Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here, and also to be following the evidence presented by Chief Joe and his colleagues. My name is Edward John. I am an elected member of the First Nations Summit executive, elected over 11 terms. This summer was like no other. In British Columb

Natural Resources committee  I would think it would be part of the strategic level plans that are developed by and for the first nations by themselves, so they're able to have these fundamental documents that allow them to make and to consider their own proposals and others; that they know the baseline infor

Natural Resources committee  There is a variety. On cooperatives, I grew up in a family that was reliant on the trapping industry. My dad and my communities were heavily reliant on it. There was no business model as such. We were out there on the land every day, selling to the Hudson's Bay manager at prices

Natural Resources committee  I'll give you an example. We work with both UBC and Simon Fraser, as well as the University of Victoria. I don't have the specific information about the other 27 post-secondary institutions in British Columbia, but, as I said, we work with them. Simon Fraser, for example, has a

Natural Resources committee  We have been involved in the corporate world, setting up corporations and businesses that allow our people to engage with other businesses and governments. One of the key things I was asked about earlier in a broad way and I want to bring forward is recommendation one in the lon

Natural Resources committee  Yes, they would be built into that, as well as knowing the land base and what's in it.

Natural Resources committee  The mining industry in British Columbia is a very big industry with opportunities. First nations in different parts of the province have been able to take advantage of those opportunities. In other cases they have been directly opposed to projects because of the impacts that are

Natural Resources committee  I don't know the valuation process for that, but for sure the cultural underpinnings are extremely important to us. We see our relationship to the natural world in a unique way based on the cultures that we come from. I could go into a bit of detail but we don't have the time her

Natural Resources committee  Some are related to energy and some are related to mining, but nonetheless, engaging first nations is an important practice. How do you engage first nations? How do first nations participate in the development of resources within their respective territories, whatever the natur

Natural Resources committee  That is a unique situation on the west coast, where a number of tribes along the corridor in northern British Columbia have work with an LNG proposal. It's been a constructive arrangement. It's working. I would think it might be important to take that specific example and look at

Natural Resources committee  Government does that to us all the time too, so it's nothing new. We find ways around it. These confidentiality agreements that people insist on, sometimes maybe it's to the advantage of the first nations that they're negotiating, but in most cases these are private arrangement

Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure that there is a right way or a wrong way. What's really important to understand is the underlying legal nature of the interests of first nations—in British Columbia, it's the issue of aboriginal rights, and aboriginal title in the northeastern part of British Colum

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  It's not particularly projects, but the manner in which projects proceed and are reviewed. We've constantly said that we need to ensure that our communities are involved in environmental assessments. We need to know what the environmental standards are. We need to know how these

Natural Resources committee  On one of the proposed LNG pipelines through the north there's been some effort by the tribes along the proposed pipeline route to address that. As you know, government has taken the approach of providing training funds to project-related initiatives, and there's no training fund