Aboriginal Affairs - Issue No. 3 - Wednesday, September 19, 2001

2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Present: John Les, MLA (Chair); Paul Nettleton, MLA (Deputy Chair); Val Anderson, MLA; Dave Chutter, MLA; Mike Hunter, MLA; Blair Lekstrom, MLA; Dennis MacKay, MLA; Gillian Trumper, MLA; Rod Visser, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Bill Belsey, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 10:03 a.m.

2. The Committee reviewed its draft public consultation schedule.

3. The Committee reviewed its draft media release and public hearing advertisement.

4. The Clerk to the Committee provided an overview of the public hearing process.

5. The Committee recessed from 10:50 a.m. to 11:03 a.m.

6. The following witness appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

    · Philip Steenkamp, Deputy Minister, Treaty Negotiations Office

7. The Committee recessed from 12:22 p.m. to 12:40 p.m.

8. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

    · Eppa (Gerard Peters), In-SHUCK-ch First Nation
    · Wendy Lockhart Lundberg, Native Women CARE Society

9. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 2:19 p.m.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS



CONTENTS

		Page

Draft Hearing Schedule		25

Advertisement of Hearings		27

Public Hearing Process		28

Presentations		32
	Philip Steenkamp, Deputy Minister, Treaty Negotiations Office	32
	Eppa (Gerard Peters), In-SHUCK-ch First Nation	42
	Wendy Lockhart Lundberg, Native Women CARE Society	48

Chair:	* John Les (Chilliwack-Sumas L)
Deputy Chair:	* Paul Nettleton (Prince George–Omineca L)
Members:	* Val Anderson (Vancouver-Langara L) Bill Belsey (North Coast L) * Dave Chutter (Yale-Lillooet L) * Mike Hunter (Nanaimo L) * Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L) * Dennis MacKay (Bulkley Valley–Stikine L) * Gillian Trumper (Alberni-Qualicum L) * Rod Visser (North Island L) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	Philip Steenkamp (Deputy Minister, Treaty Negotiations Office) Eppa (Gerard Peters), In-SHUCK-ch First Nation Wendy Lockhart Lundberg, Native Women CARE Society

J. Les (Chair): I see we're a couple of members short at this point. I haven't been advised that anybody wouldn't be attending, so I will assume that the two members not here at present will be arriving in the course of the meeting.

It's been a couple of weeks since we last met. I assure you that Tamara Little has been working hard to put together the various arrangements required for us to carry out our work in the next couple of months. The Clerk of Committees office has been very busy as well, and I'd like to thank all of them for their assistance to this point.

J. Les (Chair): The first item on the agenda this morning is to review the draft public consultation schedule. You have a copy of that before you. I e-mailed it to committee members last week — Friday, I believe it was. Because of the various other committees and responsibilities that the members of the committees and others are participating in, we've found it necessary to compress the number of communities that we will be visiting around the province. I think we still have a very good representative sampling of British Columbia communities in the schedule as it is before you now.

However, having said that, I suspect there might be some comments from committee members around some of the details. Perhaps there's a community that we might have left out, or perhaps there's a couple of communities where we can combine an appearance by the committee and serve several communities at one stop.

So I would open the floor to any comments that committee members might have in terms of the consultation schedule, keeping in mind that the exact dates are perhaps not as important at this time in that when the Clerk of Committees office gets involved in the actual scheduling of these various locations, there could be a little give-and-take in terms of the date. I think we need to look at the scheduling of the exact dates as an incremental process as we evolve our way through the month of October.

G. Trumper: I thought we were going to go to Port Alberni, and I wonder why we're not. We have a very large aboriginal community there, which is certainly one of the bigger treaty areas in numbers of people. So, having told them that I thought we were coming….

J. Les (Chair): My response to that would be that currently we have three different locations on Vancouver Island: Victoria, Campbell River and Nanaimo. I think that is probably as fair to the Island as it is to any other part of the province. If you want to duke it out with the member for Nanaimo and maybe make a trade-off there, I would certainly recommend that to you if you want to engage in that. I guess the thought there would be: we're looking at the mid-Island, and to me, it's not important whether it's Nanaimo or Port Alberni. However, obviously to yourself or to Mike, that plays out somewhat differently.

So I don't know whether we leave it there or whether we come to some kind of conclusion on that particular item. But I guess underlying my thoughts is the fact that we don't really have room unless in that particular…. Mike and I were talking earlier about Campbell River and Nanaimo. It could very well be possible to put those two together in one day. After all, those communities are not that far apart. I'm not sure whether we could slide Port Alberni into that equation using some strategy like that.

Just to finish off on this one before I recognize another speaker, I'll maybe go to Mike first to see what his thoughts are.

M. Hunter: I appreciate the expression of concern by the member for Alberni-Qualicum. I do understand the importance of this issue in that area. Like in Nanaimo, negotiations have been fairly advanced. In fact, in the Port Alberni area there was a signed or initialled AIP. So I am prepared to try and be flexible in working with the member for Alberni-Qualicum and you to see if we can't make sure that we cover that member's area as well. I know that we've got six hours scheduled for Nanaimo; I appreciate that. In order for some equity and more appropriate coverage of the mid-Island area, I'm prepared to see if we can't squeeze in Campbell River, Nanaimo and Port Alberni somehow, even if it means shortening the time. I realize six hours minus dinner is not overly generous. But I think it's important that we be seen, even if only briefly, and allow some opportunity for people in Alberni-Qualicum, Nanaimo-Parksville and Nanaimo. I'd be prepared to work with the Committee Clerk and Tamara to see how we might make this a possibility.

D. MacKay: On the draft that's before us, we're showing Thursday, October 4 as being Terrace or Smithers. Obviously, being a resident of Smithers, I'm going to ask that we consider using Smithers as opposed to Terrace. There are two reasons for that. One is that Terrace is mainly affected by the Nisga'a agreement, which is done and passed. I would like the people of Smithers to have a say in any future treaty process that is going to affect Smithers and the surrounding communities. Given the fact that we're only going to get one location in the northwest between Prince Rupert and Prince George, Smithers is a more central location and could also include Burns Lake, Houston and the Hazeltons. I had hoped that we were going to be able to get to a couple of other locations in that region, given the feelings that are starting to develop in that region with the natives and the non-native popula

tion. So I would hope that we could look at Smithers as opposed to Terrace for that one meeting date.

I have a question relating to the asterisk, which would suggest that we're possibly going to meet on a reserve. I would ask that that be eliminated and that we meet in the town of Smithers. Also, on the advertising, if we're going to choose Smithers over Terrace, we should include advertising in the Burns Lake paper, which is a separate paper from Smithers, and the Houston paper, which is also a separate paper. Hazelton could be covered by advertising in the Smithers paper, but Burns Lake and Houston should not be excluded from being made aware of the hearing date set for Smithers.

If you go to the last column there, it shows us flying to Prince George. Well, that creates a bit of a logistical problem in that there are no flights between Terrace or Smithers to Prince George, other than going down through Vancouver and back up. So if we're going to fly, it isn't going to work — unless you're chartering, of course.

J. Les (Chair): Yes, that's right. Okay, so we've got your comments on that. On the question of Terrace versus Smithers, do I have any strong feelings?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I would just say that I concur with the comments of Dennis MacKay with respect to Smithers, rather than Terrace, being the preferred site for a number of reasons, most of which he's mentioned. I just think it makes a lot of sense. It certainly impacts the northwest corner of my riding in that I expect people from Fraser Lake might very well make their way to Smithers, whereas if it were in Terrace, that would be something of a problem. So I think Smithers is the preferred site.

B. Lekstrom: Just a question I would have. I know putting these schedules together is a tremendous job, but I note that on the draft that we're looking at today, the entire northeast of the province has been excluded. I would certainly put my pitch in that I think it's mandatory that we make a showing in the northeast of this province. I know that Treaty 8 does encompass a good chunk, but this is about more than just meeting with affected bands; it's about meeting with British Columbians.

There was discussion whether Fort St. John or Fort Nelson would be appropriate. I think that Fort Nelson is far too often overlooked. It's not one of the major centres per se. It would be my recommendation that somehow we host a meeting in the northeast of this province to show that we are getting out there and getting all corners of our province covered.

J. Les (Chair): Yeah. That's a valid comment. As you rightly point out, there was consideration of going there earlier on. It's simply a question of what we can do within the time that we have available to us. At this point it's not on the agenda. It's not an intended slight. The fact that that area of the province is largely covered by Treaty 8 certainly went into the decision-making process.

At this point I'm not sure how we can bring that area back in unless we find, as we go through the process, that some time loosens up and we might be able to make a quick visit to the northeast. I would be open to that. I'm personally disappointed that we can't get to that part of the province as well. But at this point I just don't see how we can do it. So we can leave it at that.

B. Lekstrom: Noting — and no slight to any of the other members here — three meetings on the Island and not one in the northeast, and we do have significant trouble…. We're a big part of the economy of British Columbia. I think it should be incumbent on this committee to make every effort possible to find a spot today in the northeast of this province to make sure those voices can be heard. Far too often the north is overlooked. I know that this is no intended slight, but I can certainly tell you the perception of the people in the northeast of this province. Not having the ability to attend, I think they would be justifiably upset.

D. Chutter: Mr. Chairman, just prior to getting to my comments, is there a reason for the week of October 15 to not be scheduled, just out of interest?

J. Les (Chair): I'm trying to regurgitate out of my memory bank, but I'm not sure why we don't have anything in that week. I know there is a good reason for it somewhere. Is that the Thanksgiving week or something? There's a possibility, obviously, of doing something there. Maybe that's the week that we could use to — I don't want to use a derogatory term — mop up some of those areas that we might have trouble accommodating within the schedule.

I'll get to my point, being that I notice my riding, Yale-Lillooet, is left out of the scheduling. I don't bring it up because it's my riding but because I feel it's very important to be visible in that riding, mainly because there are at least 20 bands in that riding. That represents 17 percent of the native population in B.C., making it the third most native-populated riding.

I think it's critical that we be accessible to the people of this province, not just the leadership of bands or communities but those who live within the community that may have greater difficulty travelling long distances. I think it's very important for this committee to go to the people and give them the opportunity to be heard rather than expecting the people to come to us. A

few words that have popped out at me over the last few weeks in what we as a committee have said in press releases and whatever are: "Go to as many towns as possible. Listen to the people. Be inclusive." It has certainly always been my objective to make the opportunity for native women, the average native person, the average non-native person to be heard in this process. That can best be done by going to as many areas and as many towns as possible.

I would like to adamantly recommend that we consider going to a location in Yale-Lillooet. I had put forward Lillooet and Merritt. I realize that Merritt is about an hour's drive from Kamloops, which is on the schedule, but Kamloops is about two hours for people in Princeton and other smaller communities. Lillooet, the Lytton area and the whole Bridge River area are many hours from either Williams Lake or Kamloops and not easy driving. So I would like to put that forward. As has been pointed out, there's a week in October.

I'm surprised that in many instances we're only working three days of the week. I realize that there probably are other meetings within the week, but I still feel that the workings of this committee are critical to the future of the province, and I would think that we really have to look closely at what's more important: this committee's work or other meetings. I would suggest that if we can't work in that week of October 15, we look at going into the month of November, beyond the date of Friday, November 2, to add on other areas. I'm suggesting Lillooet and Merritt. We would be able to do that in one day — in other words, a half-day in each location and fly halfway through the day. Both have accessible airports. I think it's very doable and very worthwhile, considering the population and considering the number of small communities close to these two communities I've mentioned. Yale-Lillooet is very distinct that way, with over two dozen small communities.

J. Les (Chair): We'll take that and see what we can do with it. I'll work with you directly to see if we can conclude on that.

M. Hunter: There's always a tendency that you start to put nails in your own bed. I think we have to recognize that this is going to be a very intense physical and mental schedule the way it's drafted now. I think, in support of the member for Peace River South, that there is an argument to be made that people who have had experience with Treaty 8 might have some perspectives that don't occur outside of that region of the province. Again, referring to my comment about putting nails in my bed, I think that even if it means working on a Saturday and adding that extra physical stress in the time frame that we have, to leave an area the size of the other side of the mountains uncovered is probably, from a public perspective, not a good thing to do.

I do want to bring some closure to this, as I'm sure you do, Mr. Chairman, so we can all start plugging our calendars and giving Tamara some solid ground to work on. I also queried the absence of the week of Thanksgiving. It seems to me that all of us can make very cogent arguments about why we should go to different places. We're never going to be able to cover everything, but I would tend to support the concerns and points of view of the two members who've spoken on this, even if it means extra stress for all of us.

I would urge that we make these decisions, that we cut it off so we all know what we're doing and the public knows what we're doing, most importantly.

G. Trumper: I wonder if that week's been left blank. It's not Thanksgiving weekend. We're supposed to have three and one back in our constituencies. I notice I don't have any core review or meetings that week. I'm just wondering if that's the reason why it's been left blank.

J. Les (Chair): Just an oversight — whatever. I don't think there was any overt attempt to leave a week blank so that we could spend that in our constituencies. I just don't think that was particularly a consideration. I think most of us have written off the month of November as being full of work, especially Blair Lekstrom.

V. Anderson: It's already been pointed out that that is not Thanksgiving week, and I raised the same question. I think we should use the extra time. It's important to cover as much of the province as we can.

J. Les (Chair): Sure. Let's wrap it up this way. I will work with the Clerk's office and Tamara and directly in contact with Blair, Dave and Gillian, as well, to see if we can conclude this in the next day or two, hopefully, to the satisfaction of everyone. Then we will publish the schedule, keeping in mind that the exact dates, particularly as you go further out, may change slightly. At that point, when we send that out to you, it should give you a pretty firm indication of where we're going.

J. Les (Chair): On your desks you have a number of documents. One is entitled "Public Hearings." That will be appearing in newspapers around the province. The other one is a press release that will be going out tomorrow — in other words, after the conclusion of today's meeting.

Good morning, members. Before I give some more information about the public hearing advertisement, I just want to take a quick moment to introduce Ms. Anne Stokes to the committee. Anne Stokes is a committee clerk from the Ontario Legislative Assembly who is working with the office of the Clerk of Committees over the next few months. You may have an occasion to work more closely with Anne in the future, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows who Anne is and what her role is here today.

