Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

[Glenn Archie, Head Negotiator, Flood Claims Negotiations, Mishkosiminiziibiing First Nation]

Do you guys mind if I stand? I'm used to standing when I speak. I can't do it sitting down.

Good afternoon, standing committee members. My name is Glenn Archie. I am the head negotiator for Big Grassy River First Nation on the flood claim, which began in September 2009, so now we are eight or nine years into the process. You have my submission. Hopefully you had some time to read it. I hope you can ask me some questions.

I started negotiating back in 1999, when I first became a councillor for Big Grassy. I've been negotiating land claims that long, 22 years now. I've settled three land claims already, and I'm looking at a fourth one. We are doing three other claims, maybe two of which are going to the tribunal. One claim is being proposed to be pulled out of tribunal and into mediation now. That's where we are with five claims over the last 22 years that I've been involved.

When I arrived here, I heard some comments from my friend sitting here. I don't know who he is, but judging by how he speaks, he is my friend. Anyway, I just wanted to touch on that issue a bit as well.

You know the loan funding for first nations. Big Grassy is over $1.1 million, up in eight or nine years. That has a severe effect on our borrowing power for infrastructure and housing. It really stops us from providing services to our community, because that money is tied up. The Province of Ontario specifically provides grant funding each year to help us offset negotiation costs. That's where I think things should happen a bit more on the federal side. I think there should be grants. As they say, the Government of Canada is the jury and the hangman and the funder. You have one person sitting with three hats and judging everything. We need those separated in order to be effectively heard.

We also need things such as this for us to speak openly from the heart. I'm not going to speak from this. These are the facts. I'm going to speak to you guys from the heart here.

Our people have suffered for a long time, ever since colonialism came in. We've had to change our lives, our way of life. Our way of life is being depleted in the traditional and cultural aspect, in forestry, and in resources. Everything is being affected. Our people can no longer live by fishing alone, because our water is now contaminated. In our forests, the moose have died off. I'm not a doctor or a scientist, but we believe it's a brain-wasting disease. There goes our food as well. All the animals are being affected. That's only one part of the problems that we suffer.

Economically, we suffer greatly. We try to submit proposals to get my community out of the situation we are in, the poverty level. The funding organizations here refuse us right at the top. I'll give you an example. Back in 2000, we tried to develop a fishery processing plant, buying fish from all the communities in Treaty No. 3 and utilizing the existing quotas. That's what we had planned, to effectively bring in a better way of marketing fish for our people. We were denied at the funding agency level.

We were told that we were going to fish out the lake. No, we're not. We are going to utilize the existing quotas that each first nation has. It isn't going to go up; it isn't going to go down.

I have a colleague in Thunder Bay who is non-native. He phoned me up about four months ago and said that he had a fishery processing plant started, which blew me out of the water. Why did he get it, and why didn't we get it? That's my big question.

With regard to economic development, our people are oppressed and suppressed. We cannot go anywhere. We're trying to make our own lives, but the Government of Canada keeps stepping on our toes and keeps us down. That's the biggest problem I have right now. Our people cannot move anywhere. We try and try.

Racism out there is so unbelievable. Ever since Trump got in, everybody has the right now to say anything to anybody, any minority, and that's the fact that we face each and every day. I can go to a store and pay for my things there, and somebody just throws my change back. It's stuff like that.

The biggest problem we had was our being denied that fishery processing plant. We did all our homework. We did all the pre-qualifications that the province wanted and the federal government wanted. We did all that, we jumped all the hoops, and then at the end of the day we were denied.

Also, my first nation was willing to develop a water bottling company. I was a chief back then, and I was willing to invest in our community. We were denied there again, so we couldn't go anywhere.

We had inroads into a $4 million project to supply water at the B.C. winter games. That's how far ahead we were in planning.

We try hard in our community to bring our community above water, but at times we just keep getting pulled down.

Speaking of specific claims, I've been dealing with that mostly. I haven't dealt with any comprehensive claims, but mostly with specific claims.

Madam Chair, you're telling me I have three minutes. Gee, that went fast.

The funding situation is the one I want to bring up, as well as advance payments. When Canada accepts a claim for negotiation, then by definition Canada has accepted, for the purpose of the negotiation, that it breached its lawful obligation and that compensation is owing. Advance payments could be a way to provide something to the claimant at a time when it is needed, and it would be a way to mitigate the human impacts described above. It would also demonstrate good faith on the part of Canada, and it may provide momentum to the negotiations.

