Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, in my experience, if you don't consult you end up shooting yourself in the foot. One of the wise old chiefs used to say to me, “Go slow to go fast”, because if you don't, you'll get nowhere. You need to ensure that enough people have their say and, as one of the chiefs said

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can only agree that the frustration first nations have is with the bureaucratic lengths. Anything that can speed that up is going to be helpful. Manny Jules talked about the speed of business. We're not talking about a very complicated thing here. We're simply saying that if

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  To answer your question about where first nations want to go with this, my experience tells me that they want to go back to the discussion of the mid-1980s when there was a lot of talk about self-government under the Canadian Constitution. I think what first nations are really lo

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you again. As you may recall, when I appeared before you last May I told you that I had spent more than 20 years in the Department of Indian Affairs, most of that time as an assistant

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There's great variety in the answer to that question. Some first nations would see mainstream economic development as the ultimate solution to everything. There are other instances, though, in which first nations are not going to be having box stores and are not going to be leasi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I guess what first nations leaders would tell you is “Ask us. Don't decide on your own and then come and tell us what you've decided is your policy.” That tends still to be the way it works, rather than what you're doing, which may be the right thing. You're actually talking to t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Again, it's an empirical question. It depends. In some instances, it could be. In other cases, though, I hate to think of it as an opportunity, but it may well be. Take, for example, the Sydney tar ponds in Cape Breton. The first nations now have a significant economic developm

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As I said earlier, that's absolutely critical. It's critical that people be given the opportunity for education. It's critical that communities, though, support the young people who want to get an education, so that they actually use it in the communities. Unfortunately, someti

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would imagine so. I think what will happen is communities will get their feet wet. They'll find they can do it, that they have the capacity. Their self-esteem will grow and they will be able to take charge. I think they will probably take on other aspects of governance. Maybe

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think you're going to see first nations become almost unrecognizable from other nations, other communities. They will join the mainstream. I can cite an example just outside of Saskatoon now with the Dakotas. I don't think anybody going there would say this is an Indian reserv

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. Contaminated sites are significant, there's no question about it. They're on the contingent liabilities of the Government of Canada as federal lands. From what I know, there has been significant effort to try to deal with them, but there are so many. As you said, in

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From what I understand, the number of communities getting involved in the lands management act is rapidly increasing. Again, the reason why it was so difficult to get communities into that is the notion of really understanding what their land base was, what interests there were i

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From what I can tell, more and more communities are taking this on. They tend to be viewing it, in large measure, as a bit of self-government. That's a positive thing. Communities that are prepared to take responsibility for their own governance, and the outcomes, I think that's