The public hearing ad before you is an ad which will be placed in regional newspapers surrounding each of the community locations as soon as they're finalized by the committee. As the committee knows, because hearings are starting on the week of October 3, we're endeavouring to get these ads placed as quickly as possible to give people in those communities enough lead time to consider making an appearance before the committee and making the necessary arrangements through our office.

The text of this draft advertisement is very similar to the advertisement which you all reviewed and approved at your last meeting. That was the advertisement, I believe, for the call for written submissions, which you've all seen. The text hasn't really changed a great deal. It's been more developed to support the public hearing process. We wanted to give everyone an opportunity this morning to actually review that and to understand that that is part of the process we have planned as the next step.

V. Anderson: Out of our discussion we raised the question about the types of questions as well as the content of the questions. I'm wondering if that might be emphasized, because I think many people have a yes-no image of questions. The type of questions may be as significant as the actual wording of the question. I'm wondering if that shouldn't be emphasized so people would know that there are two possibilities there: both the types of questions as well as the content of the questions.

J. Les (Chair): I'm not sure how easy it is to do that in an advertisement. We can toy with that. It refers generically in all cases, I think, to questions, without trying to be definitive.

V. Anderson: I'm wondering if we might find wording something like "the types of questions as well as the content of questions" so that people realize it's broader than just a yes-no. I think it's very important that we don't get into that yes-no syndrome.

J. Les (Chair): Yeah — in order just to expand people's thinking a bit. I think that's worthwhile. If we can find some way to work that in, we'll certainly try to do that. I think that is an important aspect and that sometimes people very quickly jump to the conclusion that everything will be yes or no. Perhaps it could well be a much more nuanced process than that.

G. Trumper: In light of the fact that yesterday the Treaty Commission gave out its annual report, has there been any discussion as to whether they would be making a presentation to us, or would we just be getting a copy of the annual report?

J. Les (Chair): We will be getting copies of the annual report. I have already received one, downloaded off the Internet. We will be inviting a large number of agencies, including the B.C. Treaty Commission, to make a presentation. It's early in the process yet. In many cases they will only now be receiving those notifications of the public hearing process. Over time there is no doubt that many of those organizations will want to make a presentation to the committee. You'll notice on your agenda for the public hearing process, for example, that in week 4 we have an entire day in Vancouver and another entire day in Victoria, and I suspect that's where a lot of those will be coming in to make a presentation.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. So everyone's happy with this public hearing notification, other than the comment that Val made, which we will try to address.

K. Ryan-Lloyd: Moving on to the second item on the agenda, I wanted to offer a brief overview of the public hearing process at this point in the meeting, especially for the benefit of the new members who may not have had the experience yet of travelling with a legislative committee.

You'll find on your desk a sample itinerary, which our office has prepared to give you an introduction to the kind of details that our office will be planning on your behalf in the weeks to come. It is our intention to look after just about every aspect of the committee's logistical arrangements that need to be made, in fact, to get you from this building to the hearing locations and then back to either your constituency or Victoria, whichever your preference is.

The usual way to undertake transportation arrangements is for the committee to charter a private aircraft. That would address the concerns that Mr. MacKay raised earlier about how flights between Smithers and Prince George at 8 p.m. aren't very frequent. The charter gives us a certain flexibility there to work within the schedule that the committee sets.

Our office will be making all of the transportation arrangements, including ground transportation. When we arrive in a community, we will be looking after the accommodation for all members and the meals. While we're out on the road with the committee, we look after just about every detail that will need to be made, including meeting facilities, to make sure that the meet

ings are set up in a way that will facilitate the hearing of witnesses and attendance by the public as well.

The itinerary that we've circulated this morning is mostly just to give you an idea of the level of detail that we anticipate sharing with you throughout every step of this process so you'll know exactly where you're going to be on each meeting day. We would be happy to accommodate any changes to this itinerary that we can accommodate with the charter aircraft. Sometimes we're able to pick up members in their constituencies if it's en route to a meeting location. We can make every effort to make those kinds of arrangements for you.

The final draft of the itinerary for each week will be circulated to you at least two or three days before we depart for a meeting location. You should have a final copy of this itinerary, I would hope, no later than Monday, October 1, but we'll endeavour to get it to you on the Friday before if arrangements can be made.

Also on your desks this morning you will have seen a brochure developed by Audrey Chan and Tamara just giving an overview of the committee's mandate and a little bit about the public hearing process. It's our intention to have an information table set up for members of the public at every public hearing location. It's our intention, if you agree, to have a brochure of this kind as well as some other general brochures, which are attached to the itinerary. There is descriptive information for the public so they have a good idea of who they're going to be meeting with that day and what the role of this committee is. I just wanted to draw members' attention to that.

If you have any suggestions for improvements to any of those materials, you could let us know at your convenience. Also, if you have any questions at all about the role of our office or any of the arrangements that we can make on your behalf, please don't hesitate to ask me now or at any point over the next few weeks.

J. Les (Chair): Are there comments on any of those items? I think it's fair to say we'll be well looked after by the Clerk's office.

We should probably also touch on next week, Wednesday. Tamara and I have been working on scheduling a hearing on Wednesday next week in Vancouver. I suspect most, if not all, of us will be in Vancouver in any event next week, in conjunction with the UBCM convention. We have, at this point, several potential presenters that are prepared to make themselves available next Wednesday. What time of day was that, Tamara?

J. Les (Chair): Eleven in the morning till two in the afternoon. That could grow by an hour if we have another additional presenter available. I recognize that does conflict with the UBCM convention to some degree. However, I'm not sure that any one of us was intending to attend the UBCM convention full-time in any event. Seeing as we're all there, it's probably worthwhile to utilize the opportunity to hear some more input to the committee.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I'm just wondering where it is we would be meeting.

J. Les (Chair): That's still being finalized, but it will be very close to the UBCM convention.

M. Hunter: I'd just like to ask how the presenters are being selected. Are you working with Tamara in direct response to inquiries from the public? I just think it's important that all of us understand and have input into the process, knowing we can't interview four million British Columbians. I would like to be sure that I know who's interested as we go through the process of deciding who it is we can meet with — what the criteria are. Can you fill me in on that?

J. Les (Chair): Well, as we've discussed previously, I am always eagerly anticipating suggestions from members of the committee. Collectively we have a far better set of tentacles into the province than any of us do individually, so I would encourage you to bring forward suggestions. We have gathered suggestions from a number of different sources. Some of those people, in fact, will be presenting.

Next week, for example, at the Vancouver session we will have Gordon Gibson. We will have Paul Tennant. They will be presenting together. And we have another organization that contacted the committee, called Canfree. One of their representatives will be making a presentation as well. So it's a process of people bringing forward suggestions and Tamara, and in some cases myself, following those up. Where people are expressing an interest, so far we're accommodating them.

I alluded earlier to the first couple of days in November, when we have meetings in Vancouver and Victoria. I have some suspicion that those are going to be very full days, because as this process starts to gather momentum, I think we will find more and more people wanting to make presentations. These are the earliest people who have come forward. I think it's fair to say that all of them have something worthwhile to contribute. These are typically people who have spent some time discussing and writing about and lecturing on these issues. They will be appearing to some degree today and next Wednesday.

I again underline the invitation to all the committee members to think about who could be making presentations to the committee and adding some value to the process.

D. Chutter: I don't know if this applies to the rest of the committee members, but I know I am busy Thursday and Friday at UBCM, but not Wednesday. So if you wish to occupy us for the whole day on Wednesday, that would certainly be fine with me. Make the most of the time.

J. Les (Chair): I see a few other nods around the table. There certainly are a couple of potentials that are still up in the air at this point. Personally, I don't mind that either. Once we convene, then if we add an hour or two, that's just fine with me. So we'll try to make productive use of the time.

D. MacKay: I just wanted to follow up on Mike Hunter's comments about who was going to be selected to do the presentations. I would like to caution that we don't get into the same routine that the federal government did when they sent out the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs to listen to people — the Nisga'a presentations. The package that came out to the public told people the deadline of when to phone for presentations. I actually phoned two days prior to the cut-off date for presentations, only to be told that the presenters had already been selected by the federal government. I don't want us to get into that pitfall; the presenters were preselected by the panel that came out to listen to the people.

As we get closer to the actual presentations being suggested for the different communities, perhaps the committee should look at the names of the presenters, and between us we can make a decision as to who's going to do the presentations. That federal government issue — the one I just spoke about — left a very bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, and I certainly haven't forgotten it. So I would hope that together, collectively, we can decide who the presenters will be. Let's not prejudge who the presenters are going to be.

J. Les (Chair): No. It's a very valid point. Let me say, first of all, that so far no one has been turned away. In order to fill out today's agenda, we have invited some obvious presenters in terms of the deputy minister, for example. I think that will be useful, particularly when we go out to the various communities of British Columbia. There is a process, mind you. There will be advertisements put in the various newspapers, and people will be asked to contact the Clerk of Committees office to have their names put on the agenda. Obviously that's a good, orderly way of conducting business. I hadn't anticipated, frankly, having to sit down and sort out who's going to be allowed to appear and who isn't going to be allowed to appear. I would hope that the latter isn't necessary.

Again, there might be some more discussion required by the committee around November 1 or 2 if we find that there's a real backlog of "expert" witnesses that would wish to appear, and obviously that would be a committee discussion.

D. MacKay: I guess just a follow up to that, then. I don't want the professional people or the people involved in the industry that seems to have developed around the treaty process…. They're going to be prepared and ready to do the presentations. I don't want them all to do the presentations and exclude the general public who work for a living and have other duties to perform. I don't want to see them excluded from the process, and I don't want the other people to have the agenda given to them and take up all the time that we are allowed for each of the communities. I just want to caution that we don't get into that pitfall. We have to listen to everybody. I don't have a problem personally with listening to some of the people in the industry, but we had better listen to the people who are outside the industry and who have some valid concerns that we should be listening to.

The other thing I don't think we've touched on is the website. Tamara or Kate, do you want to talk about that?

Good morning, everyone. With Audrey Chan's very able assistance we've been able to put together a list of background information that we think will be of assistance to people who are considering submitting a written statement or appearing as witnesses to the committee. That is now listed on the website. We have a full range of links to organizations and agencies that are looking at treaty issues. We've tried to be very balanced in representing a variety of perspectives, and in order to make things easy to a public which is used to having to deal with a lot of information these days, Audrey has kindly assisted in putting together some brief summaries of some key topics related to treaty negotiations, based on the information that is available out there. Instead of having to go through very detailed websites, people can have a quick, one-page summary of what the consultation process in treaties is right now, for instance, or a little bit of information on the status of treaties. She's done a fine job, I think, and that background information will be going up very quickly.

Of course, the wonderful thing about websites is that we can make adjustments at any time, so I would certainly welcome any feedback on the links that are there or the background information available. If you think we have missed some sites, we are very much looking forward to making sure it is representative. If there are some particular types of resources you think would be useful to you as committee members or to your constituents and the public, then we can certainly address that as well.

M. Hunter: Thanks, Tamara, for that heads-up. I think it's very important that we get a chance to review what is going on the website. My experience for the last 15 years in this whole history around treaties is that there is a lot of selective information that can misguide people. I think it's very important that what we put out on our website is something that we all, as members, approve. It's not that I think you aren't doing a first-class job, but I don't think it should be your responsibility for publication of this committee's business. I would ask, Mr. Chair, that before that website material is put on the Web, we get a chance to take a look at it and suggest changes, additions, deletions.

K. Ryan-Lloyd: Yeah. I'll make a copy now for all members for review and discussion.

J. Les (Chair): I think even more workably, at your earliest opportunity, you can check the website and provide feedback to Tamara. There is some stuff on the website now, obviously. There needs to be a presence there, and that presence is in fact there. Your comments are valid. The committee needs to have some kind of input process in terms of what goes on and the information that needs to be provided. But practically speaking, Tamara needed to get a website up so that it could be tied in with the advertising process that is ongoing in terms of gathering submissions from British Columbians.

M. Hunter: I didn't mean my remarks to be misconstrued. Just as we have had editorial control over public advertising, we must also retain our editorial control over website material. That's my only point.

V. Anderson: I would raise my other question again regarding the types of questions. There might be some guidance on the website for that as well. I still think that's critically important.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): In order to access this website, do we go to www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/? Is that it?

T. Little: Then people can have access to the full range of materials relating to this committee and other committees as well.

D. Chutter: I believe I mentioned it at our first meeting, and since that time I've had more questions as to what a referendum is: in other words, questions such as how accessible will it be? where will voting take place? — the whole mechanics. I think that as a committee, we should have some answers to that. We may not have them all, and whether it's on the website or whatever is another topic, but we as a committee should be able to answer those general questions. So if we can get that information.

J. Les (Chair): Certainly, we will need to be able to answer them by November 30. Whether we should be able to answer them now is, I think, perhaps begging the question.

D. Chutter: Well, I'm not referring to the specifics but just the general framework for the mechanics of a referendum. I think it's important to be able to give some of those answers now, as we go through this process, because as I say, I've been asked that several times already.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I take it we're still under point 2 — that is, the overview of the public hearing process. Is that not correct?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): The question that comes to mind, Mr. Chair, with respect to the public hearing process, ties in, I think, with Dave Chutter's comment. In talking to folks, I've been suggesting that this committee is focused to some extent on engaging British Columbians and also on informing them with respect to our obligations as they relate to first nations. Personally, with a view to doing that, I think that familiarity with the binder that's been provided through the ministry responsible — namely, the AG's ministry — is certainly our first step in terms of informing ourselves with respect to that question. But I'm just wondering, Mr. Chair, if you see us engaging the public with respect to informing them as to our obligations. How might that work?

J. Les (Chair): Well, we just talked about one of the important ways we can do that, and that is the website. That will have a lot of very useful information included in it. Recognizing, however, that not everybody in British Columbia is on line, for those people who are not on line we're going to have to develop different processes. They will have to be better processes, in my opinion, than what were available in the past, because one thing that seems certain is that people are still very much uninformed with respect to these issues. I'm aware of the concern, and I'm aware of the need to address it. In part, the answer is: the information that's on the Web.

We're approaching 11 o'clock. We're at ten to, at this point. Our first presenters are actually here. If you'd like to take a break just before 11 o'clock and reconvene at 11 sharp…. Is that agreeable to the committee? Great. We'll do that. We'll call a recess until 11 o'clock.

J. Les (Chair): The Clerk is handing out information with respect to the information that's available on the

website. I'd ask you to review that in the course of the day and provide feedback as you wish.

