Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'd like to add to Andrew's comments. Part of your question dealt with a comparison to practices in other jurisdictions. The requirement for a vote at all is different from what most communities do when they're authorizing land use. A typical comparison for the designation proc

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On your question as to the extent it will expedite, in the designation processes over the last five years, the average time between a first vote and a second vote is about four months, so by effectively eliminating the need to go to that second vote, you will speed things up by a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, not in waiting for votes to take place, because the volume isn't that high. However, we have heard anecdotally that some have avoided the process because of the difficulty.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The costs vary considerably by community. We typically cover the costs of the electoral officers who oversee the conduct of the vote. The costs of mailing out information packages to all eligible electors could be a few thousand dollars, if it's a small community. If it's a large

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We conduct about 10 to 12 designations per year. Sometimes they require multiple votes. There are maybe around 20 votes. It's anywhere from $7,000 to $50,000 per vote. It is sometimes a little bit more if it's a particularly large community. The cost is variable from year to year

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I'll take a crack at answering that. Businesses, as we discussed earlier, want to engage in discussions with people who ultimately have the decision-making authority. They really seek certainty. Doing business depends on entering into leases, obtaining permits or rights-o

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

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  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  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  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  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  Perhaps I can respond to that.