That's a great question.
The band system and the hereditary system never meld, because you have an elected chief in one area, and then you have the hereditary system. We saw this with the Wet'suwet'en and the Coastal GasLink project, where the duty to consult is to the Crown, which they did halfway, but they didn't consult with the hereditary chief, and that created lots of problems.
That's exacerbated in particular when you have a first nation the size of the Gitxsan, where I have 65 hereditary chiefs and 33,000 square kilometres of traditional territory that's claimed, and the hereditary system is matriarchal in our case. The actual hereditary chief is responsible for the management and the well-being of the wilp group, and has that chief name that adheres to a certain tract of land, which although they may all agree upon.... It's still difficult for me—I've been dealing with them for 13 years now—to understand how we can put together our Canadian government with their self-governing nature on the traditional territory.
Forestry is one of the industries that suffer every time, because you may have the wilp group of, let's say, 300 members and the hereditary chief says that it's okay to go cut and gives a blessing—because the consultation was done; the accommodation is done; there's some meaningful employment; perhaps they have some environmental stewards there on the property in the territory watching, overseeing the operation—but yet there are two individuals who decide they're going to blockade, and they're going to shut it down because they don't agree with the hereditary chief. There is no simple answer to any of these issues; really there isn't.
I've seen it operate very smoothly where the house group is harmonious, and if the hereditary chief says that in fact this is going to be part of the operation and they're going to harvest some trees there, it goes fantastic and the wilp group benefits because they get a stipend on a per cubic metre basis typically. They do some meaningful things, and there are people who get employment from that.
Again, there's not really an easy answer to that one, but it is one that needs to be explored because that uncertainty is what causes so much uncertainty for business and whether they choose to do all the recce work, spend the money, put an application in, only to be blockaded. That's not fair to either group of people.