J. Les (Chair): Having said that, we have our first presenter here today. He is Phil Steenkamp, who is the deputy minister responsible for treaty negotiations. I'm very pleased that he's made time available to make a presentation to the committee. Obviously Phil has a lot of knowledge about the treaty-making process in British Columbia, and I welcome him here and invite him to make a presentation. After he's finished with his formal presentation, committee members, of course, will have an opportunity to ask questions of him.

P. Steenkamp: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd just like to thank the committee for the invitation to make this presentation today. What I'm proposing to do is just give a brief overview of the treaty-making process in British Columbia and then allow as much time as possible for questions, because I think a number of the points that I'll be raising will obviously raise some questions. I know you all have a hard copy of this presentation, so I'd just suggest that we proceed. I know we're having some technical difficulties up there on the screen, but we'll just go ahead.

I'll move right into slide No. 1, "First nations in British Columbia." I think it's very important to recognize that there is incredible diversity in the first nations population in this province. Overall, aboriginal people represent between 3 percent and 4 percent of the population in British Columbia. But British Columbia has 202 bands out of a total of 633 in Canada — close to one-third of all the bands. Of that number, 117 bands are on the British Columbia Treaty Commission process as of this month.

The diversity expresses itself in other ways as well. In addition to having a large percentage of all the bands in the country, 71 percent of all the country's reserves are in British Columbia. B.C. is home to seven of 11 of Canada's distinctive first nation language families. So I think the picture you get is one of considerable diversity across this province.

It's a well-known fact that the aboriginal quality of life in this province, as in many others, is well below that of other British Columbians and other Canadians. I can refer you to the provincial health officer's 1999 annual report, which paints that picture, I think, in quite stark terms.

Turning to the second slide, the constitutional and historical framework — I won't dwell on this because I know the committee has been provided material by the Ministry of Attorney General on the legal context. The constitutional context is important here, because it informs the approach we take to treaty-making in this province. I think people are familiar with the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Crown's recognition of aboriginal land ownership. In that proclamation and, of course, the Constitution Act of 1867, especially section 91 (24) making reference to Indians and lands reserved for Indians…. An important piece, especially for British Columbia, is the Terms of Union of 1871.

Under the Terms of Union, British Columbia was given jurisdiction over lands and resources. The federal government's obligation was to establish reserves. Traditionally, in B.C. the view then was that the land question was a federal issue. It was only really in 1991 that the provincial government formally agreed to become part of the process of dealing with these outstanding land claim issues.

The Constitution Act of 1982 is especially important because section 35 of the Constitution Act recognizes aboriginal rights. Section 35 is part of the Constitution Act, so it's not subject to the notwithstanding clause in the Charter. In effect, that puts it beyond provincial jurisdiction.

Turning to the next slide, the whole issue of why we are negotiating as a province. The key reasons — and there's been a lot of discourse around this — are really the fact that aboriginal rights and title in this province are undefined, and that poses a legal burden on Crown title, in effect raising what we have come to call the land question.

The important implication of this for the provincial government is that the provincial government's ability to authorize use and disposition of lands and resources is subsequently constrained, and that uncertainty discourages investment. If you cast your minds back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when this province was in the grip of a number of confrontations, blockades, court cases, the prospect at that time was leading to the potential for gridlock and inability of the province to continue its business.

Negotiations, obviously, provide us with a different forum. They also provide a forum for public input and consultation, unlike litigation. We've had a very mixed result from the courts. A lot of people say that these matters should just be sorted out in the courts and that we should seek clarification from the courts. The courts can clarify some issues, but court cases, as we have seen in the last few years, often raise many questions. The justices often urge the parties to go back to the table and negotiate what are essentially very complex social, economic and political issues which are not often subject to easy resolution through litigation.

Turning to B.C.'s objectives, our objectives in negotiation are to clarify aboriginal rights and title in order to establish greater legal certainty around land and the resource base in this province. It's to create a climate for greater economic opportunity for all British Columbians including first nations and, importantly, to address and move forward on improving the quality of life for aboriginal people. Many of the government's new-era commitments speak to these objectives. Again, those are available for your easy reference, and I won't spend time on those.

I want to turn now to talk about the history of negotiations in B.C.; I note that our presentation is up and running, if it's easier for you to refer to the screen. Again, these facts are probably well known to you. In

1991 the B.C. Claims Task Force recommended negotiation over litigation. In 1992 the B.C. Treaty Commission was established as a tripartite commission: the federal government, the provincial government, the First Nations Summit. The Claims Task Force suggested a six-stage negotiation process. Again, this material is all available, so I won't spend time on this. Very quickly, Stage 1 is what we call the statement of intent: a first nation indicates its desire to negotiate a treaty. Stage 2 is when the parties get ready for negotiations. Stage 3 is called the framework agreement stage, and that's really just establishing the agenda for the negotiations. Stage 4 is the agreement-in-principle stage, where the substantive matters are hammered out around lands, resources, the capital transfer component of an agreement and the governance components. Stage 5 is final agreement, and stage 6 is implementation. I'll talk about the results of the process to date in a moment.

The B.C. Treaty Commission, I think many of you may know, issued its annual report yesterday. Included in that annual report was a separate report, essentially a review of the treaty process. I think it's a very interesting and suggestive document. The Treaty Commission is intended to be a non-partisan keeper of the process. It has responsibility for administering funding to first nations, monitoring negotiations, building relationships and strengthening the treaty process through public education and information.

I'll turn now to talk about the provincial negotiation principles. I think this is an important point to make. From 1991 provincial negotiators have been at negotiating tables operating with a set of negotiating principles. Those have evolved over the years but not significantly. In 1991 the B.C. Claims Task Force made 19 recommendations, and I know that those are available to you. The government of the day accepted those recommendations, and Premier Campbell has recently confirmed the provincial government's acceptance of those recommendations as well.

The Social Credit government of Premier Vander Zalm had established a set of guiding principles in 1991 as well. That material, I believe, is available; we can certainly make that available. In 1993 the government of the day re-expressed those principles and added some new principles, and this was in the context of a discussion with the Union of B.C. Municipalities. In particular, in a discussion around local government access to negotiations, the province established a protocol with the UBCM which is still in place today. Those principles were issued publicly and informed the approach that negotiators took to the table.

Another important document to draw to your attention is the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs report of 1997. I know, again, that the committee has this document. What's unusual about this document, perhaps, is the inclusion of a minority report. One of the recommendations of that minority report was a referendum on treaty principles, which brings us, in fact, to where we are today.

That's just by way of some background. I want to get now to the subject of the treaty negotiations office and then to talk about the current state of the British Columbia Treaty Commission process. The treaty negotiations office was established by the current government following the election. It is now an office within the overall envelope of the Ministry of Attorney General. It essentially has the same functions as the former Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, except for a few small program and service functions which moved over to the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services. The office, as it stands now, has responsibility for negotiating treaties. In that role it represents the interests of all British Columbians and the government's interests broadly, representing all ministries and agencies of government. It sits at the table representing the interests of all British Columbians.

The office has responsibility, obviously, for developing the policy for treaty-making. It manages treaty implementation. To date, of course, that implementation consists of the implementation of the Nisga'a final agreement and also the McLeod Lake adhesion agreement. It manages relations with first nations outside the treaty process.

Another important role is the office's responsibility for managing what we call the critical incident response strategy, which is a bit of a euphemism. In fact, it's the firefighting side of the office with the responsibility for dealing with blockades and direct action. An example would be the responsibility we currently have for coordinating government's response to the protests at Sun Peaks. We have significant responsibility, as well, for consulting with stakeholders. We'll talk about that piece in a moment.

Moving to the next slide, a very important issue. In the course of your deliberations you will hear many representations on this topic from first nations but perhaps from industry as well. A very important part of our work is what has become called — unfortunately, in my view — interim measures. Interim measures just refer to everything that happens before you get a treaty. The role of the office is to facilitate the negotiation of interim measures with first nations.

In our view, the key objective for interim measures is to build incremental certainty around land and resources. So while this big project of treaty-making is underway, how do we deliver certainty in the short term? That's a critical role of this particular office.

Interim measures, in addition to economic objectives, may also address first nations cultural and social needs. An example here would be, for instance, that we are working with the Nanaimo first nation on a very important project around the repatriation of human remains.

Other interim measures, just to give you a sense of the scope here…. We are working with Treaty 8 bands on oil-rig training. We have a negotiation underway with the Carrier-Sekani on a forestry memorandum of understanding. We have an accord on economic devel

opment with the Tsimshian first nation. We have an accord on fisheries and forestry with the Heiltsuk.

There is also a subset of interim measures called treaty-related measures. The only reason we distinguish treaty-related measures is that those are the measures that the federal government has agreed to cost-share with us 50-50. We have a number of treaty-related measures in place at the moment. Most significant of these is a land protection measure with the Cowichan tribes up near Duncan, where we agreed to protect and set aside some Crown land pending the settlement of a treaty. In exchange, the Cowichan tribes agree to permit the development and forestry activity in the balance of their territory. So there are some very interesting quid pro quos in some of these agreements.

We funded a cultural heritage study with the Tsawwassen first nation, and with the Yale first nation, an economic opportunity study.

Negotiation of interim measures requires consultation with all affected parties and with local governments as well. They can involve, in the provincial view, first nations both within and outside the treaty process. As I mentioned before, there are a set of measures we cost-share with the federal government, which we refer to as treaty-related measures.

If you do have an opportunity to read the British Columbia Treaty Commission annual report, you'll notice that they've put a lot of emphasis on the importance of interim measures for building trust with first nations and for achieving that incremental certainty while we get on with the business of figuring out how we're going to negotiate the larger treaties.

I want to turn now to talk about treaty process results. I'll be quite blunt in my comments here. We've been at this for eight years. We have spent $230 million collectively. That $230 million comprises $216 million in negotiation support loans and contributions to first nations and $16 million for the operation of the B.C. Treaty Commission. Those are just the process costs; that doesn't include the costs of the ministries, both on the provincial and on the federal side, and any additional costs that first nations may have incurred over and above the loans and the contributions that they have received.

We have no treaties. If you recall, of course, the Nisga'a treaty was negotiated outside the context of the B.C. Treaty Commission process. We did sign one agreement-in-principle with Sechelt. The Sechelt first nation has subsequently rejected that agreement-in-principle. We have initialled two further agreements-in-principle, one with the Sliammon first nation. That is moving, we believe, toward a ratification vote in that community probably by the end of this year.

We had initialled an agreement-in-principle with the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council. The results of the ratification in that tribal council were that six first nations rejected the agreement-in-principle and six first nations accepted the agreement-in-principle. Obviously, we are considering what steps we take next as a result of that split in that particular community.

There are 12 first nations with fewer than 500 members in negotiation. That raises some serious questions around capacity to negotiate or to implement treaties, although there isn't necessarily a correspondence between capacity and size in first nation communities.

I think it's important to point out that after the experience of the last eight years, it is fair to say that governments and first nations have very different visions of treaty-making. This will vary, and it does vary, across the province. I think governments assumed that the Nisga'a model was a model which would be followed all across the province. That certainly is not the vision of all other first nations in the province.

First nation expectations, too, are very high about what government should deliver at the table. I think it is fair to say — and the Treaty Commission itself has acknowledged this — that the treaty process is overloaded. When this process started, governments anticipated a maximum of 30 negotiating tables, and we are in the high forties at the moment. My own view is that there are too many smaller communities in negotiation and that we need to look at some aggregation to achieve critical mass. But often the bigger the organization, the more difficult it is to negotiate, because you bring a variety of different views and opinions into a negotiation. The Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council negotiation is a good case in point.

I believe that the B.C. Treaty Commission as currently constituted is ineffective in the sense that part of the role of the commission was to assess the readiness of the parties to negotiate. I believe now, in retrospect, that many parties are not ready to negotiate. If we have in excess of 45 first nations at the table, my view is that a significant number of those first nations are not ready to negotiate. Moreover, I don't think the governments have the ability to negotiate with that many first nations. We ourselves have serious problems of capacity. When a single negotiation gets very active, as we saw with Sliammon and Nuu-chah-nulth, it consumes a huge amount of government time and resources across all agencies and ministries. I believe our ability to negotiate concurrently at 20, 30 or 40 tables…. I just don't think we currently have that capacity.

The last point I'd like to make is the federal commitment to negotiate. I think we need to recognize that the federal interests are very different from provincial interests here. The province has jurisdiction over land and resources. The federal engagement is really settling unfinished business with first nations.

Some cynics had the view a few years ago, I guess, that the federal government believed it was cheaper to negotiate than to settle. I don't think that is the case. I think the federal government is currently facing the prospect of a process which isn't working, and they now need to make the decision about what they do about that. These matters are much more pressing for the provincial government, because it directly affects the business of the province and of course the social conditions in the province as well. So the federal view always is a bit different and the agenda always is dif

ferent, and it's often difficult to discern both for the provincial government and for first nations.

Moving on to talk about consultation and public support. I want to make a point about public education here, really. We do have a very elaborate consultation structure in place across this province. There are many differing views about the effectiveness or the efficacy of this process. We have at a provincewide level the Treaty Negotiation Advisory Committee with 31 sectoral representatives, which provides us with advice on overarching provincial mandates and policy and did provide us with advice on the Nisga'a treaty as it came down.

Across the province we have regional advisory committees — 25 in total — which represent local stakeholders. Some of those committees are more effective than others, and some have a broader representation than others. If I looked at it honestly, I would say that some have been extremely effective and some have been extremely ineffective. It often depends on local circumstances and often, quite frankly, on idiosyncratic variables like personalities and the nature of particular relationships in particular communities.

In addition, we have local government advisory committees, which we call treaty advisory committees. The acronym is TACs — you'll see up there — and there are 13 of those committees. Generally, the approach here is that at least one representative from local government sits on the British Columbia negotiating team for a particular negotiation. Again, here we've seen a mix in terms of the success of this model. When I was the provincial chief negotiator responsible for the Kaska negotiations, I travelled to every negotiation with Mayor Tom Briggs from Mackenzie, who was a very active partner in those negotiations. That is the case in some other parts of the province. But in other negotiations there probably has been a much less active engagement and a much less constructive relationship. There was strong opposition from first nations and the federal government to local government involvement at all in the process. This was a hard-won concession, I guess one could call it. Ultimately, the province made this a condition of its continued participation in the treaty process. This is an issue which is still alive and well, and local governments certainly have some very strong views about their continued participation.

