Agreement. The Cree nevertheless had a 30-year agreement with the province before signing an agreement with the federal government on operating rights, royalties and so on.
I wonder whether that's what you are contemplating, that is to say eliminating the province from your agreements and negotiating solely with Canada.
I have another question, since I only have five minutes and that's not very long. You're currently claiming extraction, production, storage, distribution, processing and refining of products.
How does that work for you right now? Do you have refineries in your communities? If so, how did you manage to get them? I'll let you answer because we don't have a lot of time.
Member, Wesley First Nation
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll deal with your second question on the refining first. There are operations that have been instituted on the reserve. In our instance, we've had a plant that was put up. It was commissioned, then decommissioned, and it was later removed. There is some contamination there so we have to try to clean that up. These things are happening as we go forward and we're not involved.
Just for clarity, could you just rephrase your first question again? You had mentioned a first item. I wanted to revisit your first question.
Bloc
Yvon Lévesque Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
I mentioned at the outset that I don't understand in some respects when you say you want to exclude the provinces from your negotiations. Unless I'm mistaken, you want to negotiate directly with the federal government without the province concerned being able to share in the profits generated.