There is precedent in the insurance industry for advance payments, which are sometimes paid by the insurance companies once they are satisfied that they will be obligated to pay compensation. These payments are without prejudice and are recognized and protected by insurance policy terms, by contracts, and by court rules.

The advance payment procedure seems to be well suited to specific claims. At that point in time when a validation letter is sent out by Canada, a first nation claimant has already fully documented its claim, and Canada has already fully reviewed and assessed the claim and determined that it is partially or wholly liable. Why should this not be the point in time when Canada also advises the first nation that it will make an advance payment of a certain amount?

These are our elders. If we file a claim today, this elder is alive. Five years later, this elder is not here. These are the people who suffered the greatest impact of colonization, so why should these people continue to suffer? I think some answers should be given to these people. Help them try to live a comfortable life. It's our elders who are suffering.

We hear about the residential schools now, and that's been in the papers a lot and in the public eye. I was 28 years old when I became a chief, and the elders there told me that the residential schools broke our language. At that time, I did not see it because I spoke the Ojibwa language fluently, and all the people around me spoke the Ojibwa language. Now I see that break. I'm the last person of my age who can speak Ojibwa fluently. Everyone else can say a few words, but they cannot carry on a conversation as I can.

So we're losing our language as well, and that's a devastation that the residential schools had on our people. It was a very, very bad idea, I guess you could say, for aboriginal people. Yes, it taught us the western civilization. Yes, it taught us how to live here with today's society. Yes, we're able to live a little bit in that way, but we're not able to live in the way we would like to.

We're free people, just like any other nationality in this country. They are free to exercise their beliefs and how they want to live. How we live is culturally and traditionally. We used to live by the forest and the lakes, because God provided that food for us to live. He put us here for a reason, because there was food here and we could live here. That's why God put us here, and I strongly believe in God. We may call him the Creator, you guys call him God. He's the same person.

With that, I hope you understood and take into consideration what I had to present.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

[Glenn Archie]

I have just one more thing.

We need better communications with INAC regional offices, as well, to implement settlements. When we talk about certain models, Toronto and Ottawa support it, but when we get down to regional, they don't support it, like MPAC. That's what they use now for valuation in specific claims. We didn't agree with that. The federal government wants to use MPAC, and we didn't agree with that, and now regional offices don't want to use that either.

So where are we with the settlement? Currently we have a handshake to a settlement on a flood plain, but there's also the inter-crown dispute with Manitoba and Ontario. The federal government wants Manitoba to pay their portion before they pay out the total compensation. Our position is that the federal government should pay it 100%. Let the federal government fight with the provinces, or whoever they have to get money from. We're owed 100%, because the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility over first nations.

Darn, it's too bad I don't have 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You had 12. I was being generous.

[Glenn Archie]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You come from an area that has been particularly hard hit. I have been in your traditional territory many times. Thank you for your wise words.

We're going to get back to our questioning, so you'll perhaps have an opportunity to express some more details.

We're moving to MP Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us today.

I come from southeastern British Columbia, the home of the Ktunaxa. As I mentioned to the previous group of witnesses, I had the pleasure of representing municipalities in the treaty negotiations that the Ktunaxa undertook. It has reached an agreement-in-principle stage, but it hasn't been signed off yet. The treaty details are going back to the Ktunaxa people, in a very extensive review, to see whether they want to sign off on the AIP.

My question is for Mr. Eyford. You have British Columbia knowledge. I became a real believer in treaties, and I believe in treaties because in the end I can see it benefiting all the partners involved, including certainly the Ktunaxa. Why, then, have over half of the first nations in British Columbia decided that they're not interested in pursuing treaties? What are some of the barriers to a modern treaty from your perspective?

[Douglas Eyford]

To maybe put this in a historical context, when the B.C. treaty process was started in 1990, there was an expectation that all British Columbia first nations groups that weren't parties to Treaty 8 and the Douglas Treaties on Vancouver Island would become involved in the treaty process. That obviously didn't happen. One of the reasons is there are organizations, like the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, that represent the legitimate views of some of their members and have a more rights-based approach to dealing with the crown. They want recognition of their unextinguished aboriginal rights, including title, and they feel that the treaty process requires the extinguishment of those rights. They are not prepared to enter into that process. I think that's probably the main reason.