Lastly, I just wanted to make a comment about public education. I think we have heard over the last few weeks from all our stakeholder groups that in the course of the committee hearings and deliberations and in the run-up to the referendum, there's a real concern that there be a strong emphasis on public information and public education. I think a lot of the people who have become involved in the process over six or seven years have a very strong commitment to the process currently but are also of the view that in order for the referendum process to be successful, it is critical that an effective program of public information and education be put in place. This raises a number of questions for a number of the parties to the negotiations. The Treaty Commission has a particular mandate and a particular responsibility for public information and education. The federal and provincial governments have a separate mandate for public information and education as well. But I think this is something that you will hear as you travel across the province.

I want to end on a note about future directions. This slide is really related to the assessment I gave of the B.C. Treaty Commission process. I guess I'd express it this way: one of the objectives of the referendum, as I understand it, is to provide for public input into the principles which will inform the provincial government's mandate at the table and, beyond that, to really give British Columbians a sense that they have had a say, that they have had a voice, and to legitimize provincial participation in treaty-making. If government is successful in that mission, we should, at the end of the referendum process, have a public which has had its say on the questions put in front of it. If the public chooses to vote in the affirmative around some of these questions, we could well be in the position of having significant public support to proceed.

The issue, then, for us — for people who've been part of this process — is: do we have a process which is going to work? I think there's recognition among all the principals that we need to either fix the current process or look at some alternatives. I think you saw in the Treaty Commission report yesterday some interesting suggestions about how we might begin to fix the process or what we may look at in the alternative.

From my perspective, I think we need to move from this fixation on comprehensive treaties to what we are calling comprehensible treaties — treaties that actually make sense to people and are understood on their terms. The Nisga'a treaty is a complex document, and it is difficult to understand.

I think we have to move, as well, from the single focus on achieving full certainty and finality for all time — and you only get that right at the end of the process — to a process whereby we build certainty in stages, incrementally. There are various ways of doing that and achieving that. I think that leads me to the conclusion that we have to move from the current BCTC process to more effective models. There are many different models out there, and the treaty negotiation office, in conjunction with the other parties in the negotiation, will take the next few months to examine different models as well. A very important one, and one we've been looking at provincially, is whether we should be looking at achieving agreements by sector. If we can get agreement around lands and resources, for instance, let's go ahead and do that. Given government's current instructions, the issue of self-government is set aside for the time being while we sort out our policy and approach to self-government.

I know the federal government is interested, for instance, in looking at whether you can achieve sectoral agreements around fisheries. The idea is to build treaties incrementally that way. There is some downside to that. I mean, there is some risk associated with that, but I think it is manageable risk. There are some significantly, dramatically different models of treaty-making, and we have some international examples, of course, at

hand. The Australians have a proof-of-title system, a tribunal system, whereby you go through a much more formal legal process of proving title. I think that's probably a process we should be taking a look at in any case. There are many options open to us in proceeding here, but I think an important thing to remember is that provincial jurisdiction in this area is quite limited. Our ability to move on issues of aboriginal rights and title is quite severely constrained, so anything we do needs to be done in conjunction with the federal government and, obviously, with the support of first nations.

The last point on the slide is that…. I guess it's our hope and expectation that the referendum will deliver this: to move from a stalled process with what could arguably be called shaky public support to a process post-referendum where we have broad public input and support for this particular exercise. That's really the conclusion. Perhaps I've presented quite a harsh picture of the treaty process to date. I'll qualify that in my closing comment by saying that we have been constructively engaged with first nations for eight years at negotiating tables around this province. The last eight years were significantly different than the years that immediately preceded that, which were years characterized by direct action and litigation.

So I think the process in itself has been successful, at least in opening up lines of communication and dialogue with first nations and establishing relationships of trust. Those relationships of trust are always tested and will continue to be tested, but we have established that dialogue, and we have established those relationships. We've done that with first nations, and we've done that to a lesser or greater extent, as well, with very important elements within local communities and with local government.

I'll leave this, obviously, for the historians to judge, but in my view, the investment has been worthwhile. The task in front of us now is not to look back so much, although we have the lessons from the past, but to look forward and see how we move from here using the foundations that we have in place.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much for that very good presentation. I see a number of committee members' hands up. We'll start with Val and then Mike.

V. Anderson: Thank you very much for your presentation. Having been around here and being critic at the time the treaty process was approved in the Legislature, which we voted fully for, one of the understandings at that time was that a fundamental aspect of that process — actually, even the first, basic aspect — would be education. You emphasized again that it didn't take place. Can you give any idea why that basic aspect of education, which was fundamental in the process at the beginning, did not take place?

P. Steenkamp: I'll attempt to answer that. It's a difficult question to answer. Initially, I guess, the provincial government certainly understood the importance of public information and education around the treaty process. If you look at the early days, I think we spent a huge amount of time on public information and education. I recall, as a negotiator, going to many public forums in the north — probably, in some months, three or four a week — to talk about why we were negotiating treaties. The discussion at that stage was: why is the province actually in negotiation? I think we expended a huge amount of energy justifying our engagement in the treaty process.

I think we turned that corner in most communities. The sense I get now is that there's general acceptance that we need to be negotiating these matters. There isn't necessarily agreement on what we should be negotiating and what the content of agreements should be. I think perhaps what happened is that having made that initial point, then the energy sort of flagged on public information and education. The critical next piece, which was what negotiations then constitute and where we are heading, was probably much less well served. That particular piece of the initiative was much less well served.

Also, Nisga'a sort of occurred in the middle of this. This is a matter of public record, and this is not the precise figure: the government spent close to $7 million on a public education campaign around the Nisga'a treaty, which significantly polarized the province. I think there was justifiable criticism that it was not public information and that it was a particular spin on that particular agreement. A lot of money and resources were spent on something called public information and education, but it was seen by many people to be propaganda on behalf of one particular party.

The interesting thing about all those funds spent on that particular Nisga'a campaign was that the polling done before and after the campaign demonstrated that after the campaign, there was a little dip in support for the Nisga'a treaty. As a result of that — certainly, I can speak from the public service side of it — the view was really to try and keep as low a profile as possible and — for instance, around the Sechelt agreement — not to go out there, where we had control over those matters, and spend a lot of money on public information and education. I think the fundamental issue was that government needed to restore its trust with the public around these issues. Otherwise, anything coming from government would, I think, have been viewed as suspect.

The role of the other parties is an interesting issue here. I don't think the federal government, quite frankly, has much credibility on these issues in the province either. The Treaty Commission is the keeper of the process — again, a non-partisan body. But again, I would say that there's certainly a view out there that the commission is or has been partisan in the past around particular issues. It poses an enormous challenge for us now. How do we actually inform the public in a neutral and balanced way?

I can tell you that from the treaty negotiation office perspective, we've spent a lot of our energy on very low-key consultation and listening to communities. The current minister responsible has taken that ap

proach as well: to go out and listen to communities about their views on treaty matters. We should take all that back in and then consider how we proceed with public information and education.

M. Hunter: Thanks to the deputy minister for, I think, a very helpful presentation. Just so that everybody knows, Mr. Steenkamp and I have met in other venues in other lives.

I wanted to make a couple of comments and ask a couple of questions, if I may. Bearing in mind the time, I'll try and be brief. I think the point that Mr. Steenkamp made about the aggregation of treaty claims…. The serious negotiating capacity limitations that exist in this government are not new. I recall consultations around the Treaty Commission establishment, whenever that was — 1989-90 — where a lot of people made that observation. So what goes around comes around, I guess.

The other observation I would make is with respect to public information and education. Certainly, more information is usually better than less. I take the view — and I think this committee will find out whether I'm right or wrong as we go about our business — that the public has a good deal of information and a good deal of opinion about the subjects that are in play. One of the issues that Mr. Steenkamp didn't refer to but I think is relevant in the history of this issue is the results of the Charlottetown referendum in 1992 to the extent that that referendum dealt with certain federal proposals with respect to aboriginal governance.

I want to ask a couple of questions. Mr. Steenkamp, you made a couple of comments about the federal commitment, the lack of clarity. You've just referred again to where they're coming from. You mentioned the cost-sharing agreement. I wondered if you had any perspective that you might share with us on the public's view of the federal contribution, whether it be in terms of cost-sharing or views of obligations under the act of union — whether or not you can shed any light on that.

Maybe, Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I'll ask my last question. I've got lots more, but I want to focus on a couple of things.

You've talked about, in a couple of places, building certainty in stages. I think the other reference was to incremental certainty, or words to that effect. I'd just like to explore your thinking on that a little bit. The reason I'd like to do that is that from my background in the world of fisheries, I think there is a perspective that this is partly what the federal government has done as a result of that government's limited activity or ability in this area. Put simply, cash, land and fish are about all the feds can bring to the negotiating table other than whatever moral authority they might have.

We've seen in fisheries this idea of building treaties incrementally expressed through a number of policies. It's not clear to me that that approach, if that's what you're talking about, is the incremental building of treaties through arrangements that are not treaty-protected but are moving into federal office treaty tables as we speak, moving from the aboriginal fishing strategy decodification of it. That's what I think of as building treaties incrementally. If you're saying that, I guess I've got a problem with it, so I'd like you, if you could, to just explore that concept a little bit.

P. Steenkamp: Sure. I'll answer these as quickly as I can. They of course raise some very complex issues. On the cost-sharing agreement. The interesting thing is that we could go back as a province to the terms of union in 1871 and the various Privy Council orders and OIC 1036 and things, and we could probably make an argument that this is all a federal responsibility — certainly financially it's a federal responsibility — and wash our hands of it.

Theoretically that is possible. I think that practically, there are some significant risks in going down that road. We would lose significant ability to influence the outcome of negotiations. The federal government does have the power. It even has the power to expropriate provincial land, as we've seen. Practically, I don't think it puts us in a good position with those British Columbians who happen to be aboriginal. I don't think it sends the right signal there.

Having said that, we do have a cost-sharing agreement currently which governs lands and resources, as you are aware. There are different views about to whose benefit that agreement operates. My best assessment of it is that once you've accepted that the province is going to share the costs here, it results in a very fair sharing of the costs. There is, in some parts of the federal system, a view that provincial forest lands are valued much too highly, and I think you'll find this view among first nations as well. That can inevitably lead, in the context of a settlement, to smaller land settlements than might otherwise be the case if we ascribe different values to those lands.

Overall it's a complex agreement, but I think it's one which has worked well for us. It is very difficult to value land in many parts of this province where there isn't a market value for land. These are notional values, and this was a negotiated political agreement with the federal government. That cost-sharing agreement is up for review next year, and there are some aspects of it that we do want to re-examine and potentially renegotiate.

On the second question of incremental treaties, I think you were referring to something which I also would not support. That's a kind of incremental creep without having any sense of what the final picture would look like. You build something without any sense of where you're going to end up. Fisheries offers certainly emphasize that point. You're making fisheries offers in a context where you don't really know what you're going to do on the whole Fraser or the whole Skeena. Then I think you run significant risk of setting precedents which will cause significant difficulties down the line.

Our view is that they need to be done in a context within which you know where you're going to end up so that you've got an overall vision at the end of the

day of how much land you're talking about, what the resource management regimes will look like generally and how individual allocations will fit in a general allocation. But more than that, I think we're also talking about getting agreements, say, on lands and resources, where we would demand some kind of legal certainty as well. It wouldn't be that we would be deferring that negotiation of certainty to a later date; we would be getting certainty on those subjects and then moving forward so that those would not be subject to being revisited or reopened.

Now, that does pose some interesting legal issues for us. Obviously, we cannot expect this kind of certainty mechanism that we had with Nisga'a and with first nations around self-government, for instance. If we were just doing a land and resources agreement, we could not expect first nations to agree to modify their rights around governance issues. Those are issues which I think we can work through with legal counsel in conjunction with the federal government and the first nations. I don't think they're insuperable obstacles to moving down that road.

A key objective for the province, obviously, is to try and achieve certainty around issues like lands and resources so we can get on with the business at hand, industry can get on with its business and first nations can get on with their lives. We defer other subjects, and we get to those as the parties are collectively in a position to get to them to negotiate them.

The whole issue of fisheries is a particularly important one. I think it's very important for the province to develop a coherent and comprehensive response to, for instance, federal Fisheries offers, which we know will be coming down at a number of tables over the next few months.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for an excellent presentation. I found that helpful and informative.

I was invited to a meeting of the northern chiefs on Friday of last week in my riding. It was an interesting exchange. A point was made, a reference to a point that I had raised in a memo dated May 24, 2001, to the Premier as well as to the now Attorney General with respect to a first nations assessment. It's a memo that you may or may not be aware of. I'm just interested if it's something that you've considered.

I suggested that in order to facilitate the referendum, the negotiating process, perhaps we conduct extensive research on the needs and concerns of the status native population — first nations community opinion both on and off reserve. I pointed out that it's as important as is the opinion of all those that will be affected by the outcome of the ongoing land claims negotiations. Under "process," I'd suggested that a first nations assessment — that is, obtaining information and consensus from status natives through the survey process on what, in their view, would constitute a satisfactory conclusion from each of their particular perspectives — would be helpful. Native representation should be included on a survey task force. I'm just wondering if it's something which your ministry has ever considered — a separate first nations assessment.

P. Steenkamp: No, we haven't, and I haven't seen that particular memorandum. The First Nations Summit is meeting today, Thursday and Friday in Cranbrook, and I think that's an issue which will probably come up there — doing that kind of assessment.

In the office we have developed a detailed statistical profile of first nations, but we have not done any particularly targeted opinion research with first nations. It's an interesting proposal, but we haven't done that kind of work.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I had thought it might very well have the potential to complement the important work that this committee is doing and will be doing over the course of the next few weeks. In any event, thank you very much for a great presentation.

D. MacKay: Thank you, Phil, for the presentation. I guess, as we proceed with this process — and we have been proceeding down this road for a number of years now — I'm hoping we have the ability to look at the past and learn from some of the mistakes that have been made in the past. Of course I'm referring to Nisga'a, which I think was a mistake that was made on behalf of the province. That's my personal view on that.

