Thanks to all our witnesses for being here.
This last part of the conversation I think is also attached to similar concerns. We've all heard repeatedly about sufficient capacity and resourcing, even for participation in the regulatory review process. Certainly, indigenous communities engaging with companies and resource proponents for development is clearly a long-standing challenge, which obviously governments of all stripes will have to contend with. They are a key part in continuing to improve indigenous consultation on major resources projects, about which I know we are all concerned.
Mr. Ross, I have a couple of questions related to some of the comments you made in your presentation. You talked about the importance of empowering individual first nations through ensuring they have information to make informed decisions about resource proposals, and the priority to reduce poverty and increase jobs for indigenous communities.
You touched on something that I think Canadians are hearing more and more about, related to this potential disagreement between elected leaders of indigenous communities and other forms of leadership, such as hereditary leaders.
Mayor John Helin of the Lax Kw'alaams Band was here at committee on February 5. He talked about the other point you made, how the foreign-funded, anti-energy activists were undermining the economic ambitions of first nations who want to develop their own resources. In his case, they came into the community and sowed division among community members and band leadership. They were claiming and posing publicly as hereditary leaders, in opposition to proposed LNG developments that the elected leadership supported.
The chiefs' council of the Lax Kw'alaams put out a letter that said, they “[do] not sanction inviting professional protesters from non-governmental organizations, and non Lax Kw'alaams First Nations members into their traditional lands in breach of ancient tribal protocols. [...] The unauthorized action by this renegade group has created needless confusion, damages tribal unity, and is insulting to tribal members.”
In the context of best practices for indigenous engagement, I think there are many Canadians, and maybe even elected people, who question whether or not this is happening and is actually a thing. However, we've heard about it repeatedly from indigenous leaders.
Do you have any suggestions on how a government could effectively go about sorting out the various leadership structures and figure out who's actually speaking on the will of the communities?
Also, do you have any views on how it impacts first nations communities when governments impose policies and laws that were explicitly requested by foreign-funded activists, for example, the oil shipping tanker ban, Bill C-48, against the preferences of the locally impacted communities?