Thank you.
My name is Gary Wilson. I'm the director of business development and strategic initiatives for the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. I work for the government, but I also serve the development corporation around many initiatives. So I wear several hats, as many of us do. I work for the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. They're a self-governing first nation. They've been self-governing now for 11 years. We're in Dawson City, Yukon, which is the heart of the Klondike gold rush. We have different circumstances from several other first nations communities. We have a very strong tourism industry that exists there, and of course placer mining has existed there for 100-and-some years.
I think this is one of the points I want to make, that there is a differentiation of communities in the north. Our first nation is the largest employer, at about 200 people in the community. We pay very good wages. That's why our community can afford two grocery stores; it's because the first nation exists there. I think these things are forgotten in the process, how much economic wealth we bring to communities currently and in the future.
The first nation owns and operates five businesses, and operating businesses is different from investing in businesses, as many of us know. We've invested in about another half dozen businesses here in the Yukon. So we have a mixed portfolio. We have largely no unemployment, frankly. Capacity issues for us are different from other first nations. We have very little social assistance. As a community, our housing is actually pretty good. I would say part of that is reflected in the fact that Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in has been able to bring capacity to the first nation for several years because Dawson City is actually a community people will come and live in. It's very vibrant; it has a very strong arts community and a very strong music community. So people like myself...I'm an outsider; I'm from Saskatchewan. I've worked in the United States. I spent more of my adult working life in Dawson City than anywhere else. I come back to Dawson City because there's something about it.
Having said that, on a very broad basis I think the key issue for us is that in the Yukon there's not a really good distinction between government and business. Government is so top heavy here. You asked the question earlier, and you know the number varies, but it varies between government being somewhere between 48% and 69% of the actual people who are employed in the Yukon, depending on who you talk to. And then another large percentage of businesses exist to actually serve government. They're not out there to actually produce something that other people buy; they're there because government exists. So we have a government-based economy, and most people don't want to speak to that very strongly, but because of that, we also seem to not be very—one of the key issues—strategic in our approach. As governments, we don't seem to work very well together. The territorial, federal, first nations, and municipal governments always seem to find reasons not to work collectively and partner in long-term strategies. We're unfocused in our approach to economic development. We're a territory of approximately 32,000 people and we get probably over $1 billion a year, and part of the reason why we have barriers to economic development is because collectively we can't seem to be able to figure out how to work together.
Andy stated it very well by talking about the court case, the litigation. It's always about trying to hang on to control and not figure out how to work together in order to benefit the greater good, and often, if we bring that down to the community level, it really doesn't necessarily always reflect community needs or desires.
Talking about resource development, there are some first nations communities that are not interested in having an open-pit mine in their backyard, especially if it's foisted upon them and they have to fight tooth and nail the entire way to get any sort of return for the community, or environmental benefits, or to have environmental issues dealt with appropriately.
We have all these things that have been put through land claims. YESAA is an example. It was supposed to make it easier for all of us to work together, and it really hasn't made it easier to work together; it's brought local control to a political body that, frankly, doesn't necessarily reflect first nations or community needs.
Frankly, the federal government has abdicated its responsibility through that process, and now first nations have to litigate in relation to all those issues if they want to actually stop mining projects coming into their territory, or even just to get the benefits they should from that.
Having said that--