I heard you make the comment that the treaty negotiating office represents all the people in the province. I'm assuming you're basing that comment on the fact that you're relying on the regional advisory committees and the treaty advisory committees to make that comment. I'm hoping that we have learned from the past and don't make the same mistake in that we also had those RACs and treaty advisory committees with Nisga'a, but they weren't listened to at all. Their recommendations were ignored when the treaty was signed with Nisga'a. So I'm hoping that today — and I'm assuming we have regional advisory committees and treaty advisory committees in place today — they are in fact being listened to and their input is being given some weight in the process.

You also mentioned finality towards the end of your presentation. In your view, does this include the term "cede, release and surrender"? It seems to me that we're going down a road now where we are going to have a couple of generations, and their whole life is going to be…. When people are going to ask what they did in their careers, they're going to say they were negotiators, for generations. We've got to come to an end sometime down the road, and I wondered if your office has ever looked at putting a timeframe on the process — an end date ten or 15 years down the road — saying that if we haven't signed off on the treaties in that timeframe, we're going to have to get on with our lives. I just wondered if that's been looked at, at all.

P. Steenkamp: I'll respond to a few of those comments. Just on the issue of representing all British Columbians, as part of government the mandate of this

particular office is to represent all British Columbians. Whether or not we had an advisory process in place, that would still be our mandate. The issue you raise, I think, is a very important one about how well British Columbians feel represented. Often the measure of that is in how effective those advisory committee processes are. But we sit at the table as those representatives.

The issue of certainty and finality is an interesting one. I think that people are probably following the events up in the northeast at the moment around oil and gas issues with the Treaty 8 bands — a number of protests and blockades. That treaty includes the term "cede, release, surrender and yield up." I think the oil and gas industry would probably argue that what's currently going on is not the kind of certainty that they were looking for.

So I don't think the language or even the legal mechanism necessarily delivers the certainty. It's what's in the agreement. It's what you finally agree to. I think the argument we would make about Nisga'a — and current government policy is the certainty model in Nisga'a — is that the treaty itself should deliver the certainty. The treaty should spell out the relationships and the respective rights, obligations and responsibilities of the parties in great detail — in much greater detail, for instance, than was done with Treaty 8.

You raise a very good question around time limits. I think part of the problem we currently have in this process is that there are no incentives to settle, in the sense that governments keep pouring money into this process. Most of it is federal money. If people recall, the federal government provides 100 percent of the loan funding to first nations, and we provide 40 percent of contribution funding. The provincial contribution to first nation funding is 8 percent in total, so the federal government's providing 92 percent of that funding. So we pour a lot of money in there. There is an industry, for sure, that has grown up around this business. There's an industry of lawyers and consultants. There's a lot of money that's keeping this system going. In my view, in some areas there don't seem to be good incentives to settle.

I think we need to take a very serious look at time limits, not because you can say, "We will achieve agreement in this period," but if we haven't made significant progress or we're not close to an agreement, then we should down tools and go somewhere else and do something else. It's a waste of all our time, money and energy. And that includes first nations, who've spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and money — incurring debt — in this particular process to date. A lot of first nation leaders are under huge pressure as a result of the debt that's been incurred and the time and energy that's been expended.

It's been the case that no one's been prepared to say: "The emperor has no clothes." No one's ready to pull that pin, because the stakes are very, very high. At least it's a forum within which we can talk about issues and negotiate issues, instead of facing each other across barricades or in the courtroom. I think we have a very good opportunity right now to make the fix that is necessary and to take a hard look at some of those issues, like time limits and like building more incentives into the process for all the parties to settle.

B. Lekstrom: I have just two brief questions. Thanks, Phil, for your presentation. I think it was certainly well done.

Slide 7, when we talk about the B.C. negotiation principles. My understanding of what we're about to take on and go through in the province, through these discussions and public hearings and the eventual development of the questions, is to put together the guiding principles for the negotiation process in British Columbia. Just going back to your slide 7, possibly your comments on what effect that may have and what we're looking at there. I would think that what we're about to undertake and what the outcome of the referendum will be — whatever that may be, through the questions asked — will significantly change what's taking place in this box. Your comments on that.

P. Steenkamp: Obviously, I don't want to prejudge the outcome of your deliberations and what questions you recommend to the Legislature. I'll just make a comment about the principles. If you take a look at the principles, people are usually quite surprised by how precise some of them are and, in some views, how conservative they are. They certainly have caused us difficulty at the negotiating table with both our negotiating partners. Some of them seem quite hard line, and we've had lots of criticism that: "We thought you guys were in an interest-based negotiation, and here you are coming to the table with positions." It's always been an interesting tension. On the other hand, you get criticized for not being clear about what your mandate is and what your positions are, and I think the Treaty Commission reflected that in its annual report yesterday.

I think the problem with the principles in the past is that they were drawn up by government in response to two things: trying to codify what the key provincial interests were and trying to identify some key interests of the public and of stakeholders in general. The line between those two things is, I admit, very fuzzy. The problem is that there was never the sense broadly that the public had input into these principles. I don't think these principles were well understood, well articulated or well advertised, although they had been publicly available since the early 1990s. Our view as the treaty negotiation office is that we obviously will await the outcome of the referendum and then seek instructions from our principals. We anticipate, as a result of the outcome of the referendum, we will need to re-examine and rework our mandates to reflect that outcome and then take them back, in the case of the office, to cabinet for review and decision. Then we will proceed. If I could speculate a bit, I think in the course of your deliberations you will…. I think many of the issues that are articulated here will come up in some form or the other, because in my experience over the last eight years these are the issues that are of concern to the public and to stakeholders.

There's a lot behind some of these principles. The principle of private property is not on the table. That's a very broad principle, and that has been ultimately interpreted as: no private property will ever be on the table. Another articulation, where there's a willing buyer and willing seller, is that private property could be part of the settlement, but government would never expropriate property to put on the table. We've seen, in the context of the negotiations in Nanaimo, that there's considerable anxiety around that principle and how it gets expressed, as there is and there will be in many other urban areas. So I think there's also a good opportunity to tease out issues, or interests and concerns, behind some of the general principles that are out there in any case.

The other really interesting opportunity — and I hope it's one that first nations take — is for the committee to hear from first nations directly about their interests, because their interests are not really reflected in the principles we've had before. These have always come from government. I don't think I can say with certainty without consultation or input from first nations.

B. Lekstrom: You've touched on something which I think is very important, and that's the key to what we're going to do as a committee: to listen to both first nations and other British Columbians on what the principles should be. A quick follow-up question I have relating to slide 10. You talked about eight years and $230 million and no treaties. Do we have a total figure of provincial expenditures on the treaty process to date? You noted that the $230 million wasn't inclusive of the ministry costs and so on.

B. Lekstrom: Would we have anything available? I know people do ask that question: what has the province and the taxpayer funded to date?

P. Steenkamp: You can come up with a variety of different figures. It's easy to take the former Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs budget, going back to the nineties, and just add all that up. That will give you a pretty solid figure. Well, even that would need to be disaggregated, because a lot of that budget, for instance, would have been expended on managing what we call critical incidents — blockades, direct action. Some of it would be associated with litigation. Some of it would be settlement costs of specific claims, so not treaty issues. But you could go through it, and you could separate out the treaty stuff. You could come up with a figure. We could certainly do that. We have, from time to time, done that.

What that doesn't take into account — and this would be the very difficult piece to quantify — is that ministries and agencies across government have been involved in this process. There are representatives from ministries and agencies at treaty tables, at working groups, at technical working groups. Ministries and agencies across government, particularly the resource agencies, do a lot of policy work on treaty issues as well. There's a lot of committee time, both at the executive levels in the public service and also cabinet and caucus committee time, over the years.

I mean, you could come out with some rough estimates. You could do the same with the federal government, and then you could take the first nation contribution and loan funding and then make some guess about what, in addition, first nations have spent over and above that. The figures that I've seen kicked around a few times — I think they were reflected in newspaper articles over the last few years — were somewhere in the order of half a billion dollars. It would not be an unreasonable estimate, but I haven't really interrogated that figure. As I say, it would be something which would be difficult to arrive at with any kind of precision. But needless to say, it's been a lot of money.

J. Les (Chair): Two more people have indicated they wish to ask a question. That would be Gillian and Dave.

G. Trumper: To Mr. Steenkamp, thank you for your presentation. You know that I've been involved in this for a while. You've certainly talked about some of the issues or what hasn't happened in the past. I'm not sure whether you want to answer this or not. From my position, we obviously haven't done a very good job in getting the attention of the general public on this issue until it hits their doorsteps and becomes very local or personal. How do you see us getting the attention of the general public per se and — I don't like to use the word "educating" — informing them on the issues? We obviously haven't done that; that hasn't been done well by whatever group was trying to do it.

P. Steenkamp: It's a very good question, and I'm not sure I can answer it. We have been out there, as I've said, with public forums. Many tables are open. Many first nation leaders will also tell you that if they get one or two people showing up at an open session, it's a lot now. Those sessions are always as interesting as watching paint dry, so I think you're absolutely right. My experience has been that we do not get the attention of the public until the deal is imminent and the interests are raised around it. That was certainly the case with Nisga'a; it was the case with Sechelt. It's been the case with Sliammon and to some extent with Nuu-chah-nulth.

That brings me to your question: how do you do it? I think we have to find a way, and I think there is an opportunity now. We have to find a way to produce very neutral, factual material, and I think we have learned the lesson over the last few years that we need not be advocates for this process so much or try to overconvince people. We just need to put facts in front of people in a very neutral way. My own feeling about it at the moment is that we should start this in a very

I guess from the perspective of the treaty negotiations office, too, we would be very interested to see what representations are made to this committee on that issue, because we do not have any firm or fixed views about this. Of course, with the restructuring of government and the creation of the public affairs bureau in government, all those issues are being approached in a different way. At the moment, I guess what we are doing is sitting back and assessing what we think an appropriate approach would be. But we don't have any fixed view on it yet.

G. Trumper: Can I just follow that up? Would it be a view of yours that the Treaty Commission, which is supposed to be neutral, represents all British Columbians, whether first nations or not? Would you see a different role in there for them to try and get that message across? That's what they were supposed to be doing originally.

P. Steenkamp: Yes, I think they should have been doing that, and I think they could do that. I have problems, quite frankly, when the Treaty Commission clearly starts making statements which in my view are not non-partisan or neutral and commenting, for instance, on referenda, which I think is straying into political territory. I think that kind of intervention calls into question the neutrality of the committee. I don't know — I haven't seen any polling around this or anything, and of course we certainly wouldn't be commissioning anything like this — how the commission is perceived across the province. I know anecdotally how it may be perceived across the province, but I think the commission has a historic opportunity now to take up that mandate and to really focus its energies on a very neutral presentation of informing the public.

Again, this is a matter of the public record. I think it was the commission's report in 1998 that included an interpretation of the Delgamuukw decision, which I took strong exception to, and we had a public exchange on that. We have tried, over the course of the years, to give the commission our sense of the role it should be playing. It's always difficult with the commission, which is independent and which is tripartite. But we do need a body like that, and we need a body like that to spend more of its time and energy on informing the public generally. We certainly have been in discussions with the commission around that, and the federal and provincial government provide the commission with resources to do that work. From the provincial side, we provide the commission with $250,000 annually for public information. The federal government provides more. So it is something we expect of the commission.

D. Chutter: On slide 4, "Why Negotiate," it states that there's the need to negotiate because aboriginal rights and title are undefined, and the courts have recommended that the parties negotiate those. In slide 5, "The B.C. Objective" is to clarify aboriginal rights and titles. How successful has the negotiation process been in clarifying these rights and titles? Is it more appropriate for some items of rights and titles to be referred to the court — those items that may be of a more legal nature; for example, third order of government and that kind of thing? Can we negotiate all rights and titles, or are some more appropriately sent to the court for question?

P. Steenkamp: It's a very interesting question, and I'd answer it this way: Nisga'a, whether you agree with it or not or whether you like it or not, includes a very precise definition of rights and title over lands and resources and over self-government. It was done in that context. We all, of course, know the history around Nisga'a and particularly around the self-government component there, and it potentially could raise a constitutional issue. That's the only case where, I would argue, the province, the federal government and first nations have sat down and defined rights and title. If you go through the agreement, it's very clear what Nisga'a treaty rights are now, and they've modified their rights and title. Those have become treaty rights, and that's spelled out in some considerable detail.

The Nisga'a model — and this is a point maybe I didn't make — is the kind of model of treaty-making which the federal and provincial governments subscribe to, which is a model whereby there is a land base which is treaty settlement land. The balance of the territory is Crown land, although there are some Nisga'a rights within that Crown land — for instance, wildlife and fisheries. There are many first nations in this province who do not accept that model of treaty-making, who argue for rights across their whole traditional territory and are looking more for comanagement or cojurisdiction over all Crown lands and resources and in some instances revenue-sharing of resource royalties and revenues. That would be a different way of approaching that question about how you define rights and title.

My view is that I think we are going to have to go and get some clarification from the courts on certain issues. I mean, first nations have a number of cases in front of the courts currently around claiming title, and there are a number of rights cases working their way through. Those will work their way through, and we may or may not get the clarification we seek. The intention of the current treaty process, looking at the Nisga'a model, is to achieve that kind of clarity. I guess our view, particularly when we initialled the agreement-in-principle with Sliammon and Nuu-chah-nulth, is that we would be achieving that clarity with those first nations in a similar way — setting aside, again, the issue of self-government, which is obviously now set aside, given the instructions we have from our principals.

I guess my view is that in the future, if we continue negotiation, it's inevitable that we will either be in court or have to go to court to get clarification on certain issues. Another way around it, and I alluded to this, was that in Australia they have a tribunal system whereby you can actually go to a tribunal. It's a much

more formal legal system, and you can go there. You have to meet certain tests to prove title, and that involves lots and lots of archaeological and anthropological evidence. It can become a very different adversarial process, although it has worked in limited circumstances in Australia. I think it's inevitable. We'll see a mix of those.

J. Les (Chair): I'm trying to be mindful of the time. I see several hands coming up again. Perhaps another five minutes, and then we do need to break for a quick lunch. I would invoke the understanding of our next presenters in terms of delaying their presentation just slightly. I'm assuming that will be all right. Did you have a quick follow-up, Dave?

D. Chutter: I did — just one very specific question. With your eight years of experience in the process, is there any specific guiding principle that is lacking, with reference to your slide 7, which has come forward and hasn't been dealt with?

