Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, I certainly heard comments about intervenor funding in the course of my review, leaving aside the reviews they're having in the Yukon and in Nunavut, though I didn't know about the latter specifically. I did not address that issue in my document. It's a minefield when we talk about intervenor funding, as we all know.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Bevington, you and I may have a fundamental difference in understanding. The land use planning function, in my view, would be to determine whether an area should be developed or not. Once it can be developed, then the specific rules and guides relating to how the development would occur would come out of the regulatory body in that area.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That is correct, according to my understanding.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not sure how it works in Ontario. I think I did read that a bill was just introduced relating to land use plans for northern Ontario. I haven't read it yet. But what I'm thinking of and the way I'm describing it is that it comes out of the land claim agreements. And the role of the federal government is that together they would decide.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. What I am trying to do is move up the local influence to an earlier point in time, and not at the regulatory stage but at the land use planning stage, which I think is where you should make those policy decisions, and local people should have a huge input in that respect.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The easy answer for me would be to say you should choose the Mackenzie Valley, as I did. In retrospect, if I were to do it again, I would have spent a lot more time in the Yukon right at the outset, because they seem to be able to make it work, and what is it there that is different from that and NWT and Nunavut?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's correct. If a company in B.C. wanted to do work in Alberta, they would deal with one regulatory body as opposed to, if there was an area 10 miles in length, dealing with four or five.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Regardless of what else you do, I think the land use plan should be a priority. From there, you can make other choices and other decisions. So in my view, would land use plans would be a good start? They absolutely would.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  They're close.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the land use plans would help in the process, but I don't think they would solve the issue that we have, which is that there is a complex series of regulatory bodies that do not have the capacity to do the job they were set up to do.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One or more of them is engaged in every single project.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's not on every individual project, but if the project included more than one region--and as I said, a lot of industry has the capacity and the will to want to go to a lot of different regions--then they would involve a lot of different boards. But you're right, if you took one specific project like the Diavik Mine--one project, one area--you could get through the process if you had the money to support it.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That depends on which industry you're talking about, but both the mining industry and the oil and gas industry expressed to me the concern that they would be working in two or three different areas. As a result, they would have to learn and run through two or three different boards in the course of that, with the projects sometimes overlapping and sometimes not overlapping.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  My understanding of what we would be doing in terms of land use plans is that you'd carve off areas that are subject to development and areas that are not subject to development. On those that are subject to development, then you'd go through the different land and water boards or the environmental impact review board, and each area would have its own set of rules respecting that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, I heard rumours to that effect. Actually, my own belief is that these mines are so large that they will take the effort to actually make them work, regardless of where they are in the area. They have enough people and enough resources to make them work. Nobody said that the system can't work for very large projects of that nature, but you lose a lot between the small and large projects that are troublesome.