Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[Sophie Pierre]

As the Ktunaxa Nation, we entered the treaty process right at the beginning, back in 1993. We have a very astute treaty negotiator, chief negotiator Kathryn Teneese. She knew we had an opportunity to use the treaty process to rebuild the Ktunaxa Nation, and that's what we've done.

We've been rebuilding from the inside out, so that we're not going to be faced with a situation, when we get to the point of the enactment, of creating and being ready to govern. We've taken all those steps that help us move forward. We've taken over everything except the final step in child and family services. We did that 10 years ago. We have a very solid child and family services section within our nation. It's the same thing with education and housing.

We do all of these things incrementally, so that we're ready to enact a treaty when we get to that point.

We just made that decision that we were going to use this process and we were going to use it in a way that we could rebuild our nation in order to be able to take advantage of the economic activity that goes on in our area.

Yes, our nation is one of those that is benefiting from those bilateral agreements. We have a bilateral agreement around mining. And good on us. I'm really happy that we have that.

We have bilateral agreements in other areas. I believe we have one in forestry. It's definitely a bilateral agreement. I'm not sure what acronym it has. So we have these, and we're in a position that we can take advantage of those.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Bevington, you have five minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the commission for coming here today. I look forward to actually talking with you more tomorrow.

I come from the Northwest Territories, where we've engaged in a number of processes over the years to try to come to some solution of the claims issues. I have seen what you have laid out and I have seen the slow progress of this treaty commission in such a major area. I saw a press clipping; it seems that there has been about a half a billion dollars spent now by first nations in trying to come to grips with this. All that money is on the books for repayment out of the resource quantum from....

[Sophie Pierre]

Yes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So in many cases this is going to eat up a lot of the economic benefits that could come out of the treaty agreement.

[Sophie Pierre]

It could, yes. We're concerned about that, yes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Are there interest charges being attached to those dollars?

[Sophie Pierre]

Not until 2014. The way the agreement was set up, 12 years after you started accepting loan funds, the interest was going to start kicking in, but we've been able to have agreement from the federal government to move that back. They've moved it back a couple of times, because of course we've been into the process now for 19 years.

We don't know, and this is where we're getting very concerned and we want to ensure that we're totally involved with this comprehensive review that's going on about the funding for the B.C. treaty process, which is going to come up in 2014.

We're saying we want to get involved now in how this is going to shape up, rather than just being told later what's going to happen and not have it workable.

We are involved, by the way, in something called the treaty revitalization. That includes our continued relationship with the federal and provincial governments and the first nations groups that are involved in treaty.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So through this time, these 20 years with all the groups, did everyone stay onside with the treaty commission?

[Sophie Pierre]

Oh, no.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

No. You lost a lot on the way.

[Sophie Pierre]

Yes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Could you give me some statistics here about how many?

[Sophie Pierre]

Statistics? I'm sorry. I can't give you any statistics off the top of my head.

But I do know that we have 60 tables that have gone through the process. They've put in their SOI. They were determined ready. They got their framework done. And of those 60 tables, we have 27 that are in stage 4, which is the agreement in principle.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Yes, I understand that.

[Sophie Pierre]

At the back of our annual report, actually, are all those numbers.

But what has happened is we've got many of the tables.... For example, the Westbank First Nation, which was very involved in treaty negotiations, was involved in something called the “common table”--which again, is something you need to be aware of--where all three parties really did make an effort to identify common areas and deal with them that way. My colleague, Commissioner Haldane, can speak some more about that, if you want to know more.

We have these efforts, but they frustrate the first nations so much so that they walk away. Now the question is.... And it's been indicated that perhaps we need to look at the 12 or 16 treaties that we feel are really doable in the next three to five years. We have identified these tables and we know what's doable, given the scenario I've described in terms of mandates and getting deals done.

But then what about the other tables that are not really moving? It's been suggested that those tables should not be funded any more. They're raising their debt, but they're not getting anywhere moving their commas. So maybe they shouldn't be raising their debt any higher.

But our question is, what happens to them? What do those first nations have, then? If they leave the treaty table after all these years, having created this incredible debt, what are we offering them in place of it? And what happens to their debt?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

It's a very serious issue, and it's something that....

[Sophie Pierre]

It would be so much easier if we just had the mandates to get these things done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Seeback, for five minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you for being here.

As my colleagues have said, as a person who has very little experience in any of these matters, I find the information that we get at this committee both useful and somewhat overwhelming, because it seems to be incredibly complex.

In your annual report you talk about efforts being under way to find common approaches to certain treaty issues. We also hear that some first nations don't want a one-size-fits-all approach. They want approaches that are unique to their communities. What are your thoughts on how we reconcile those two approaches?

[Sophie Pierre]

I will turn to my colleague, Celeste Haldane. Before she became a commissioner, she was actually sitting at that common table. So it's very relevant.

[Celeste A. Haldane, Commissioner, BC Treaty Commission]

To provide some information on the common table and how that process unfolded, it was a coming together of several first nations--actually, 60 in British Columbia--from all over the province to deal with issues in common around some of the negotiating mandates, the take-it-or-leave-it positions that were coming to the tables.

One of the issues was certainly recognition, fish was an issue, and own-source revenue was another substantive issue, where there was just a take-it-or-leave-it basic policy. Taxation, the section 87 exemption, was another issue. Some nations were not prepared to perhaps have that model forced on them.

What this table really did, and what it allowed for, was the dialogue between the nations, those sitting at the negotiating tables or on the ground, and representatives from both Canada and British Columbia to really flesh out some of the substantive issues on the ground and come up with some solutions and creative options that the parties could endorse--that there could be more than one option. There were maybe three options to deal with these very specific substantive issues. That would break the logjam of the treaty negotiation process.

At that time, it became extremely stagnant. So through the frustration, these tables came together, the nations came together. There was work that started in 2001, but the process really started to kick off in 2005 and 2006 to deal with the substantive issues that were on the ground, these positional take-it-or-leave-it negotiations. And it did create some opportunities. There was a report generated from the BC Treaty Commission, which is out there and available. And it also created more space to have that additional dialogue, which is still ongoing. Recognition language was tabled from the first nations grouping to the federal system. So we'll see where that's going to go. That is still open, again, trying to come up with some creative solutions to deal with the logjam that was in the process.

Hopefully that has answered you somewhat.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

What opportunities do you see to speed up that progress?

[Celeste A. Haldane]

I think Sophie touched on that quite a bit in her presentation around opening up the negotiator, having negotiators who have the mandate but have the flexibility to come up with some of these creative solutions. Have it endorsed internally, so there's not a big.... They have the mandate to negotiate, so they can have these options presented through their negotiations, and that can be endorsed from the chief negotiator level and hit the table. I think that is part of the problem.