I could speak on behalf of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, ACFN. Basically, we're in the Athabasca region north of Fort McMurray.
Over the years, what we have experienced in regard to oil and gas operations is that we find it hard to truly maximize the benefits from the oil sands reserve here in Alberta because industry makes it complicated for first nations when making impact benefit agreements on their traditional territories. That's mainly because of the high rate of lobbying that continues to happen daily with both federal and provincial government officials, in which industry says that first nations are being a burden in regard to extraction of the natural resources in the area concerned. In more ways than one, whatever Canada has been doing in the last little while in regard to first nations becoming self-sufficient and moving on an economic platform, they tend to widen the gap in regard to how difficult it is for us to make these agreements with industry. It's mainly because industry wants to control and is lobbying both levels of government to have control over first nations traditional territories.
I don't think it's right, in more ways than one, that Canada, along with the provincial government, continues to deregulate the regulatory system to make it easy for industry to go into our traditional territories. Our traditional territories existed long before European descendants came into our traditional territories. ACFN has always recognized that we are here to protect and to be stewards of the land.
Through our IBAs, impact and benefit agreements, we're starting to implement some of the agreements we have in place. We make sure that in the implementation there are grounds for protection of water, air, land, and animals in the area. If anything were to go wrong for any of the developers with whom we make an IBA, we have implementation clauses in the agreement whereby they are subject to penalties if anything occurs on their sites.
We need a good understanding between the first nations and government with respect to where they're going. I truly believe that industry continues to lobby at a rate such that government continues to give in to them.
We all know for a fact that economic development is a key component in building this country, but we also have to look at the other portion of this whole thing. Whatever happens in our area, the community of Fort Chipewyan, has a drastic effect on our health system. Our ecosystem is in jeopardy; our water system is in question right now because of the uncertainty regarding all of the effluent that is being pumped into the Athabasca River. With the continuous breaches with respect to how the regulatory system is failing us, this situation needs to be looked at in more ways than one.
If the Athabasca River is deemed to be one of the protected rivers in Canada, why wasn't that protection enforced when the Obed Sherritt mine had a breach up around Hinton, Alberta, when the whole coal mine tailings pond leaked into the Athabasca River? No criminal charges have been laid against the perpetrators in that area.
In our way of looking at things, we need to come up with a strategy whereby first nations people are heavily engaged in the process of developing a regulatory process for protecting the ecosystem and yet can continue to build an economic platform.
For as long as those tools are not in place, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation will continue to put pressure on the oil and gas industry in this region until we come to these conclusions.
We are using our rights and we cannot continue to allow industry to lobby government officials to let our treaty rights deteriorate. Our treaty rights are enshrined in and entrusted to the Canadian Constitution. We make this a lot easier if it becomes known that we as first nations people will work at a government-to-government level with both the feds and the provincial government. I don't think that at this point in time industry has anything to say about it.