Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  I am sorry; I did not hear.

Natural Resources committee  No, not necessarily. But I have to say that the distance between the community and a project would be a factor to consider. In a real sense, the fact that a community is a very long way from the site can imply that it is not intended to be involved in the consultations. I am also thinking about a project in the north, in the Mackenzie Valley.

Natural Resources committee  That is a huge question, but I would say that, for the departments, the best way to improve the consultation process would be experience, by which I mean getting to know aboriginal peoples, listening to their concerns and understanding the impact of the decisions that affect them.

Natural Resources committee  That is an important point. We have to be able to convince a third party, a judge actually, that the process was viable and that the effort made to consult the aboriginal people was significant. That is not a veto. Working with aboriginal people is not in itself necessary to make the decision a good one.

Natural Resources committee  There's an indirect connection. Again, my observation is that industry proponents for projects, anticipating the value of having support from aboriginal communities, put a great deal of effort into negotiating what we call interim benefit agreements, which are essentially documents to improve relationships with the aboriginal peoples in a particular area.

Natural Resources committee  It's a factor that is of interest, of course, because it signals that the aboriginal community sees some value in the project. If I were a decision-maker, I wouldn't need to rely on the fact or absence of an interim benefit agreement because I would have the benefit of the views expressed by the aboriginal community itself, because they would be expressing it to me as a decision-maker.

Natural Resources committee  Maybe I'll start. In the early period after the decisions came out from the Supreme Court, there was actually a fair bit of variation amongst provinces, and between the provinces and the federal government. As time has gone on and more experience has been gained, there's a striking similarity and convergence of both the process and the criteria that we apply and the stages at which consultation will be worked out.

Natural Resources committee  I think it is important to make sure we get quality decisions. That is the goal. That is a decision-making process that gives results acceptable to all parties, to everyone with an interest in the outcome. The time that an agency or a minister needs is one factor, but it is not the only one.

Natural Resources committee  If that were to result in the right decision, yes, it would. As I told you, it can take a day or a year. The important thing is the quality of the process for gathering the necessary information that allows the decision to be made. That is more important than the time it may take.

Natural Resources committee  Well, as I say, Little Salmon was only decided last year, so it's still a bit fresh, but the dispute itself had arisen a number of years ago with the Yukon government, and as soon as the dispute arose, people who were negotiating modern land claim settlements were much more attuned to the importance of articulating in the document itself, as much as possible, what exactly all the players had to do for consultation.

Natural Resources committee  Well, the good news is that, yes, most of the north is covered by modern land claim settlements, and most of them--in fact, all of them--do contain provisions that anticipate the need to consult with aboriginal groups in decision-making, particularly around environmental assessment processes.

Natural Resources committee  The short answer is no, there is no stage in any process where there would be no trigger. But a decision-maker needs to ask, at each stage in the process, what is the likelihood that my decision will have an actual impact on an aboriginal interest? At many stages, particularly the planning stages, it's hard to imagine where the impact will be.

Natural Resources committee  I would second that approach. As I said at the very beginning, if you're seriously looking at any natural resource project in this country that you can reasonably anticipate will have a physical effect on the environment, then it would be striking not to have factored in from the very beginning who the aboriginal groups are, what their interests might be, and what impacts there might be with regard to the various stages along the decision-making process.

Natural Resources committee  As I was saying in response to your first question, the courts are actually fairly deferential to what they see as rigorous decision-making that makes an honest effort to take into account all the factors that are meaningful to Canadians. These are decision-making processes designed to make the best possible decisions for all Canadians, not for any particular group within the Canadian population.