Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 28th, 2009

[Paul Fauteux]

Yes, we go so far as to use an order in council under the legislation on the implementation of specific land claims settlement agreements in the Prairie provinces, to which my colleague Martin Egan referred. If those acts do not apply because we're not in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba, or because a first nation in those provinces has not chosen to make a request under that act, it's an order in council and not an order from the minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

Mr. Payne, you have five minutes.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today. It's always nice to see you come out to provide some information to our committee.

I was looking through your report, Ms. Filbee, and you talked, on page 2, about the number of acres. I didn't see how many acres were actually created in year two, if any. I'm not sure that's clear to me.

[Martin Egan]

It was less than 25,000. It was about 24,900, or something like that.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So it certainly surpasses the 14,500 that were done previously, not necessarily to reach that particular target but--

[Martin Egan]

And in year three we're at 111,600 already, so we're well on our way there.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Well on your way.

The other thing is on page 4. We talked about the due diligence of the bands and the buyer approach, so I was wondering in terms of those first nations--and you talked a bit about the back and forth--how much has that actually delayed the process in creating these TLEs for the first nations?

[Martin Egan]

We think the lack of a defined proposal has created a lot of delay. In some instances the first nation will simply provide a BCR with very tombstone information that requires a lot of back and forth to try to understand exactly where and what the first nation wants as reserve. On the other hand, some first nations provide a lot of information. So we need to define that and make sure there are more defined lines between that first phase and the second phase. Then the clock can start ticking and we can put service standards in place.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay. I don't know how many of these are happening, but certainly my impression right now is that there are a number of these that are creating the delays.

[Martin Egan]

We have many, many open files.

[Sara Filbee]

It's a highly complex process and there are many parts to it. One of the things we're trying to do to particularly help with that part of the process is this work that we're doing with NALMA. It's more sort of a manual, templates, to assist first nations in doing the due diligence they need to do with the first phase.

The other thing that is not front and centre in terms of the discussions here is one of the programs that we have been supporting for the last two years, the reserve land and environmental managers program. It trains first nations individuals in how to be land managers, which of course is more important once they've actually got the land and the reserve. But it also can be very important in helping them understand the issues of third party interests, how you deal with them, what's a fair appraisal, what's not a fair appraisal, and so on. That's so they're better positioned up front when they're actually picking the land and doing some of that work as well. Again, it's not front and centre in terms of these discussions, but it's one of the other ways that we're also trying to build the capacity and make the process more effective.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So adding that to the template will certainly help them move forward.

[Sara Filbee]

That's certainly the hope.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the NATS, and there was some discussion on that already. I guess I wasn't totally clear about when that program is going to be rolled out.

[Martin Egan]

Yes, there are last-minute improvements being done. We wanted to make sure that system's going to be the definitive system that the practitioners in the field are going to use on a day-to-day basis, rather than it being something they're going to have to feed, in and above their work. So that will make it far more effective as far as the information being definitive goes. It's still about a couple of months away before we can roll it out.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So in terms of that, how do you see that speeding up this whole TLE process?

[Martin Egan]

It may not actually speed it up per se. It will help us to make sure we have the right number of people poised to address files, because we'll know exactly where files are in the process and we'll be able to have the right people at the right spot in the process to address it as the files come down. We'll be able to better plan our environmental assessments and our surveying requirements.

So all of that may have some effect, and hopefully it will, but it will also allow us to better see how long these proposals are actually taking from beginning to end.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So you'll be able to use that right across the whole--

[Martin Egan]

Right across Canada.

[Sara Filbee]

From a perspective of continuous improvement, the more data we have and that we're sure about, the more and better we can do going forward. That's in terms of seeing what our progress has or has not been, what we need to do differently, and where the bottlenecks appear to be, and so on. Again, it's not a quick fix. There's no quick fix, but there are a lot of different things we can do and are trying to do to improve the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.

Now we'll go to Madam Crowder again, for five minutes.

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

There have been a number of questions around phase one, so just to be clear, the Auditor General said she was looking at the results from phase two on. Although there may be substantial delays in phase one, that actually isn't captured in her report. You're saying that because sometimes there is not sufficient information from the phase one selection, it sometimes impacts on phase two. Okay.

I want to come back to Manitoba--no surprise. You're talking about this new information system. In paragraph 4.21 the Auditor General talks about information on costs, the acres that first nations are entitled to, and lands they have selected. Will all of that be captured in there?

[Paul Fauteux]

Yes.

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

In paragraph 4.47 on management plans, she says, “In 2005, we recommended that the Department develop a management plan that outlines how it will manage its operations for processing outstanding selections within a reasonable period of time”. Then she says in the follow-up audit that the Manitoba region has still not done that.

Are there plans to put those management plans in place in Manitoba?

[Martin Egan]

Manitoba region has created what's called a dashboard. This is sort of preliminary before NATS comes into play. The dashboard has selections from the current year and the next year, where they are in the process, and what issues have to be overcome to keep them moving through the process. I guess the plan is that the files that aren't going to happen for year three, four, or five are going to be slowly brought into this process and put into NATS eventually.

They're still trying to focus on getting 150,000 acres done for this year and moving the files along to position ourselves for the 150,000 acres for next year. We're just trying to get caught up with these other files that are going to take a lot longer. So there is a plan to review all of the files, determine where they are, and put in place action plans for each file.