Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2011

[Andrew Beynon]

I should just note that, of the departmental employees, some are in headquarters, but many are in regional offices.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Ms. Buist.

[Margaret Buist, Director General, Lands and Environmental Management, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Just to give you a very quick flavour—and we'll provide you with the statistics—in the last five years, the department has negotiated about 44,000 leases. We do about 10 designations a year. We've had almost 40,000 legal land transactions registered in the last five years, or about 8,000 a year. It's a significant number. We have, as Kris said, about 200 people doing that land administration work within the department, as opposed to what's going on in the FNLM, 53/60, and the RLEMP first nations that are doing it much more themselves.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Chair, they haven't answered my question about where the money goes and whether the first nations can access it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

You didn't give any time for any answers to anything.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I know. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Let's see if we can get to that in another round.

I have a question, and I'm going to take the chair's prerogative to ask is RLEMP is currently open or closed? We understood from the Auditor General that there were some concerns with regard to its flexibility for nations wanting to enter.

[Kris Johnson]

RLEMP for many years was a pilot program. It was designed to respond to that 2002 evaluation that Andrew mentioned. As time proved its benefits, the funding for that program was stabilized in 2009. There was an action plan pursuant to a federal framework on aboriginal economic development that injected $9 million a year to stabilize it and bring it out of the pilot phase into a permanent program phase. So there isn't currently a waiting list per se to get into RLEMP.

You do have to go through the training component that we described to receive your operational funding under that. That takes a little bit of time just to get people through, but every year when we put out the call letter for interested students, it's always a little bit under-subscribed. We're meeting the demand to keep pace, and we are transitioning people out of those old RLAP and 53/60 programs into RLEMP.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you.

Mr. Wilks, for seven minutes.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to the three regulars for coming here yet again.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Because you're here so much, I need some duty time sometime. Maybe we could make an arrangement for

I noted on page 5 of the deck, under the reserve land and environment management program, that it refers to the national association of land management quite often. With regard to the national land manager's association, how does your department partner with them, and how does that work?

[Margaret Buist]

It's an officially incorporated not-for-profit, non-political organization. It has had an elected regional board of directors since 2000, and it includes 106 first nations nationally. There's also a B.C. group that represents many of the B.C. first nations. It's joined with NALMA now, and is called first nations for land management.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

If I may, is B.C. a little different because it has no treaties, or what is that?

[Margaret Buist]

It's a little bit different, because it has no treaties, but it's just something they've decided to do in their own land management world. They work closely together.

Our partnership with NALMA resulted in the development of a national capacity-building program for reserve land management. That program has led to a number of improvements in our land management programs, allowing the first nations to be much better able to activate their own resources to respond to economic development opportunities, and NALMA has played a key role in that. They provide technical training specific to the Indian Act land management. They provide technical expertise when asked by their first nations members, and they provide support to regional land associations that exist throughout the country for the land managers.

It's all first nations run and all first nation membership. We have a close working relationship with them. For example, you heard us talk on Tuesday on the additions to the reserve tool kit that they've developed. They're now working with us to develop a designations tool kit for first nations to help them.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Excellent.

Just to further that conversation, what consultation has your department done with first nations regarding community economic development programs, and what did you hear back? Could you expand on that, please?

[Kris Johnson]

Last year, the department undertook a quite extensive external engagement process to learn from our various stakeholders and partners about how our programs could be enhanced or altered in some fashion to better meet the unique needs, challenges, and diversity facing aboriginal communities, which Andrew talked about in his opening remarks.

So the engagement process was really designed to get that feedback through a variety of ways. There were nine regional engagement sessions with a focus on first nations. There were seven targeted sessions with the key stakeholder groups, focusing on issues such as lands, and business and economic development. There were three round tables on some of the crosscutting issues such as gender, youth, and remote communities, which really face some unique barriers to development.

There were recommendations and submissions made from aboriginal institutions and organizations that have an interest in economic development.

Some of the feedback that we received—and Andrew and I were at some of those sessions and heard first-hand about it—was the importance of the land use and economic development plans to ensure successful economic development. We also heard other points, such as the need for predictable funding to access the necessary expertise to pursue economic development opportunities, as well as the need for broad global partnerships with provinces, with territories, and with the private sector, in response to the increasing complexity of projects occurring on reserve.

We heard a lot of good feedback on how we need to take a closer look at the intersection between land management and economic development in response to these very ambitious development plans that are occurring on reserve lands across the country.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

With regards to land management and economic development, what are some of the things you heard from first nations that they want in order to move forward with economic development, and how do these affect land management?

[Andrew Beynon]

Generally speaking, some of the points we heard echoed the themes that Kris talked about. We heard, for example, that the complexity of the transactions is necessarily increasing, that the capacity of first nations and the department itself has to increase, that there needs to be as much done as possible to move at the speed of business because we'll lose the economic opportunity if the system can't keep up with it, and that programs need to be modernized in a way that allows for this twinning of economic development and lands pressures at the same time.

To have lands in one stream and economic development considered afterwards doesn't work. Or vice-versa, to try to drive an economic development project and get the whole commercial deal figured out, and then find out later that you can't do that under an Indian Act land provision, doesn't work.

So cementing the two together was certainly one of the points that we heard a lot.

[Kris Johnson]

If I may add to that, a key thing we heard was the need to get the decision-making as close to the community level as possible, ideally right at the community level. That's where you get the gains in efficiency and the speed.

When you have to involve departmental officials, as Andrew was saying in his opening remarks, we oftentimes have to second-guess things in order to reduce the liability and exposure to risk. If you can get the discussions occurring directly between the community and the potential investors, that's where you can save a lot of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilks.

Ms. Bennett, for seven minutes, please.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

To follow on from my colleague, Ms. Duncan, my question has to do with wait times. In health we talk about this all the time. I was just wondering what your wait-time strategy was.

[Margaret Buist]

For getting into the programs or for the land transaction?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

From the time a community decides it would like to enter one of the programs to the time that it's signed and delivered.

[Margaret Buist]

One of the wait times that we've observed is, for example, for a community to designate lands for commercial leasing. It is very important, as Andrew was just saying, to match the economic development opportunities with the land issues, that is, having the land ready for that economic development and having it start at the same time.

We do experience delays with respect to processing the designations that come in through the region. They're like the ATRs, the additions to reserve, in that they come in through the region. They go through headquarters and go up for ministerial approval, and the Governor in Council, and that causes delays. So one of the things we've done, for example, is to work with NALMA to do a designation tool kit for first nations.

Just like the ATRs, we are examining our own proposals to see what risk we're able to tolerate in cutting out some of the phases of approval that are needed. We're looking at delegating down the authority to make the decisions on the designation, so we're looking at a wide range of options for that one piece of the puzzle.

I will turn it over to my colleagues to talk about the wait time for some of the programs, for example, for land management on reserve.