Evidence of meeting #4 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 tribunal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Chris Warkentin
No, you can't. We're already 30 seconds past your time.
Ms. Bennett, we'll give you the floor now since you missed earlier.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
Is there a document or a road map of all of the land claims and the status of each of those land claims?
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
All that information is available on our website. There's a public searchable database.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
Is it in a chart that is alphabetical or by region? Do you have to search for each one individually?
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The reporting centre allows you to do that. It's very flexible. You can press “print” and you'll get all the specific claims that are in our process right now. They give you the status, where it is, what the specific claim is. You can do it by province. It's quite versatile, and it allows people to have ready access as to where those claims are.
Liberal
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
If it's a claim that has been filed with the minister, it will have that date. All the dates are identified as part of the report. So it will say to you that this claim was filed with the minister on such a date. It will say that this claim was accepted for negotiation on such a date. So you know that from that date there is the three-year timeframe.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
As I think were my colleagues, over the summer I was very concerned about the “take it or leave it” aspect in a process that's supposed to be based on negotiation, mediation, or whatever. The idea that “this is our last deal and otherwise you can take it to court”, which is of course a very expensive process, is worrying. I don't know that I'm reassured that “whatever is our last deal” is the way this thing was originally set up.
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
We have no plans to terminate any negotiations. It is important that that be said. We are trying to manage the negotiation process to get ourselves to a settlement within three years. That is our approach. That's how we're organizing ourselves to do it, but we are not terminating any negotiations.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
But you are. When the clock runs out at three years, what happens?
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Each and every negotiation table is managed independently. We monitor the work and the progress at the table, and we do it with the first nation as well because we want to get to a settlement by such a time. All the work at the table is focused on achieving that settlement, so if we are getting close to the three years and we have all the information that allows us to put an offer on the table, we'll put an offer on the table. If we don't have all those components, we will continue the discussions.
In certain cases we have no choice. There might be other parties to the table so that it takes some time for us to get to a settlement, but we do not arbitrarily terminate negotiations after three years.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
At the three-year point, is there is some leeway by Canada to actually extend it?
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Yes.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
You can extend it if you want. So even when there is this arbitrary message that it's to be done in good faith, putting an unacceptable deal on the table a week before the three years is up should be avoided. Is that right?
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Yes.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
You are saying there is nothing automatic at the three years. There is no sort of “see you in court” at three years.
Director General, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The “automatic” is there, but it's not ours. At the three-year mark the first nations can leave the process and bring their claim to the tribunal and we can be still sitting at the table, so it's up to the first nation.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Chris Warkentin
Thank you, Ms. Bennett.
Mr. Rickford, go ahead, please, for five minutes.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses. This has been helpful, especially for committee members who are new here. We went through this process just under a year ago, and we had an opportunity to interview the commission as well on that process. There are transcripts available to that end. They might be beneficial.
I was struck by part of your speech. After you talked about the pillars, you actually had an independent evaluator who found, among other things, that this is working, that “changes resulting from the action plan could be expected to enhance the ability of the federal government and first nations to settle specific claims, which in turn could promote greater social and economic development”. I can't help but think that certainly for a senior policy analyst like Kathy Green, this would have been something she was either seeing the results of or had thought about.
I'm saying that pre-emptively because this committee has taken note of a couple of big-ticket items that first nations leadership is talking about, and one of them--a key one, I might add--has been the strategic economic development of land, or land-use planning.
I know that specific claims don't necessarily fit into that per se, but on this side of the table certainly we are beginning to be struck by what appears to be an emerging constellation of tools and instruments and/or processes that offer up opportunities for first nations to move forward on sustainable economic development planning.
This is perhaps particularly for the senior policy analyst. Can you expound on the last part of that comment, which appears to have been from your evaluators, on what discussions you might have had about how this benefits, as a tool or an instrument, economic development prospects for first nations communities?
Kathy Green Director, Research and Policy Directorate, Specific Claims Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The compensation that first nations achieve through the settlement of specific claims is theirs to do with as they choose. There is an expectation that the compensation received will be used for the benefit of the community as a whole. With no empirical study of that having been done, it would be safe to say that is what happens with the compensation received from specific claims settlements, that bands do invest it in various ways to the betterment of their communities and their population.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Sure, and I can appreciate that this part of the data may not be something that you would necessarily be in the business of gathering, but this didn't occur in a vacuum.
Conservative
Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON
Your independent evaluator said that this has benefits. I was just wondering if that discussion moved beyond what you've stated is more or less obvious.
My question to you as a panel, then, would be this. As we consider the prospects of strategic economic development of land, in its very rudimentary form, as even I am trying to put a concept to it, we would benefit from consideration of our analysis or the results of some of these claims as they may have been settled, to understand what they're doing, and they would form an interesting part of our analysis of strategic economic development of land use planning.
I know that land tenure reform creeps in there. I don't mean to invade that space, but perhaps you could comment on that, Anik.