P. Steenkamp: It's a good question, and I'm not sure I've actually thought about it enough to answer it. I think a critical issue we're going to have to deal with — and I don't know if this gets expressed in a principle — is the role of local government and local communities. That may be less a principle than it is a process issue. It does come up again and again for us.

Another one I think we've all discovered is that we get to this point in the negotiation, and governments can discover, as they did in Nanaimo, that there's very little public support or stakeholder support for a proposed agreement. First nations in many instances have discovered they've got right to the edge, on the verge of agreements, and there's very little community support. Again, the principle of community consultation and the accountability representation — I don't think that one has necessarily been well expressed as a principle anyway, but I think it applies to all parties equally.

M. Hunter: Yes, Mr. Chair, it's very quick. I wondered if we could ask formally for Mr. Steenkamp to provide us a briefing on this Australian proof-of-title process. I think that given the nature of rights, that's a judicial concept and not a legislative one. To me, it would be an interesting piece of background information.

P. Steenkamp: Certainly, if it's the wish of the committee, we could provide that information.

No further questions? Seeing none, I'd like to thank you, Phil, for making yourself available today. You were our first presenter, and I think you've more than adequately provided the backdrop to where we are today and have given us the benefit of your insight into a number of very difficult questions. In return for that, I commit to you that we will attempt to make your life simpler in the future.

J. Les (Chair): We will recess for about 20 minutes and reconvene at 20 to one.

The next presenter to the committee is Gerard Peters from the In-SHUCK-ch first nation. Gerard's aboriginal name is Eppa. I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance several years ago. He's been involved very extensively in the treaty process, and I'm sure the committee will find his thoughts of interest as well.

G. Peters: I listened with great interest to Mr. Steenkamp's presentation, obviously. I'd like to take an opportunity at some point to address some of the points he raised. It won't surprise any of you at all to hear that I differ with some of the recommendations that Philip would have made.

Indeed, my name is Eppa. I want to thank the Chair for inviting me to make a presentation today. As he said, he's been into my territory. My people's territory is actually located geographically between Harrison and Lillooet Lakes — about their midpoint between each other. From Pemberton to my house is about 65 kilometres, most of that on gravel road. In terms of population, we are three Indian bands: Samahquam, Skatin and Douglas. All together we know ourselves as the In-SHUCK-ch.

The thing that I think the committee should be aware of in terms of why it was so important at the time for…. This relatively small and, in the greater scheme of things, insignificant people made it their business to come together — as we did in 1988, in advance of a B.C. Treaty Commission process — to consider for ourselves how we could get the attention of Canada and B.C. so that we could all together come to terms with issues that were outstanding among us.

I listened with great interest, of course, to those of you who asked questions of Philip that relate to the involvement and role of local governments. Some of my own people believe that treaties should be negotiated between first nations and Canada, to the exclusion of the province of B.C. I know that I'd better quickly present my own personal views in this regard. I don't think that's the preferred situation, at least involving the negotiations that I was involved in up until 1999.

My own feeling is that we need to engage the province of B.C. very actively in negotiations that I hope would result in a newly defined relationship. I under

stand, of course, that it's the purpose of this body to turn its attention to how to engage the public at large. I want to point out that in terms of historical reference points, in 1870, probably very close to this very place, there were debates on the question of confederation with Canada. At the time, there were 21 legislators involved in those debates. There was one individual by the name of Henry Holbrook who made it his business to propose a motion that would have considered the interests of the Indians in a union with Canada. For his trouble, Mr. Holbrook's motion was defeated, of course, by a margin of 20 to 1.

At the time, significantly — at least for me and, I would hope, for other British Columbians — is this other fact. In 1870 the population in B.C. was in the range of 6,000, as I understand it, and a conservative estimate of the aboriginal population is something in the range of at least ten times that number. The other thing I would point out is that in the terms of union that Mr. Steenkamp referred to earlier, there was provision within the British North America Act at the time to have Indians become, under law, something that was Canada's responsibility. This meant, of course, that Canada would in due time bring forward the Indian Act.

If you'll recall, I introduced myself as Eppa. That name came to me in a traditional way from my father, who received it after the passing of his father, Eppa, in 1925. That Eppa lived to be in the range of 95 years old, which means, significantly for me on a very personal level, that he was born and lived at least half of his life as a sovereign human being.

If we consider the work of this committee and ask the obvious question about a referendum which is intended, of course, to involve all British Columbians in defining principles that will circumscribe the approach that this government is taking with regard to my people's interests, I have a real concern that those interests need to be understood in a human way. I'm less concerned about providing to this committee, as others certainly will, legal briefings and other historical briefings. My primary concern in agreeing to appear before this committee was to present what I think is a necessary component that's been lacking in discussions that relate to extremely important issues, and that's a simple human element. I think this human element is, from where I sit when I ain't here, defined by nothing more and nothing less than the Indian Act.

You're all aware, of course — because there are reports in the media — of intentions by Canada, represented by Minister Nault, to make changes to the Indian Act. You've also heard that when it comes to those changes, there is a certain element of the leadership of Indian people who take issue with that. I'm here to wonder aloud, I suppose, at the irony of it when I consider, as I have done, that the authority that those Indian leaders have as chiefs is delegated authority from the government of Canada.

Do you know what I'm saying here? I'm saying that those chiefs derive the authority they're using from the place where they're trying to make adjustments. If that's true — and I believe it to be, certainly, a fundamental truth — then I think the serious need arises to have defined for me an authority that is outside of that in terms of jurisdiction, so I could comfortably sit eyeball-to-eyeball with the negotiators that Canada sends and that you send to try to come to terms with quite extraordinary historical, legal and other issues.

Now, for me and my people — and we number fewer than 300 — what's of real concern to us is the effect of being controlled by a government, as we are, which defines my relation within Canada to the degree it does, from cradle to crypt. In terms of myself on an extremely personal level, I want to inform this committee that I'm certainly not a raging sovereigntist. I don't believe for a moment that it's possible to extract from negotiations involving federal and provincial representatives something that would allow me a place other than within Canada. So I'm making it my business to say to this committee that the purpose I have, really, essentially is reduced to negotiating my place within Canada.

My nearest neighbour in the valley is a friend of mine by the name of Alan Trethewey, who comes from a historic family. They were pioneers. He and I, no more than a week or two ago, had discussions about issues of fundamental equality. I tried to transmit to him my view that in no terms were we ever equal, because Alan in his time, in the early 1950s, contracted with the B.C. Electric Co. to clear the transmission tower line.

In so doing, I think he began to establish for himself his economic position. Certainly, through the course of that endeavour on his part and initiative on his part, let me say this: he had people, my father included, employed. In 1950, please understand that my father was an Indian. He still is. He's 85 years old, and the entire definition of his life — and to a very, very great degree, my own — was defined by the fact of the Indian Act.

I went to school where I did because of the Indian Act. I tried to shake it, upon graduation, by going into the Royal Canadian Air Force. I spent five years there — something I'm extremely proud of. I've been a member of the Royal Canadian Legion for 37 years this year.

When it comes down to asking the question why, if it's possible for an individual like me to make his way in the greater world, I should refocus my attention inward and try to come to terms with issues that are limiting of and by themselves, the reason for me is very clear: because I have a grandson who has my sama name. His name is Gerard Peters, something he's going to have to live with in his own time. But I have another grandson, and his name — in due time — will be Eppa. I invited him here; he's 13 years old. I seriously question, for him at least, the influence I've had on him, because he chose to go to school today. I said: "Come on. We can fly there. We can spend some time in the hotel before we go over, and we'll fly back. We can do some shopping and, if there's time, maybe visit the museum, and you can see where the government operates from in the capital of the province." And he said:

"Thanks, but I think I'd rather go to school." I think that speaks volumes for his upbringing, not just for myself certainly but from the extended family.

Now, when we factor in, as I have to do, the need that my people have to establish for themselves a new frame of reference, I think that frame of reference has to be based on the historical fact, the omissions, that took place throughout the history of the province — those things that this committee and I and my people are trying to come to terms with.

One of the things that occurs to me, having listened as I did with great attention to what Mr. Steenkamp had to say…. This as a particular concern. There's no other way to put it: I'm concerned that this committee would listen to a component of the government of the province in actually trying to come to terms with how to make something happen with regard to treaties in the province. In actual fact, I believe that limits the creativity that is necessary to be brought to bear in order for issues to resolve.

I shouldn't be picking on Philip so much, I suppose, but he referenced in his presentation the high expectations on my side of the table. I'll frame it this way: in terms of basics, the tangibles, that will, I hope, come to fruition through my and other people's efforts, we'll achieve ownership of land. The current situation now, given the Indian Act, is that there are small Indian reserves that are reserved for our use and benefit. We don't own them. Those are owned by the Queen in the right of Canada. We can't use them to raise capital. We can't mortgage them. The house I'm living in I've been building for over ten years now, for that simple reason.

There's an additional reason, and I wouldn't mind telling it to you. It's because I don't want to be beholden to Canada, so I'm not, for the purposes of building my house, going to Canada for any financing. This means that I've had to be creative, which means that I had to go to logging companies and ask them for assistance. For example, at one time the military was in the area doing exercises. They came to see me and said: "Would you mind if we crossed the river here?" I said: "Not at all, if in fact what you do is lend me the use of that heavy equipment you've got there for two hours to excavate my building site."

Now, those sorts of things are things that I as an individual am able to do. But if you come to my territory — as I hope some of you will, because I'm here to invite you — you will see the circumstances under which my people live. There are 800 of us who come from the three Indian bands that I referred to earlier. They live in quite abysmal circumstances. Their situation has been referred to in the media — maybe because I refer to it, and they quote me — as Third World conditions. And that's what they are.

Mr. Trethewey, in 1950, cleared the power line. In due time, B.C. Electric was transferred to B.C. Hydro. Never mind the fact that my people have always been there; we are not served by the B.C. Hydro grid at all. I can pick up a rock from my front door and throw it as far as the hydro transmission line, and B.C. Hydro will not serve me.

Some of us, in our own situations, think that electricity is something that is so fundamental that we all should be served by the hydro grid. I'm here to tell you that I believe that to be a truth that this government really should give particular regard to. Having said that, let me quickly contradict the wish I have to be connected to the B.C. Hydro grid: I don't want to be. I want to be in a position to generate power that I can sell through the grid to, among others, B.C. Hydro.

One of the fundamental issues when it comes to my ability to do that is the question of ownership and jurisdiction of water. Notwithstanding the fact that others who are engaged in the business of producing run-of-the-river hydro-generating systems are reviewing the potential — they're doing economic analyses, engineering and environmental studies…. They're doing this, of course, with attention to the bottom line. I want to say that in principle, I believe that the bottom line is extremely important. However, I believe that my people's ability to participate in economic ventures has been, up until now, strictly limited by virtue of their lack of capacity to raise capital, their lack of ownership of land and disregard because of their relative isolation — and that's changing, by the way.

We have Whistler located on the…. My east/west eludes me on this point, but my people are just on the other side of the mountain from Whistler. Whistler is one of the economic drivers, I think, in B.C. Pemberton, our nearest municipality, has been referred to as the fastest-growing municipality in all of Canada. I know that I've attended discussions at the Fraser Valley regional district and received their briefings on the likelihood of population growth in the Fraser Valley.

Factor all of that in, and the result, for me, is that…. Never mind the atrocity of the road; I'll give you more on that in a few minutes. In fact, I'll invite you to travel it with me. My wife brings my boys to school and back — 70 miles down this dirt road — every day. There's an Indian school much, much closer, but we want to get our boys ready for the larger world, and that's what my wife does to further that cause.

There are other realities that I think we need to consider, at least in my geography. One of them is the 2010 Olympic bid for Whistler. Discussions in that regard, of course, are always flagged because of the need to pay attention to making sure that people can get to and from those facilities in good time and, in fact, safely. When it comes to the 2010 Olympic bid and when it comes to the consequence to me and mine, the concern we have is that British Columbia and others might pay attention to the need to upgrade the road.

You'll understand when I tell you that I now buy disposable vehicles — ones that will disintegrate in one or two years, and I can get another. It doesn't make practical economic sense to buy a new truck and have to trade it in every year, because when you bring it back, you're not going to get your money back out of it. That's the reality.

With regard to the Olympic bid and the need that I think has to be paid attention to when it comes to transportation, I believe that in fairness to the greater

need, my people have to pay attention to the need that they have to suffer the consequence, quite frankly, of having more people come through the territory. I've said this to my people, and they've — until now, at least — resisted stringing me up or poking me with sharp sticks. But in the end I think, practically speaking, the inevitable is there, and we have to recognize it.

All of those things considered and the limitations that I tried to portray with regard to our capacity to pay our own way — which fundamentally is what I think a treaty is going to result in — we wish to contribute rather than to take from the general economy. That means we have to create wealth. That means we have to have a climate that will allow us to do so, and that climate does not exist.

I listened keenly to references previously with regard to incremental treaties. On the one hand, it gives me pause, because I believe that there was also a reference to the comprehensive nature of the Nisga'a agreement and the fact that, at least for the purposes of the Nisga'a agreement, that provides a high degree of certainty and finality. That's my hope. My hope is that in fact we can have an extremely comprehensive treaty.

That, of course, is limited by virtue of this complication: we're not negotiating a treaty. We, the in-SHUCK-ch, appeared at the door of the B.C. Treaty Commission on December 15, 1993, and presented our statement of intent. Ours was the first received by Commissioner Chuck Connaghan. When he received it, of course, I had a good contingent of my people present. As circumstances would have it, one of them wasn't clear about the time the door would open, and he arrived somewhat early. So when the commissioners arrived to open the door, he was there, and as a result we were able to present ours first. A fluke, but I'm very proud of it in any case.

For the purposes of the process, I wouldn't mind giving you a sketch of the process that we incorporated for the purposes of advancing negotiations and involving the general public. We did that to a degree that I am extremely proud of. I believe we have more friends now than we did then. But here's the scary thing to consider, I think: we're also much better organized. There are implications in that as well.

With regard to involving others, we have had and still do have a good relationship with local governments. We have a good relationship with industry. I think we have a good relationship with all manner of interests that deal with us, internal to the valley. I'll point out one exception, and that's kayakers who cowboy down our river. They do so without regard for trespass, and they get real steamed because I lock a gate and pose a degree of problem for them.

