Thank you, Minister, for joining us today.
I have a bit of a framing of my question, but in the end, it's actually a pretty simple question.
A year ago you went to the UN and indicated that we were going to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This year, of course, you said at the UN that you were removing the objections of Canada to the paragraphs around free, prior, and informed consent. I thought that was included the year before, but having said that, I note that it was official this year.
According to The Globe and Mail, you said that “'free, prior and informed consent' merely means there is a commitment to developing policies in conjunction with Indigenous people on matters that will affect them”. Also, stated the Globe, you said, “'This is about making decisions together' from the inception”, and that it's not about “'putting some fully baked project in front of people and getting them to vote yes or no.'”
Of course, National Chief Perry Bellegarde continues to say that the UN declaration gives communities the right to say yes and the right to say no.
I'm going to target that. We know that there are complicated issues such as pipelines, but there are also very simple issues, and we have a simple issue in the riding I represent. It's a KGHM mine called “Ajax”, and it's important for the industry, communities, and first nations to know what this is going to mean. The first nations in the area, the SSN, undertook an extensive environmental process, and they have definitively stated that they do not give free, prior, and informed consent to this project. They've been very definitive. They went through an extensive process, as it's a mine.
The federal government now needs to make a decision about that mine. In regard to the fact that the SSN has said definitively that they will not give free, prior, and informed consent, does that mean definitively that the federal government will say no to this project?