Evidence of meeting #36 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was tenure.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
I think if the deputy minister or the minister were sitting here, they could tell you what resources are devoted to particular regions, and there are parts of the organization—or there used to be, in any event—where that's what people did. They were experts in it. They knew the process. They knew how to do it.
It requires a lot of legal nit-picking to ensure that all of the right information is there. You're taking on enormous responsibilities when you add land to a reserve, so the crown wants to be very clear.
Also, in taking it on the first nation lives with the circumstances it's bought into, once it happens. If somebody's missed something, it could be a problem. I think people do double- or triple-check things just to be sure.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
Do you think you could have a service expectation of something like two years?
As an Individual
It varies, because some things are really simple and some things aren't. So, no, I don't think you could say that. I can give you some examples. There was one out on Lake Superior where there was an addition to a reserve that involved a sawmill. The sawmill had been there for a long time, and it had all kinds of problems. It took close to a decade to resolve. It wasn't that people were dragging their feet; it was sorting out a whole lot of things. There are other instances when you have a piece of farmland in Saskatchewan that has been growing canola for the last 20 years, and there's nothing else that ever happened on it. That shouldn't be very complicated. So it really depends.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
Mr. Chair, on the order-in-council thing, do you think the minister could make a decision?
Conservative
As an Individual
I don't think that's a big issue. The minister essentially approves the order in council, in any event, before it goes to the cabinet committee, and it's never more than a week or two. So you're not saving great amounts of time.
Conservative
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
In reading your document from January 2005, I wanted to focus on pages 4 to 9 and page 14. You wrote that economic development issues facing first nations are extremely diverse and complex and that one size will not fit all. You consequently pointed out that any response will have to be fashioned to fit a variety of circumstances. This is something this committee has heard repeatedly from witnesses.
Do you have any recommendations on how to create land tenure policies and programs that are robust as well as flexible?
As an Individual
I think the answer lies in creating the opportunity for local communities to take charge and come up with a system that works in their circumstances. There are different cultures within the aboriginal communities. Some of them have a long-standing tradition of communal ownership, and they don't have any concept of parceling land off. Others have a culture of almost fee simple, with certificates of possession that have run through families for generations.
You have to be able to develop a system that's going to accommodate the various traditions within aboriginal communities. You can't do that without looking at the actual circumstances on the ground. I think you have to try to localize it or regionalize it as much as possible.
Conservative
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Do you find economic development varies from province to province? For instance, in Kelowna at Westbank, because of where they are, they have an advantage over people who may not have such a location. Is that part of the flexibility that needs to come forth?
As an Individual
Yes. If Westbank hadn't had the opportunity to lease its lands out to non-aboriginals to the extent that it has, it wouldn't be nearly as successful. But go down the road a bit, and Osoyoos is using wine-making as their engine for economic development. So different circumstances offer different opportunities.
Conservative
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
You also stated that creating a modern land tenure and land description system, coupled with an efficient land registry, would be an area for possible improvement in the conditions for economic development. This is on page 14. We have heard from a number of first nations that this is being studied. What accounts for the view that reform of the land registry and land tenure processes on reserves is required?
As an Individual
It's the fact that in many instances it's quite difficult to describe the physical parameters of the land you're dealing with, and that if it is registered, there often are all kinds of caveats on those lands.
It becomes really complicated in the aboriginal world because of the system of wills that exists, as well. Land that has been passed down through a number of generations gets split up, so that you might end up having, I don't know, 25 to 30 names of people on the title.
There needs to be some system like a Torrens system, whereby you could have a guaranteed title, you would know who actually owns it and what their interests are, and you would have some method of disposing of interests that don't want to be there or aren't necessary to be there. You need that kind of land tenure system.
Conservative
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Following along this same line, what challenges are associated with reforming land tenure on reserve lands?
As an Individual
I could give you anecdotal information.
It's incredibly difficult to get an agreement on who actually has the tenure. I can recall, from a meeting in your area about 10 or 15 years ago, sitting around the table on that exact question of setting up a land register and how we'd do it. The incumbent Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia was a lawyer in those days, and we were going to set up a system. We had a couple of people who said, “My grandfather's land went from that rock to the tree to the reef.” Another would say, “No, it was that rock.” After about 20 minutes back and forth, we said this isn't going to happen.
The difficulty in reaching that agreement was enormous. You'd have to go through a registration system—I would imagine quite a lengthy one—whereby people could resolve their disputes and could decide to agree to disagree and where to draw the line. But right now, in most cases there are no lines.
Conservative
David Wilks Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
You mentioned certificates of possession. We've gone to a couple of places where CPs are extremely problematic. Do you have any thoughts on them?
As an Individual
Well, I would agree that they're extremely problematic in some instances. In some communities they are viewed as essentially a fee simple title; in other cases, they are not.
Now, in law the land is all communal. CPs are at the.... Really, a council can remove them, but like many things, they develop into an economic benefit, and there's no council that would be able to actually say, “George, we're taking back your land.”
But they don't exist everywhere. They're just something that communities that have them will have to figure out a way to regularize into some kind of tenure. The traditional methods work in some places, and in some places they don't.
Conservative
