Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 28th, 2009

[Paul Fauteux]

That registry has been in existence for a long time, since the 1960s, in electronic format.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

What does IT have to do with that?

[Paul Fauteux]

IT makes it possible to record all the legal interests in the reserve lands. For example, we were talking about easements enabling Bell to set up its telephone poles and Hydro-Quebec to install its power transmission lines. All those easements are set out in the legal instruments. Those instruments are entered in the Indian Lands Registry, which is not part of the addition to reserve process, but which is a responsibility of the Lands Branch.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

That's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay, now to Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

May I call you Sara?

Sara, I just want to ask a few more questions specifically around this economic development idea. I've read previous reports here that suggest there may be a problem in evaluating the economic impact. Obviously, some of the more comprehensive agreements deal with different things, and we've heard Mr. Egan talk about surface rights versus underneath the ground rights.

Do you have a general sense of the economic impacts of negotiated settlements?

[Sara Filbee]

That's an interesting question.

I think a lot of it depends upon how the community uses the results from the negotiated settlements. There have been some really wonderful success stories in which they have used--for example, if it was moneys--investing in community activity and economic development in a very planned and orderly way. There have been some really wonderful success stories there.

It's not as simple as that we have a bunch of assets now and therefore we will have economic development. Quite often, if you have an effective, accountable governance situation, you're more likely, even if you have fewer resources, to develop a prosperous community.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

In the scenario where there is settlement for land instead of money, can you comment generally and briefly on the distinctions between a settlement in northern Canada that is outside of the provinces versus ones that are in the provinces? Are there any glaring differences?

[Sara Filbee]

The more important distinction is really with respect to the nature of the land, the richness of the land, in terms of whether it has resources, whether the location is good.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Does it have an inherent value for sponsoring--

[Sara Filbee]

Again, I'm thinking with an economic development lens. So that's really what's more important. There are other reasons for additions to reserve, such as just to increase because of housing needs, because of space needs and growth needs, but certainly with the economic development lens, it really depends upon the nature of the land.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

So far when we talk about the concept of urban reserves.... Can you comment again, in general, on what you've seen as having the best prospects for success? What kinds of examples of use of urban reserve tracts have you seen so far, in terms of economic development?

[Sara Filbee]

In terms of economic development, I think we've seen a number of success stories. In general, again, if you think of the work, for example, that Harvard University has done with the Harvard project, they're talking significantly about the importance of governance structures. They talk about the importance of citizenry having ownership of the activities and the proceeds from, for example, what they call own-source revenues, which comes from economic development, which can result in a whole different way.

A third and really interesting aspect is the whole issue of property taxes on reserves. As you may be aware, the First Nations Tax Commission was created and is one way in which reserves have started to levy taxes, which they can then use to support the programming and the development of the reserve. It's one way of developing citizen buy-in in terms of responsibility for the results of the process.

As usual, the challenge with economic development is that it's a very complex system, and unfortunately, there's no one button that we can push.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I understand this, and I'm looking back at some of the older reports and trying to reconcile ways that you measure economic impact, and preferably successes. But is this what makes it so difficult to develop a framework for evaluation? There doesn't seem to me to be a standard template you could develop, because the nations use them for different opportunities.

[Sara Filbee]

In terms of economic development?

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Yes, in terms of economic development.

[Sara Filbee]

The way we're working it through at the moment, because we're doing a lot of work in this area, is that if you look across the spectrum of what's required in a community for effective economic development, it's everything from access to resources to effective governance in community situations, a proper commercial infrastructure, a proper regulatory regime, and so on.

Again, different communities will be in different circumstances in terms of either the nature of the resources or the particular impediments they face. So when you're looking at a community in particular, you have to almost do a survey of the factors that are necessary for good economic development: which ones are missing, which ones are there, and then how do we start working with them?

I think one of the primary things is that government can't do it for any community. Communities have to do it for themselves. We can get out of the way, we can remove obstacles, we can do our processes more effectively so they have more lands to work with, and so on--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

That's it.

[Sara Filbee]

I'm sorry, I know I'm rolling on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

No, that's okay. Thank you, Ms. Filbee.

Now we'll go to Ms. Crowder, and then Monsieur Bélanger.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I just want to make a quick comment on economic development before I ask my question.

Some really interesting work has been done on things like John McKnight's stuff on asset-based economic development. It is probably a really good example of where the community could build on its strengths. One of the big challenges with community economic development, which I'm sure you're well aware of, is that it requires long-term commitment because often it takes ten or fifteen years to see the results. So if we're developing policy around community economic development, it would be nice to see some long-term commitment to it.

I just have one brief question, and it's about monitoring and reporting results to Parliament.

In 2005, the Auditor General indicated there wasn't that reporting to Parliament around legal obligations, cost numbers, acres selected, acres converted to reserve status, and so on. In her current report, in paragraph 4.54, she again says: “As a result, the Department is not clearly presenting the progress it has achieved and the challenges that remain for Canada to meet its treaty land entitlement obligations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.” And she talks about the fact that she looked at 2005-06, the departmental performance report for 2006-07, and still there was no information. I wonder if the department has plans to actually report in their performance report around the fact that the Auditor General now, in 2008-09, has said the department's not doing it.

Are you going to do it?

[Sara Filbee]

I hate to be a broken record, but one of the reasons for the importance of the system of NATS for us is that we are going to have a better information database so we can report appropriately, so then people can help us in terms of bringing good insights to the process --where the blockages are, where they're not, what's working, and what's not.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I have a question just out of curiosity. In the performance reports, why wasn't the department reporting that it wasn't able to do that? You had clear direction from the Auditor General, the department itself made a commitment it would report, and then it didn't do it. Why didn't it?

[Sara Filbee]

That's a difficult question. I wasn't around at the time they were written, but what I can say is that ever since the first report, we have been working on putting in place a number of solutions to try to solve the problems you so rightly identified with the many other parties who are also part of the solution.

Whether or not it was reported in the DPR, that activity has been continuing. Some of it has taken longer because there are longer processes. You're familiar with the challenges with IT projects. It takes longer than one would like to get to a point where you have a result. But whether or not it was in the DPR, that activity has been happening. The last audit report recognized the fact that there have been some successes and some changes as a result, and we're hoping the remaining issues we had not been able to fix by the time of the second audit, we're now in a good position to be able to report on.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I'd like to reiterate the importance for parliamentarians. When performance reports come out for a department, reflecting what's going on in the department, it's disappointing to see that the Auditor General identifies it as an issue. The department agrees it's an issue and then doesn't do anything about the reporting. I'm not talking about the other. There was a specific commitment by the department to report and the department did not report. That's what I'm talking about. An important aspect of how parliamentarians can determine what's going on in a department is that it's included in the reporting. So I look forward to the next DPR, to reading the progress on the TLE process.