Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On the specifics of the pre-reserve designation process and the model that you've described, I was trying, with the case example, to understand. But in the existing Indian Act, there is provision under section 36 to designate a piece of land as a special reserve. So there's sta

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The short answer is that the lands that are held up all have what regrettably has become a thorny issue.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For example, in NCN's case, most of the lands with minimal conflicts.... I mean, I'm the TLE adviser for NCN, and they have by far the most complicated of all the selections of any first nation in Manitoba. They've asked us to help stickhandle that process through.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The informal process that your officials have adopted and are working with, we call parcel A and parcel B. In that situation we take a piece of land that includes an identified area that's in conflict. The area might be a former mine against which there is a mining claim or somet

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The quick answer is that we absolutely have the capacity to do that. We could do the comparison. If you're requesting that, we'd be happy to do that. Typically, it takes at least eight years to move a parcel from selection to—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  So we're all into looking at anything that works, and if it doesn't undermine the intent for which the selection was made and so forth, we've all been pretty flexible. Actually, your officials in the region have been reasonably flexible about those kinds of things. The other hang

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for that question, and thank you for allowing me to continue with the parliamentary secretary's question. We've all tried to make it work where we can. Even though thorny issues have arisen, they haven't.... As another consequence of the two ministers making a commitme

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can say the ministerial order is a good thing. It moves the land more quickly. The order in council lands, you're all familiar with the mechanism. It takes a long time. You have to get the committee of deputies together. It's a long process to get an order in council of the fed

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. I was saying that, without intending to be disrespectful, we called the ATR the prevention of reserves policy because it just took so long.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The prevention of reserves policy. For example, there was an issue with the stale-dating of environmental assessments. Departmental officials would work on doing an environmental site assessment, particularly if a site had any human use prior to that, the storage of fuel or parti

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would say, as a practitioner, that there are elements of the change in policy that when properly applied are better than the previous process.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The ministerial order is a step that removes a considerable period of time consideration. I repeat again that most of the acres that have moved are ready to move. They're remote, there are no mining claims, and there are no hydro easements. You basically send a survey crew out, s

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think reasoned minds getting together to methodically go through the parcels that are in limbo would be of some value right now. That might need some senior policy assistance to say, “This is the decision we're going to take, this is the decision we're going to live with, and l

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Interestingly, in many cases with the sites that are the most troublesome the issues arose at a very early stage after selection in the various correspondence back and forth, including from the province. Some of them, for example the departmental concerns regarding the pre-transf

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good day.