Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 14th, 2009

[Bill Namagoose]

Yes. The ideal would be to have a tripartite process, but we want to proceed bilaterally if the occasion is there. That has been the pattern with the Cree Nation over the years, and that's why we made progress, because we have not been held back by certain disagreements or policies of one government over the other.

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

That's unlike the situation in British Columbia, where it's hard to get all three parties at the table.

[Bill Namagoose]

Yes. That has been our history, so it works well for us.

The amendments that the Cree-Naskapi Commission had brought up are strictly administrative amendments that have been called for by individual communities in their presentations to the Cree-Naskapi Commission since 1984. It's mostly administrative efficiency measures, like band borrowing bylaws. They don't feel they should have a band referendum to borrow $10,000. That should be a mandate to give to the council.

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

Mr. Namagoose, there are actually two very different issues here. We have the bylaws and some of those administrative amendments, which could have actually been included in this current piece of legislation. I certainly respect the wish not to hold up the current piece of legislation to include those amendments. Then there's the larger issue around governance. So could there be two separate pieces of legislation that come before the House then?

[Bill Namagoose]

Well, not now, but Bill C-28 as it goes, is--

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

Yes, I mean aside from Bill C-28. In the future, there could be one to do with the administrative and one to do with the larger governance?

[Bill Namagoose]

Well, the governance agreement could be brought into force by separate legislation or an amendment to the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act. Those are the options we have. So I guess it'll be up to the negotiation process. Once we arrive at the Cree Nation governance agreement, we will decide or resolve with our federal counterparts if a new piece of legislation or an amendment to the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act is required, such as we are processing now.

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

On the administrative amendment side of it, is there work being done?

[Bill Namagoose]

Yes. As I explained before, we have a process now with the Department of Indian Affairs and the Naskapi, who are affected by the same legislation, to work through those amendments. So there is a process in place. Either we can come back for a new amendment to the Cree-Naskapi legislation at a future date, or we could come at the same time as the Cree Nation governance agreement legislation is being discussed.

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

One of the amendments that were included concerned the police force on category 1 lands. I don't have the details here, but I know the Cree-Naskapi commissioners raised some issues around police forces, and they didn't have information about the effectiveness of the police forces currently. Will this address some of that?

[Bill Namagoose]

The Cree police were established in 1975 by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and they are local police forces. With the Paix des braves we signed with Quebec, they will become a regional police force, with one structure instead of nine separate structures. The new powers they have will be enforceable by the....

I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice.

[Denis Blanchette, Legal Counsel, Gowlings Montreal, Grand Council of the Crees]

Essentially, what we had originally was local police forces in each of the communities. This is pursuant to the original provisions of section 19 of the James Bay Treaty. Eventually over the years, we realized that some of the issues and services dealt with by the police were better dealt with at the regional level and that more coordination was required between the communities to deliver some of the services, including investigative work, dispatching, things like that.

Basically, what Mr. Namagoose is saying is that, in 2002 with the Paix des braves and 2008 with the new relationship agreement with the federal government, there was a commitment to amalgamate the local police forces into a regional police force. This commitment has now been enshrined in a complementary agreement to the James Bay agreement, under essentially a revision of section 19 provisions, to provide for this establishment of the regional police at the regional level.

This complementary agreement has been signed. It needs to be put into legislation at the Quebec level, the provincial level. The Quebec Police Act was amended by Bill 54 last year. The bill has passed; it needs to come into force now at the date of the amalgamation of these local police forces.

The counterpart to the provincial legislation is essentially a section of the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, section 194, which now will recognize the regional character of the Cree police force, which will have jurisdiction in all the communities on category 1A lands and around those communities. This amendment, in section 28 of the amending legislation, was essentially to recognize that regional—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Unfortunately, we will have to finish up there. We're quite over time.

I'll add my welcome, by the way, to our witnesses this morning and my compliments to our vice-chair, Mr. Russell, who is not here at the moment but is here in spirit. I appreciate members' understanding of my temporary absence this morning.

Now we'll go to Mr. Duncan for seven minutes.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, everyone, this morning--Mr. Namagoose and your team, Mr. Blanchette, Mr. Pilote, and Mr. Craik. Mr. O'Reilly, good morning to you. Your reputation precedes you. I know you've been involved in aboriginal affairs for a long time, not just in the province of Quebec but in other parts of the country as well. It's good to finally meet you.

I would like to recognize the comment about the role that Raymond Chrétien played in the negotiations. I had dealings with him when he was the ambassador in Washington. I came to respect some things at that time.

I wanted to ask about the new Canada-Cree Standing Liaison Committee. I'm unsure if we are talking about the same body that's carrying out these negotiations or if we are talking about a separate entity. So I'm asking about the status role and responsibilities of that liaison committee. Also, what kind of dispute resolution mechanism, if any, is predicted or in place?

[Bill Namagoose]

The standing liaison committee, our committee, is responsible for implementation of the agreement between the Department of Indian Affairs, representing the federal government, and the Cree Nation. It is functioning now. An ADM has been appointed, Michel Roy, to sit and represent Canada on this committee, along with me and other people. We call people to the committee as we need them. It is not a large committee, just two of us at the moment. We bring representatives to the committee.

There are no disputes at the moment. Hopefully it will stay that way. There is smooth implementation.

I will ask Brian to describe the dispute resolution mechanism.

[Brian Craik, Director, Federal Relations, Grand Council of the Crees]

We have a dispute resolution mechanism, but we haven't used it because we've been able to bring the issues and set up processes to deal with them. Basically the dispute resolution process calls for bringing in a third party to mediate a solution. If the solution isn't workable, then the parties maintain their legal positions.

All of the work of the liaison committee to date has been to try to better understand the issues from both sides and to deal with them as they arise. It's a way of not allowing issues to be buried for too long, and to deal with them as they arise.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

What I understand from that is that if there is good faith on both sides, the current system tends to work. Would that be a fair statement?

[Brian Craik]

Yes, I think that's a fair statement. We have many issues that are complex. They involve Quebec, they involve Canada, and they involve other aboriginal parties in some cases. So they can't be rushed.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

All right. I want to go back to the subject that Ms. Crowder was talking about, these administrative amendments. When you're dealing in a trilateral way on the governance, there must be bilateral things that you're doing with the Quebec government as well. How is this working? Does it make any sense to try to do something more quickly than the two or three years you're anticipating to complete the governance on negotiations, or not? Can the administrative amendments wait for the two or three years?

[Brian Craik]

Are you just talking about the ones that were brought up by the Cree-Naskapi Commission?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Yes.

[Brian Craik]

A lot of those amendments were put together just after the act was passed in 1984. Within two or three years it was evident that there were a few things that should be adjusted a little bit. The spirit of the discussions between Canada and the Crees at that time was not such that either party could focus on just those issues.

Right now we have to go back for another round of consultation with the communities to discuss whether the amendments, as they were construed at that time, are still exactly what we want or whether we want more. The other issue is that we're involved in this larger process of defining Cree governance.

What we would prefer to do is come back in three years or so with a more comprehensive picture, which might well include some of the administrative amendments that we were thinking about. From our point of view, right now it would be premature to pass those amendments.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

We will now begin our second round, with Mr. Bélanger. You have five minutes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to continue on the same line of questioning as Mr. Duncan was on, on these non-contentious amendments.

My first question is to the clerk. Have we received any communications from the Cree-Naskapi commissioners? They said they might get us some documents on the non-contentious amendments within a week. Did we receive anything?