Good morning, and thank you for this invitation.
My name is Mark Podlasly, and I am a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation in southern British Columbia. I am speaking to you today from Coast Salish territory in southwestern British Columbia.
I am the director of economic policy at the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, a national collective of 70 indigenous nations working to ensure that first nations receive a fair share of benefits from projects in our territories through the ownership of equity in proposed pipelines, electric infrastructure, transportation routes and other revenue-producing initiatives.
I am here today to speak on behalf of our members in support of Bill C-15, an act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For our members, UNDRIP already frames how we see development and our ability to direct decisions that are supportive of our interests.
The declaration focuses indigenous attention on how first nations-supported development can enable self-determination as described in UNDRIP article 3. However, it is article 4 that, in the opinion of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, will be key to successfully implementing UNDRIP in Canada.
Article 4 states that:
Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.
This financing or fiscal component is key to ensuring that first nations have the means to pursue UNDRIP autonomy. No government, indigenous or not, is truly self-determining if it is reliant on an external government for financial viability. It is impossible for a government to function at any level without a source of revenue to pay for its operation.
This is why our members see revenues from indigenous-held equity as providing the financial means for self-determination, and why first nations must implement this according to UNDRIP. Without it, UNDRIP implementation will be impossible.
For first nations, a multi-generational source of equity-derived revenue will allow our nations the ability to set and fund our own UNDRIP self-determination priorities.
These UNDRIP priorities include culture and language. They are, as described in article 11, to practise and revitalize our culture, traditions and customs; in article 12, to manifest, practise, develop and teach our spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies.
They include education and media. They are, in articles 14 and 16, to establish and control our educational systems and institutions, to provide education and to establish our own media in our own languages.
They include economic, social and health improvements. They are, as noted in article 21, the improvement of our economic and social conditions.
They include revenue from traditional territories. They are, as described in article 26, to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that we possess by reason of traditional ownership, occupation or use.
They include development priorities. They are, as described in article 32, to develop and present priorities and strategies for the development and use of our lands and other resources, and as described in article 34, to promote, develop and maintain our institutional structures.
Article 39 notes that we are to have access to financial and technical assistance from states regarding the rights contained in the declaration.
These UNDRIP articles are all dependent on a revenue stream to pay for their implementation. A new indigenous-controlled fiscal component offers significant benefits for first nations and Canada, including greater investment certainty and reduced opposition to projects; self-sustaining indigenous governments; stable own-source revenue streams to fund first nations government priorities; the ability of first nations to access capital sources to leverage their revenue streams to further invest in the Canadian economy; a new nation-to-nation relationship with the Crown as a true UNDRIP partner; direct first nations involvement in the wealth-generation aspects of the Canadian economy; and fulfillment of UNDRIP.
These benefits will accrue only if there is a way for first nations to acquire a revenue stream to support self-determination. At present it is very difficult to nearly impossible for first nations to raise or access substantive capital to invest in major projects.
The advice that I wish to provide to the committee today is that the key to making UNDRIP work in Canada is to start with article 4, which is about the ways and means for financing indigenous autonomous functions. How this is implemented will determine if the promise of Bill C-15 and UNDRIP will be fulfilled.
Thank you.