When it comes to the question of time, Mr. Chairman…. When it comes to the question that I think you need resolved for yourselves and as a committee of the Legislature, I have this to say. When it comes to process and due process, I'm aware, as all British Columbians must be, that there is a very strong weight of Liberal representation in the Legislature. Congratulations to you for that. This weight, of course, precludes and makes an obvious question when the type of government that British Columbia operates within is considered.

It may be poking my hosts in the eye to point this out, but I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong to have limited representation from those who would ask difficult questions that need asking with regard to all issues. But in this particular circumstance, I think that in fairness to the two lonely NDP members in the Legislature, the burden they have is to give as much expression to and criticism of government issues. When it comes to aboriginal issues and the question of referenda, I think that in the greater scheme of things — never mind the fact that they're of extreme urgency to me — there are other things, like the economy, that need to be paid attention to. I'm well aware of that.

Again, in fairness to due process and the parliamentary system in British Columbia, I think that one of the things I would make specific recommendation about is the question of how to generate creative alternatives with the efforts of this committee. When I make this recommendation, I am keenly aware that for your purposes you may not wish to do so. It's not my job, of course, to oblige you to. It's my job to make representation of what I think is a deficiency.

Actually, I was made aware yesterday of my attendance here. I came really well equipped with — let me dig them out — notes on little motel notepads. Before my time has expired here, I wouldn't mind speaking on certain matters that I think are important.

One of them is Canada's role with regard to treaty negotiations. I heard earlier the reference that was made to what Canada brings. I believe the reference was to cash, land, fish. If I may, I'm here to clarify on behalf of Canada and certainly for myself that there's an added component here that is more important than those things combined. It's jurisdiction.

Now, it doesn't much matter to me in the greater scheme of things how many fish I'm able to get. My preference is to manage, in a partnership way, toward an allocation that might restrict my ability to access fish in ways that some of my people might not find tasteful.

On the subject of land, in 1871, in the terms of union, my people's traditional land became Crown provincial land. The only distinction, when it came to my traditional land, was the Indian reserves, which are a federal jurisdiction. Somewhere, somehow, we've got to find the way to formalize for ourselves, in a comfortable way, a different view of land and its jurisdiction.

I'm also here to suggest very strongly that when it comes to the result of treaty, one of the things that certainly I have raised with regional and local governments is the need for agreements and understandings that we can dovetail. I think this is possible even outside of a different place from which we take jurisdictions. I don't much like the reference to a third order of government, but I do believe it's necessary to understand that there is a difference of view when it comes to where jurisdictions come from. I dare say, for members of this committee, you have a view that those ju

risdictions really should flow from the province of B.C. I'm here to suggest otherwise.

Let's get comfortable with that as a fundamental reality. I think we can move on from there and achieve some momentum, some movement, by looking at things in a different and, I hope, more creative way.

I want to leave some time for questions, certainly. I want to point out, however, that there was indeed a reference to a Canadian referendum in 1992. For what it's worth, my people supported the question in the referendum. Understand that of the 800 people that make up the In-SHUCK-ch people, only 80 or so live at home, because there's no opportunity for them. Ninety percent have migrated away from the home territory. That's because there's a different economy. There's a wage economy today that is quite different from the economy that was there when my people were there in pre-colonial times.

There's also, I think, in recent memory the referendum activity that took place on the question of Quebec sovereignty. Why were those such exercised undertakings? I think it was because of the question. It brings me all the way back to the point of all of this, and I hope that you've stayed with me. It's this. When it comes to the question, it's been made very clear, of course, by references that I've seen in the media, that this government does not see it as appropriate to define aboriginal rights and title. What scares me is that that's what the treaty process is all about.

If that's a given — and I believe it to be — the result of asking a question of the public in B.C. is going counter to the rules as I understood them on December 15, 1993, and that poses for me a great weight of problem. Now, I think I need some comfort that the rules as I understood them on December 15, 1993, when we presented our statement of intent to negotiate, are the same rules that we're using to negotiate a treaty in my area.

I have a last point to make. It's a very personal one, and it goes to the reference to, under my name here, the In-SHUCK-ch first nation. I'm here to tell you that since at least 1999, there has been no formal In-SHUCK-ch first nation. The In-SHUCK-ch first nation was formulated, achieved its life, because of the treaty process. We came together, as I said, in 1988 and formalized a union. We camped. We had hundreds of people in the valley. We fed them and camped outside, because there certainly are no facilities to do this.

The end result of it was, by 1990, a submission to the Prime Minister of the day, Mulroney, and the Premier that we wanted to engage on the matters of title and rights, and we asked for the opportunity to do so. The B.C. Treaty Commission task force or whatever the task force was called — I don't recall — undertook its activities after that, in 1991. The government of the province of B.C. and the Prime Minister, the Premier and the First Nations Summit all came together and signed an agreement in September of 1992. My boy Patrick was there at that time. He was four years old.

When it comes to the consequence, the effect, of all of that, for my purposes — and I'm about to make an admission here now — in hindsight I would have made sure that before December 15, 1993, when we presented our statement of intent to negotiate to the B.C. Treaty Commission, we had resolved for ourselves the matter of jurisdiction and where it flows from.

When I say that, I mean this. The documents that we formalized to enter the B.C. Treaty Commission process were documents that were signed by our chief and council, who are delegates of the federal Crown. Now, having understood that since the implosion of negotiations at my table…. That implosion really was a consequence of a number of factors. I, in fact, came here and had a meeting involving Mr. Steenkamp and the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs at the time and the negotiator that was at our table. I said that we had an agreement. That agreement would have called the land and cash proposal exactly that: a place to start from, not an offer. There are distinctions there. As a consequence, I had a very, very hard time at home with regard to my own integrity. I told them it was a proposal. They said: "The government said it's an offer. You gotta go."

What I'm leading up to is that I'm not here representing the In-SHUCK-ch first nation, and I don't think I'm here representing anyone else. May I quickly tell you that the First Nations Summit is, I believe, meeting now in Cranbrook. I've rarely gone to the summit, even when we were involved in negotiations, because I think that the summit's focus was more like a large beam than a narrow one. When I agreed to participate in the summit, I thought its job was only to support treaty negotiations in whatever fashion.

I think that being able to express myself the way I have is less compromised by virtue of the fact that I don't have political baggage anywhere. I'm not running for office at the summit, and I don't think they'll have me anyhow. I'm not running for office, in fact, anywhere. What I've been doing since 1999 is paying attention to my own back yard. The In-SHUCK-ch N'Quat'qua Indian band membership have assembled over the course of the last two years and made some decisions with regard to how to frame out for ourselves our constitution and how to explain for ourselves how we derive our authority. It's not from Canada, nor is it from British Columbia, thank you very much. It's from ourselves, and this approach is one I would recommend to any other first nation. The approach is one that is generated from within the people themselves, certainly with regard to the need for referencing Canada and the federal relationship, given the Indian Act and all of the implications therein.

In essence, when it comes down to it the constitution for In-SHUCK-ch N'Quat'qua will be adopted, I hope, at the end of October. It's on that basis that we will re-enter the B.C. Treaty Commission process. We'll have established for ourselves by doing so that the authority really is ours, and it's not Canada's by delegation. When we've done it, the accountability that the Minister of Indian Affairs talks about and the opposition to that that Indian Act chiefs at the Assembly of

First Nations have is something they can damn well worry about. I'll pay attention to my own.

I think that pretty much sums up my presentation, and I'd be happy to answer questions if there are any.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Gerard. Does anyone have any questions?

D. MacKay: Gerard, thank you very much for the presentation. You articulated your position very well, and I listened with interest. I just want to touch on a couple of things, if I could. What I'm going to do is speak from past knowledge, and I'm going to wind up by asking you one simple question.

First of all, Gerard, one of your concerns had to do with the human element that seemed to be missing from the process, and then you went on to speak very eloquently about your grandchild and the fact that he would sooner go to school than come to Victoria with you today. I guess you spoke about some dreams and some aspirations for your children. I guess I should say that I'd like to speak on behalf of myself. I am also a grandfather. I have two grandsons and a granddaughter, so I speak very similarly to you, I hope, and have the same aspirations for my grandchildren as you do. That is for employment and happiness down the road as they get older. We're certainly not very far apart on the human element side. We're speaking from the same seat.

Then I heard you go on. You spoke about some of the things that you saw were missing from your life. One of them was the B.C. Hydro that ran by your place, and you could hit it with a rock. They wouldn't serve you. That's not unique to yourself, Gerard. There was a small community up in my riding called Meziadin Junction with the same thing. The hydro line went right by the whole community, and they couldn't access the hydro line. They had to run off diesel power. They finally got B.C. Hydro convinced; they dropped a line in there. The people who are now using the substation that was dropped in there are having to pay for that. It cost just under $1 million. They also have a very similar concern to what you just expressed, that Hydro wouldn't serve you, so it's not unique to yourself. I just wanted to bring that to your attention.

You spoke about road conditions, the gravel roads. Once again, I represent the largest geographic riding in British Columbia, and most of the access to my communities is on gravel roads. So I know from where you speak when you speak about gravel roads and how nice it would be to have paved roads. I accept that, and I also wish we had it as well.

You talked about the fact that a large number of your community members have migrated away from the village because of economic conditions, and that made me think back to my own childhood. My father was a coalminer. In 1957 the coalmines closed down, and 100 percent of the people in that small coalmining town were unemployed.

Today, when I go back to where my home used to be, there's nothing there except trees, because the town was knocked down and reclaimed by Mother Nature. The economic benefit was not there. That was considered a ghost town, I guess, and it has since been reclaimed by nature, because the economic activity had been removed from the community. So we had to move and find work elsewhere.

Now I'll get down to the question. I heard you talk about — and I think I detected a bit of cynicism there — the Indian Act. My question to you is simple: would you like to see the Indian Act done away with, as opposed to what Minister Nault proposes, which is to amend it? Would you like to see it eliminated? I guess it's a personal question I have of you.

M. Hunter: Gerard, I too enjoyed your presentation. I listened, I hope, carefully. Perhaps you can clarify something I'm a little confused about your views on. Let me pose it this way. It has been suggested in various quarters that part of the problem we have with the Nisga'a treaty is that it has, in a sense, carried on the past, in that there is a land base which is not a reserve but is a core piece of land, and there is a government structure which cynics say moved the government from Wellington Street in Hull to Greenville. But the ability of people in that part of the province to access funding from whichever bank you want to pick or pledge property as security for business loans still doesn't exist.

Do you see the issue of how people, as opposed to communities or…? Let me put my question the other way. Would you believe that we would be better off in treaties to move toward private ownership of assets and lands so that people can pledge securities and, I guess, obtain the right to go broke? Is that an approach that you would support? Can you just amplify for me how you see your business sense, which I detect, meeting your perhaps more communal objectives in your society?

G. Peters: I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I don't think that it's necessarily one or the other. I think that in terms of the Nisga'a…. My understanding, in any case, is that the Nisga'a can obtain mortgages. They can have private ownership of their land, according to their own criteria, and that's what I would propose.

How do I say this from my own experience? My old friend Mr. Trethewey and I had a really strenuous discussion about whether or not it was going to be possible for the In-SHUCK-ch government in a post-treaty environment to underwrite mortgages and to, in that way, secure the communal interest by protecting the land base. I think that's possible.

I also think, quite frankly, that it's possible to develop a governance system that takes into account the

extreme likelihood that on land that we own, there will be other people than ourselves and that they should have a role in the government. We framed that out in treaty discussions. I think that we were accommodating in the extreme, and we were so simply because of pragmatic reasons, political as well as economic. I don't believe it's possible to remain isolated from the rest of the world for the reasons I described previously.

From my own perspective, I would say this. I would hope that much of what is possible with regard to the raising of capital for business ventures or whatever — finishing a patio on a house, that sort of thing — is available to my people. If it requires something different than what exists now, I think we should pay attention to looking for that something, and I think that something should perhaps be a role for local and regional governments. I've said in the past that I hope we construct a school that's of a physical standard and has the curriculum and staffing that are so good we'll attract students other than Indian kids, because it doesn't make sense to have an Indian school and a non-Indian school in the valley.

J. Les (Chair): Any further questions? I suspect we're probably bumping up against the time that you have to leave, Gerard. You have a 2:30 flight, I think you told me.

G. Peters: I do. I wouldn't mind adding a bit here, though, before I do go. I think, in terms of the future…. And that's where my eye is, not just on 2:30; it's in fact to the year 2030. When it comes down to it, I expect we'll have a different world then. You may not be around. I certainly will be. My dad is 85. His dad lived till 93, and I'm going to be a crotchety old guy. When it comes down to it, by then the Indian Act will be gone. We'll have resolved these issues that seem to be so elusive right now.

I think the only way for us to accomplish that is to remember the historical reference points. I believe it's necessary to look at the future, but let's not forgo the opportunity of learning from where we've all come from, because if we don't do that, I think we'll repeat some of the problems that we've had. The other thing — I expressed this at least ten years ago in a public discussion in Pemberton — is never mind the fact that there are different jurisdictions at play. Never mind the fact that there are different economic realities. We were meeting in the legion at the time, and at that time I was a member of the legion for 26 years. I said: "We're one community." That is, I guess, the common reference point, and I hope that when it comes to understanding, I make it my business as much as I possibly can to understand what issues are of primary concern to British Columbians. For that reason it seems to make sense that a question be asked with regard to what the general public feels in this whole lead-up to a referendum.

I'm not here, of course, to endorse a referendum. I want to make that abundantly clear. I think it's misdirected. Having said that, though, I also understand that it's going to happen, and if it's going to happen, I'd better make it my business to come here and explain to you some of the concerns that I would have. If you are going to ask a question by way of referendum, I would ask you please to refrain from the extremely subjective. I had a really exercised discussion with Mr. Trethewey about equality, and we had differences of opinion about what that meant.

I hope that the mandate the government has provided to the negotiators that are engaged at various tables across the province does not prevent them from exploring creative ways to bring out different ways to apply to jurisdictions. I think that the mandate, as I understand it now, is for the negotiators to engage in land and resource negotiations and interim agreements — treaty-related measures. For our purposes, when we do come back to formal negotiations, we're going to make it our business to engage on the question of jurisdictions first, because I think that in order to understand what we're able to do with land and other tangibles, we have to deal with that as a prerequisite.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Gerard, for coming today and sharing your thoughts with us. We appreciate that very much. Have a good trip home.