There are other communities that I act for in British Columbia that are on the path of economic development, and frankly, there are a wider range of financial benefits, procurement opportunities, and training and employment opportunities offered through economic development than there are through treaty. As well, those agreements that they enter into with industry don't take decades to complete. There are groups who see that as being a more pragmatic way to pursue their interests.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

They don't see them just as interim measures towards treaty eventually.

[Douglas Eyford]

Some of the groups in the Prince Rupert area, many of the Tsimshian groups, are involved in the treaty process, but they're not actively pursuing treaty the way they've been actively involved in the development of the port of Prince Rupert, the development of LNG terminals in that area, and natural gas pipelines.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Archie, you started by talking about some successful negotiations that you have concluded over the last few years. Aside from being a great negotiator leading to a successful negotiation, what were some of the factors that led to those being agreed to in the end? What's key to getting a settlement or an agreement on these negotiations?

[Glenn Archie]

We pushed and pushed for our issues. I guess we finally won over.... The government finally bent back a little bit and decided to agree with our issues, sometimes agreeing 100% with it, or 50%—

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

What were some of those key issues? I'm really interested in what the struggle was.

[Glenn Archie]

We had a resolution of the Assabaska land claim back in 1997. Land was a big issue, a big component to agreeing to settlement. We were able to buy two other parcels of land that were agreed upon to be put into the ATR process. That's been completed. Orders in council have been executed and signed. Basically, more land was the key issue on that.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

How did you resolve the funding issue at the end of those negotiations?

[Glenn Archie]

I have to remember how this one happened. It was 21 years ago. I think they forgave the loan in the end. I think that's what happened.

This is what they're proposing for the flood claim now. They're going to forgive the loans, but they're still in our books right now, and that's the big problem that we're facing. We're borrowing for housing infrastructure projects.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Questioning goes to MP Bossio.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you all for going to great lengths to get here today. I know it was staggered, and we really appreciate your making the effort to become a part of this panel today and the testimony you've given.

I referred in our last meeting to member Saganash, who is not able to join us today. When we talked about the northern Cree and the fact that they negotiated a land claim, and then the negotiations went on, probably 20 negotiations, 20 agreements, occurred over a generation. On Tuesday, with Nunavut and ITK here, we were talking about the same sort of issue, that these claim agreements need to be living documents.

Mr. Eyford, can you comment on the need for these agreements to be living agreements as they transition into changes as a result of these agreements and unforeseen consequences that could occur?

[Douglas Eyford]

I agree, they are living documents. The complaint from some groups that have completed treaties is that, once the treaty is completed, Canada sees the relationship as having come to an end, when in fact it's a new relationship. It's a comprehensive, complicated relationship in many ways. Canada has ongoing obligations to each of the modern treaty communities. There are review mechanisms in those treaties for the parties, after a period of time, to review how the treaty is being implemented.

I mentioned implementation in my comments. One of the points I want to emphasize is the strong need, as more of these modern treaties are completed, for Canada to be able to better coordinate the way it is interpreting and implementing treaties. If Canada doesn't do that, there are significant liabilities that will follow.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

It's vitally important for a true nation-to-nation relationship. It's a partnership. Thank you very much for that.

I wish I could delve more into that aspect of it, but there are some other issues I want to cover, in particular with Mr. Stewart.

Manitoba and, I think, B.C. also have an organization that conducts the research for provincial indigenous organizations. I assume Ontario doesn't have that relationship. Maybe you can take a step back on the historical aspect of the funding for research for land claims. Can you take us through once again the historical perspective? What impact does that have on the ability of different indigenous communities to negotiate these land claims and the level of debt they end up incurring because you're no longer available to provide those services to them? Do they just forego that research?

[Cam Stewart]

I can expand on the effects, and I'll let Patricia handle the history of it.

The fact that we're going year to year means we have no traction. That means we can hire staff, but we're not sure if they're going to be around the next year, very simply, and that affects everything. That affects, again, the first nations' right to pursue claims. If we have a claim on our books, and we cannot pursue it the next year because our funding agreement is not adequate, that means their community is suffering because that claim is shelved.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's part of the reason it ends up taking 25 years or 30 years to settle it.

[Cam Stewart]

It can. In our case, yes, absolutely. But there are other reasons, too. There are political reasons. There's a shift in community interests. There's, again, a lack of resources on our behalf because the funding is not there, so we can't pursue that claim enough.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

When you were at a staff of six, would you say that was an optimum level of resource?

[Cam Stewart]

No.