Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. It's an excellent one. When the regime started, there was a fair amount of uncertainty. It was a fairly large change. It took the experience of some first nations that had gone through it and proved its benefits to gather attention from additional fir

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It is a matter of some discussion, and we are working on it. Defining what success means is never evident, so it is a process that we have to go through. The kinds of themes we have been discussing are in line with the comments my colleague made at the beginning. We see this as a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Let me add to his response that another point was mentioned that I think is quite important to the conversation, and that's on the issue of regulatory gaps. One of the large impediments to economic development on reserves is that the way projects are regulated on those reserve

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll provide a point of view on that. The experience I described earlier in the relatively short lifespan of the legislation, where there was a slow uptake and then accelerating to a point where we now have a demand that exceeds our capacity, provides a strong indication that th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Perhaps I can respond to that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You've already touched on a couple of them, but you're right there are several others that are worth mentioning to this committee, which address the wide variety of issues that Andrew outlined in his opening remarks. For example, additions to reserve is a process that many first

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Perhaps I'll field that one as well. Margaret touched on it briefly earlier, but a regulatory gap really is the absence of adequate laws, including the regulations and the monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, to govern those activities. That gap may exist either because we're n

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Perhaps I'll respond to that. There is a proposal, in its early exploratory stages, by the First Nations Tax Commission examining that very issue, whereby a limited number of interested first nations could grant fee simple title to some or all land parcels with a reversionary r

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sorry, but if I may make one further comment on that, another part of this to consider is that many first nations communities have land managers themselves, so we'll try to get some estimates. We don't have perfect numbers on that, but we'll try to provide some estimates about th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We do have some of the numbers at our fingertips today. To your question about how many are in each program, we have within the three programs my colleague described—RLAP, 53/60, and RLEMP—a total of 164, of which 93 are in the RLEM program at various stages; 69 in the RLAP prog

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  RLEMP for many years was a pilot program. It was designed to respond to that 2002 evaluation that Andrew mentioned. As time proved its benefits, the funding for that program was stabilized in 2009. There was an action plan pursuant to a federal framework on aboriginal economic de

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Last year, the department undertook a quite extensive external engagement process to learn from our various stakeholders and partners about how our programs could be enhanced or altered in some fashion to better meet the unique needs, challenges, and diversity facing aboriginal c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If I may add to that, a key thing we heard was the need to get the decision-making as close to the community level as possible, ideally right at the community level. That's where you get the gains in efficiency and the speed. When you have to involve departmental officials, as

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's a good question, and you're right that I did touch on it earlier. So thanks for bringing it up again.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. In line with the other elements of the federal framework for aboriginal development—and here you talked about enhancing the value of aboriginal assets—I would signal two key assets in any first nations community. One is the people themselves, for very obvious reason