Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In my comments, I think I said that collaborative consent is a nation-to-nation approach to getting to the UN declaration. You have a couple of sets of commitments that are all around this, including this government's commitment to building nation-to-nation relationships. I think

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You don't normally put governance structures like that in a bill. What this means is that indigenous governments have to work together with non-indigenous governments to create these tables. We don't have FPT tables in our legislation. That's the way governments work together to

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, I was about 16 years old then. At the beginning, for a very long time, nobody knew what section 35 meant. There weren't any cases that described what was actually included in the 1982 amendments. Since then, we have spent a lot of time in court, as my colleague pointed out,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  What I care about is that it must be acted on. That's what I care the most about. I see the minister having to report back every year as being focused on that. It's almost the public shaming part of making a law enforceable: the minister has to show up and show what's happened ev

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  This is why we came up and framed things as collaborative consent, which is consent between governments. I think the right to self-determination is the right of indigenous nations to define their governments and to participate in setting the direction of Canada as governments. It

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I just want to point out that the Tsilhqot’in decision defined consent. It said that it's required regarding titled lands, point blank, and then, if you don't get it, you have to do the justification test. Consent is already defined in law. UNDRIP just says, “States shall consu

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I know that announcement was met with some.... Different folks felt differently about it. Not all aboriginal governments support that particular initiative. However, it works with the non-derogation clause in Bill C-262, which basically says that this bill is not intended to dim

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. The only concern I would have with that is that things evolve over time, and you would need to ensure that it is not a defined box of rights that stay locked in the year 2018, or whenever it's completed, right?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The principle in law of rights, the expression of rights evolving over time, is an important one, and it changes circumstances, so that would be the only real concern I would have. Negotiating together is the whole idea behind collaborative consent. It's a consent-based mechanis

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the invitation to present to the committee. My name is Merrell-Ann Phare. I'm based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. I'm the founding executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, which is a national first nation charitable envir