Evidence of meeting #17 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 issues.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Thank you very much.
Members, we now go to the second round of five minutes.
We'll begin with Mr. Bélanger, for five minutes.
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Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I want to make sure that I understand what these non-contentious items are. You're not referring to the list in the submission we got from the commission dated May 5, are you? These are items one to 32, on pages 7 and 8.
Are those the non-contentious items you're referring to?
9:55 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
No. Those are broader than the non-contentious things.
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Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
I thought so.
Is there a list of these non-contentious items?
9:55 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
Yes. A number of them have been in our reports over a number of years. They remain there.
As we've mentioned, they do deal with things such as quorums. The quorum issue is one of the most complicated. There are different quorums required for different types of approval of different decision-making processes of the bands. Some of the quorums are very high, some of them should be. Some of them are moderately high, and you don't need a referendum at all. Some are somewhere in between. Those things need adjustment.
Things like the ability of an individual first nation to make a bylaw dealing with questions around elections are a little broader. The election bylaw process, incidentally, is the only bylaw-making process under the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act that requires departmental approval. As you know, under the Indian Act, all bylaws are subject to a review by the department and ultimately could be disallowed by the minister as an administrative decision.
Under the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, there's only one kind of bylaw, and that's the election bylaw. That's one in which we have all these little problems.
So there are things around that. There are a number of others here, but the non-contentious issues have been brought up over and over again. They've been raised in our reports. The Cree leadership has raised them on a number of occasions.
We have a publication listing the amendments we've proposed, having pulled them together from all of our reports. We could provide that to you. If you'd like to follow through on that, we'd be pleased to do so.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Please.
I want to understand; when you say non-contentious, is it non-contentious among all parties, including the Government of Canada?
9:55 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
For the ones we're calling non-contentious, that is the case.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
So there is basic agreement all around, yet they're not included in the piece of legislation currently before the House, Bill C-28.
10 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
There are some things that neither the Crees nor we find contentious, but that government has not agreed to at this point in time. There are some of those as well. I don't want to lead you down the garden path that everything is hunky-dory for every one we've come up with. It's not. There are a number. There definitely are.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
What I'm interested in are those about which there is no disagreement whatsoever anywhere. I would like to have that, and you'll see why in a minute.
My next question, Mr. Chairman, is not for our witnesses but for the government, if I may pose it rhetorically at least, in my five minutes.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
It's my five minutes, so perhaps Mr. Duncan might be listening here.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
There is, commissioners, a method for legislation to be dealt with in a much more flexible manner. It's the referral of a bill to a committee before second reading. We introduced that in previous minority governments as a way of perhaps engaging parliamentarians more actively in the crafting of legislation. After you've had second reading, which is essentially adoption in principle, if you try to introduce amendments that may be seen as broadening the scope of the bill before the committee at the time, generally the ruling is that these amendments are not acceptable because they broaden the scope.
However, if the bill is referred to a committee before second reading, such amendments can be entertained. If indeed we have a situation before us where there are one, two, three---I don't know how many--non-contentious items, as I've defined them previously, that is, and all parties agree, then perhaps this committee could consider introducing such amendments if indeed the bill were referred to it before second reading.
10 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
As we said in our presentation, appearing before this committee is frequently helpful. Here's another example of how it might be very helpful. I think we need to behave ourselves and stay within our mandate.
I would suggest that the Cree and the government could inform you very quickly on what they agree on. What they don't agree on maybe is a matter for another day. I wouldn't want to take that role myself and say, yes, there's agreement on this, but not that. I could be wrong.
That would be my answer.
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Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
These discussions are somewhat open for the public, and I hope that the government is listening. Perhaps we'll get a response.
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Conservative
10 a.m.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Merci, monsieur le président.
Welcome to the witnesses. I want to congratulate you from the outset on your perseverance and success, particularly with this government, in significantly moving this process forward.
I want to initially, very briefly, if I can, go over a couple of community-specific concerns that may not have been dealt with in the 2008 agreement. I have a question, partly prompted by curiosity, with respect to the Waswanipi. One of their concerns was to enhance provisions related to ethical matters.
Could someone briefly describe to me a little bit more about that and whether it had to do with governance?
10 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
From time to time, there are political issues in communities, as you can imagine. There are questions from time to time about whether someone has acted appropriately in making a decision, whether the process followed was proper. Those frequently come to us.
In looking for guidance on how to resolve those matters and what sort of recommendations to make, we take into account the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, obviously. We take into account, if it's relevant, the agreement. We take into account traditional customary law. It isn't always easy to reconcile all of those things.
One of the issues is what is a matter of ethics and what is a matter of political judgment? If a government of any political stripe makes a decision, I can get up and yell about it and say that I don't agree, and it's unethical, and it's wrong, and blah, blah, blah. If there's a code of ethics, it's helpful, because then we can separate things that really are unethical according to what's in front of us, accepted standards, and things that are just not agreed with politically. There's a big difference, as you very well know.
That's the kind of thing I think we need to get at: what are the ethical standards the community expects to see from their leadership and their employees, and so on? It helps if that's written down, because then there are fewer arguments about it later.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
The second concern came from the Kawawachikamach community. They had a concern about their exclusion from participation in proposed talks with the Nunavik government, which to me would suggest that these larger agreements can impact nearby communities beyond simply marvelling at where you are in the process. Can you talk a little bit--again very briefly, because I have one more question I'd like to get to in this five minutes--about why they would be concerned about the impact of that agreement or being excluded from it.
10:05 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
They felt they were not consulted in a meaningful way, which, if you dig into it, means they saw themselves as being engaged in a fairly token way. They saw themselves as not having their rights and interests provided for in the proposed new Nunavik regional government.
As I said, their actual category IA-N land is not within that government, it's just barely outside. But their category II-N lands, and some of their traditional territory beyond that where they continue to hunt and so on, is definitely within Nunavik. Nunavik has jurisdiction, purportedly, over issues around resource use. So they're concerned about that.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
I was curious on that basis, because when I was articling, I was involved in some dispute around this in that specific region, so it was interesting.
My last question goes to the second phase of this process where the federal government, and the Province of Quebec, and the Cree Nation will attempt to modernize the current governance regime vis-à-vis the self-government agreement. I just want to know what the next practical steps in this process are going to be in order to make this a successful process. Do they help to address some of the issues I had asked about from the outset?
10:05 a.m.
Chairman, Cree-Naskapi Commission
My colleagues may want to say something about that, so again I'll try to be very quick.
It seems to me that the next steps are fine. It's the parties getting together and agreeing on an agenda, and starting to negotiate the main elements.
There's one thing that the Crees have raised with me that they're concerned about. Frequently, when you get the federal government, the provincial government, and the first nations together, they don't want to move on anything until there's tripartite agreement. They're concerned there may be issues that are within federal jurisdiction, that the feds and the Cree agree upon. They're concerned the feds may not want to move until the province is on board. Conversely, when there's something that's within provincial jurisdiction, generally speaking, that the Cree and the province agree on, if the feds are not nodding, is it going to happen?
They want to be able to assure themselves that some bilateral progress can be made, even when trilateral endorsement isn't there.
