Natural Resources committee  Thank you. We were talking about best practices for indigenous engagement. I just want to tell you that the best practices are here in B.C. That's the way the LNG project got approved for LNG Canada. It was a $40-billion project and it was 15 years in the making. I know they've

Natural Resources committee  I can't quantify the value to first nations because those are confidential to every first nation, but in talking with some of my fellow chief councillors over the days, some of the comments I heard were basically that these are our first steps out of dependence on the Indian Act.

Natural Resources committee  What do you mean, one of my members?

Natural Resources committee  We don't have that problem. What we do have is a problem with the first nations communities, in terms of elected leadership. They all signed agreements that were basically, at a lower level, being consulted with their people. With their own mechanisms, they actually got agreement

Natural Resources committee  You know, it's an issue that I've faced for over 15 years, and I've had the option to do it at many different levels. Capital isn't the problem. There's tons of money out there. In fact, at one point, I had a financial institution in New York that had $2 billion to engage with

Natural Resources committee  Okay, that's two questions. I don't think government can do anything in terms of elected versus hereditary. Every community is going to have to figure that out for itself, because every community has evolved to a certain extent in terms of their leadership. Some have gone entire

Natural Resources committee  When I talk about what happened in Kitimat here, we're really talking about what happened in the last 12 years. That's a really short, condensed time frame to change the mentality and approach of first nations towards major project development. We've evolved. We've evolved so qui

Natural Resources committee  Oh yes, definitely. The difference in what LNG Canada did versus the projects before them was that even before they went through the environmental assessment process to apply for a certificate, they came to us. They talked to us. We laid out our concerns at a very high level, bec

Natural Resources committee  That is correct, without a doubt. The only way this works is if the first nations leadership in question has constant communication with their own membership. I know you can't legislate that. I know you can't put it into a policy, but it's a question I ask all the time when first

Natural Resources committee  It was trial and error. They weren't the first proposal to come to our territory. We had the modernization of the smelter there. At the beginning, we had a pulp and paper mill. Back in those days, we were just understanding risk and title. We were using our risk and title lawyers

Natural Resources committee  They're trying to shut down the energy industry, the forest industry and the mining industry. If it were about raising the standards and actually addressing climate change, some of the measures that have been put in place in B.C. should have been enough. Even with a commitment to

Natural Resources committee  Well, it's not keeping up with what's happening on the ground in B.C., I can tell you that. It's interesting to see how first nations are viewing this, because everybody knows that in terms of rights and title, there is an economic component that has to be understood and realized

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I was last here 10 years ago to talk about the exact same subject matter, but in a different context. I was here to get the Government of Canada to support LNG development in B.C. I'll open up by saying that I'm not here to ask for money. I'm not here to de

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It doesn't. When I got elected as a counsellor in 2003-2004, my chief counsellor had experiences with these types of organizations. We spent a lot of time trying to understand the relationships among NGOs of this nature, the governments of B.C. and Canada, and their agenda, whi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's not just first nations' success we're talking about that matters. Come to my committee and see the single mom who's off welfare or my friend who stayed out of prison. When you talk about resource development at the first nations stage, you have to remember that revenues an