J. Les (Chair): We'll take a three-minute break while the next presenter finds her place.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, if we're all ready, we'll hear from our next presenter. That is Wendy Lockhart Lundberg. Wendy represents an organization called Native Women CARE Society. We obliquely crossed paths a few years ago in Ottawa, when we were each making presentations to the Senate of Canada. I'm pleased to see her here today and pleased to turn the floor over to you, Wendy.

Yes, I'm really pleased to be here today to make this presentation. I'm here with Maisie Baker, also representing Native Women CARE, an advocacy group that we formed after realizing that native women were underrepresented on issues directly impacting their rights in relation to self-government, the B.C. treaty process and Bill C-49, the First Nations Land Management Act.

Native Women CARE advocates communication, accountability, responsibility, respect and equality. One of our main objectives is to give native women a voice. In this regard, despite the divided opinion on the question of a referendum in the treaty process, we consider this hearing to be a welcome opportunity to express our opinions and concerns for and on behalf of the native women who form part of Native Women CARE

It is refreshing to be included in such a vital stage of a historic process, in contrast to Senate hearings on Bill C-9, the Nisga'a Final Agreement Act, in which native women were not represented by any national native women's organization. We consider this to be a tragic and shameful chapter in Canadian history.

We realize that one of the most controversial points on the question of a referendum is whether or not a referendum will cause the views of a majority to challenge the constitutionally protected rights of aboriginal people. The tragic irony of this argument is that in law in Canada, native women are not constitutionally protected.

Native women are discriminated against as a result of the Indian Act and the complexities of reserve land held by the Crown complicating the application of the Charter of Rights and the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Indian Act is specifically excluded from the application of the Canadian Human Rights Act pursuant to section 67, and these facts are included in the recently released report dated January 12, 2001, of the special representative on the protection of first nations women's rights, Mavis A. Erikson, appointed by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Hon. Robert Nault. I've provided a copy of this report to the committee Clerk for your review.

While much attention has focused on the treaty process in British Columbia, there has been little attention given to Bill C-49, passed by parliament in June 1999. However, for reasons which we will explain, we urge you to fully examine this legislation in conjunction with your examination and review of the treaty process. Please consider Squamish Indian band's handling of this land management legislation as a precedent in your review.

As your records will indicate, the Squamish nation submitted its statement of intent in the treaty negotiation process in December 1993. Following letters of commitment and openness, protocol for treaty negotiations was signed by Canada, British Columbia and Squamish in 1995. In 1998, however, we discovered that the Squamish nation and other first nations had been engaged in a ten-year process, including the signing of a framework agreement, culminating in the legislation known as Bill C-49.

For Squamish band members the very existence of the bill was not known, and contrary to provisions in the treaty process, Squamish band members did not vote to mandate or ratify the framework agreement. The issue regarding the lack of consultation and due diligence was raised in Senate hearings, and in a letter dated February 15, 1999, Chief Bill Williams acknowledged that council would wait until the proposed federal legislation would become law before presenting it to band members. I've also included a copy of his letter to me.

We consider Squamish nation participation in Bill C-49 illegal and unconstitutional. In the meantime, the B.C. Native Women's Society launched a lawsuit to force the government to deal with the issue of native women's property rights under Bill C-49. We were stunned to learn that the Squamish nation intervened on behalf of all the signatory bands, without informing their own band members, on the side of the federal government and against the B.C. Native Women's Society.

A significant property issue affecting native women relates to the division of matrimonial property on marriage breakdown. This issue does not affect non-native women in the same way, because they are automatically protected by provincial statutes in this area. The complication for native women arises because of the division of powers granted under the constitution to the different levels of government and because reserve land is held by the Crown.

Another major issue affecting native women in respect of property is inheritance relating to lands on reserve. This is an issue which personally impacts me, my mother and Maisie Baker with respect to familial property. My mother, Nona Lockhart, was raised on the Mission Indian reserve in North Vancouver by her parents, Mona and Henry Baker. Henry, known as Hawkeye, was a legendary lacrosse goalie who played for the North Shore Indians and for Canada in the 1932 Olympics. I am proud to say that he was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.

When my mother married a white man in 1947, she was stripped of her status and band membership, a discriminating rule of the Indian Act that did not apply to native men, who could marry whoever they pleased without punishment or loss of their identity. Sadly, my grandmother died in 1967 at a young age, and when Henry passed away in 1968, he bequeathed his two properties on reserve lands to my mother, his only child. Despite the existence of a legal and valid will approved by Indian Affairs, my mother, who had by now been declared a non-Indian, could not even live in the home in which she was born and raised, in the house that Henry built himself.

Following the 1985 amendments to the Indian Act known as Bill C-31, native women, including my mother, had their status and band membership restored. As a result, my mother filed formal land claims. However, to this day Squamish band council have not restored my mother's property to her. As an example of how native women are blocked in regaining property and consequently blocked in accessing programs and services which are, for the most part, provided for on reserve, the following sets out the manner in which Squamish band council have dealt with my mother's claim.

With respect to my grandfather's property on Stawamus Indian reserve in Squamish, council passed a motion that said that lot 7, block E, sketch plan 24401, Stawamus Indian reserve No. 24, reverts back to the Squamish nation and that Nona Lockhart be given first consideration of the lot 7, block E, when allocated a home in the future. This is clearly not a resolution to a land claim, and clearly it is not the manner in which title to land would be transferred or effected for fee

simple land off-reserve. In addition, it is not in keeping with estate matters in the execution of a will for non-Indians.

In the matter of my grandfather's other property on Mission reserve, for which, in 1968, my mother received compensation for her father's house, Squamish band council considers this a finality of my mother's claim. This is clearly a double standard, because while the Squamish nation will make land claims for land in compensation for past injustices, band council is not recognizing the injustices suffered by their own people, their own women, as a result of the discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act which stripped women of their status and band membership.

One of these properties is now occupied by a non-native woman and her native husband. The other was occupied by a native man, a member of Sechelt nation and not even a Squamish band member. This property is now vacant, and there are no encumbrances to registering title to my mother.

Another complication in this matter, which applies to all native women who have previously lost status, is the question of band membership. For myself and others, this is problematic. For example, my son is denied band membership and status, therefore denied inheritance rights. My son Maximilian, whose ancestral name is Xamelk, is with me here today. His future and the future of countless other descendants of native women will be impacted by the work of this committee and the outcome of these issues. The complete and documented history of my mother's land claim and the story of her life as a native woman is contained in the attached copy of my brief to the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, dated May 4, 1999. Also included is a copy of an excerpt of issue No. 28 of Proceedings, which contains the testimony of Maisie Baker.

After Bill C-49 passed in June 1999, the Native Women's Association of Canada was forced to file a lawsuit to bring forward the failure of the federal government to exercise its fiduciary responsibility to native women. Despite their representations to the Senate committee, the legislation was not amended to address native women's property rights. Their testimony is found in issue No. 27, which I have also included.

Within just one year of Bill C-49 being passed, we were faced with an issue which we raised concerning our individual land claims expropriation. The matter relates to an agreement signed by the province of British Columbia, B.C. Rail and the Squamish nation regarding a land exchange in respect of lands in and around Squamish, the Sea to Sky Highway and Porteau Cove. Our letters to the chief and council in June of 2000 are enclosed, which detail this matter.

The federal government refers to the inequality of native women's rights as a legislative gap. I was stunned to read in the attached letter from Hedy Fry, Member of Parliament, that the Secretary of State for the Status of Women believes that these issues will be addressed by first nations communities. While there may very well be responsible band councils that will address these issues, the question we ask ourselves is: why would this minister, whose rights are enshrined and protected, vote to pass legislation that will force native women to fight for their rights?

In terms of formulating a recommendation to this committee in respect of your terms of reference, we urge you to fully examine and question the issues surrounding the rights, position and interests of native women in relation to the treaty process, land management legislation, self-government issues and aboriginal affairs. We ask you to question as you meet with and hear other individuals and organizations: are we travelling down the right road? Are there other ways and paths that we can follow to resolve the complex issues surrounding the treaty process and land claims which we are all facing in British Columbia?

For us, the path of native women is strewn with obstacles in the way, making it difficult, if not impossible, to attain equality on our journey. Self-government, to us, represents discretionary government. When we say discretionary government, we mean that programs and services — including housing, education, language, culture, membership and inheritance — are administered at the discretion of band council. We have found this to be the case in our own band. After meeting with and talking to many native women and native men, self-government in its present form is not the path we wish to follow. On this issue, we are pleased to note that some native bands are now suggesting the idea of dropping self-government from treaty talks.

With respect to the complexities of reserve land blocking protection of native women's rights, as we have outlined, we see the following as possible solutions. The government can amend Bill C-31 to reinstate descendants of native women, and they can establish land title in fee simple for Indians. This would effectively remove the complications of allotments of reserve land, protect native women in terms of property issues and establish the same land tenure system for Indians as for non-native people off reserve. This would, in effect, provide native women the same rights as non-native women in Canada as regards property and lead us out of the Dark Ages.

We recommend and urge you to examine private property rights for native Indians. We recommend and urge you to examine negotiating individual land claims. In our own band there is fear among band members that our council has been actively working toward obtaining complete collective control of band lands. This would explain, for example, their reluctance to resolve outstanding individual band member land claims and their unwillingness in recent years to issue certificates of possession.

Another area which affects aboriginal people, and in particular native women, is the distinction between band members that live on reserve and band members that live off reserve. As I mentioned previously, programs and services are for the most part delivered on reserve. If native women are not being returned to their communities, as we have found, then we wonder how

they will truly be a part of and benefit from land claims and treaty settlements. Our own band is an example. There are approximately 2,800 band members, of which 50 percent live on reserve and 50 percent live off reserve.

I would like to draw your attention to additional reference material regarding the issues we have raised. With respect to Bill C-31, I recommend to you examination of a paper written by Harry W. Daniels of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples entitled Bill C-31: The Abocide Bill. Also, statistical data on aboriginal women is included in a recently released report entitled Gender Inequality in Canada: A Status Report for 2001, by Dr. Karen Hadley for the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the CSJ Foundation for Research and Education.

In closing, we would like to say again how pleased we are to have had the opportunity to make a presentation to you here today. We are hopeful that this is an indication of the beginning of positive change for native women, their children and their families. Thank you.

D. MacKay: Wendy, thank you very much. I've been aware for some time now of the inequality in the Indian Act as it relates to native women. Sitting in the House for the first time as an elected MLA, I'm absolutely amazed that we still have the Indian Act in place governing natives in this province. It's remarkable that it's still there.

I'm going to have to show a little bit of ignorance on my part here. Was Bill C-49, which you spoke of quite frequently, intended to balance the scales for native women? What was the intent of Bill C-49?

W. Lockhart Lundberg: Bill C-49 is legislation that at the moment gives 14 first nations across Canada the power to manage their lands, which sounds like a good step of progress. But as I pointed out, the problem with it is that it's very flawed, and it doesn't protect native women automatically as it does non-native women off reserve. This is a point that we raised in Senate hearings, as did the Native Women's Association of Canada, in Ottawa. Unfortunately, the legislation was not amended, and it was passed in its present form. In other words, native women would have to fight with individual bands, in that legislation, to attain the equality that non-native women off reserve have right now in Canada.

Another problem with Bill C-49 is that it will…. I mean, I consider it to be a legislated end to treaty matters for the Squamish nation and others. It's also going to give the Squamish nation and other bands — in that act — the power to enact laws, the power to expropriate lands. It's very broad. There are a lot of concerns that native women have, as I've mentioned.

D. MacKay: Just a follow-up to that. Wendy, I assume you represent a large group of native women.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: We are both Squamish nation members. We are both registered status natives. We formed this society called Native Women CARE. In our own family alone we are probably representing about 50 native women. We have been contacted by other native women who have heard about our work, who have read about our stories, who have heard about us by word of mouth. There are probably about ten women among us that are actively working to network with other native women and other native women's organizations to try and give native women a voice. We are not an organization funded by any organization or level of government, provincial or federal. It's something that we've undertaken to do with our own resources, because we just found that there was this big hole where native women were not being represented.

D. MacKay: Just one final question, Wendy. I guess this is the question. I heard you mention — and I think I read you right — that you supported private property rights. I guess that begs the question: are you talking about private property rights or individual property rights on existing reserves or on lands that may be expanded through a future treaty process?

W. Lockhart Lundberg: I don't know exactly how it would work, but as I said, right now our own band, for example, is gaining collective control of the land, and for the reasons that I have expressed, it's of concern to native women. It's going to put us in a position where we have to fight. It seems to me that all levels of government are having these band-aid solutions where: "We're going to implement this legislation. We're going to change that legislation. We're going to maybe do away with the Indian Act." It seems clear to me that if we had private property rights, as non-native people do off-reserve, then we would eliminate all of these layers of legislation and complexities on the issues.

I don't know how it's going to work. That's something for your researchers and your legal people to research and come up with some policies or proposals. It's clear to me that you can make legislation in a treaty, in a self-government for a first nation, that's going to give native women the same rights and equality as non-native women in Canada. Or I think you can simplify it and have native people have private property rights like everyone else does.

D. MacKay: Last question, Wendy. Are you recommending that this committee look at making a recommendation to the treaty process that private property rights be a consideration for future treaties? I'm not being gender-specific. I'm talking about native women and men.

G. Trumper: Thank you for your presentation. I really don't have a question, but I hear this frequently from my contacts with the aboriginal community, the

men and women that I know — their problems and their concerns. I notice you've given us an appendix of a whole lot of information we can get. Certainly I would hope that by you making a presentation here, you're able to hear from other aboriginal women in the province, because this is something which isn't addressed and which isn't heard much about unless you are very involved in the communities, which I have been. It is a huge, huge issue with aboriginal women. Thank you very much for your presentation.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: On that point about informing native women, especially, about the process and grass-roots native people…. I know you were discussing this earlier. It is going to be challenging. I highly recommend that you give notice to as many of the native organizations as you possibly can. I can provide you with a list of native women's organizations, in particular. Hopefully, they will inform members of their groups or people they're in contact with, because we have found as band members, with respect to any initiatives or events such as this, that the information filtering down from band councils to band members is very limited. It's a problem to even be informed about matters such as this taking place.

G. Trumper: We would certainly appreciate it if you have other groups we could approach or get information from. That would certainly be appreciated.

V. Anderson: I'll ask a question on private rights, just to make sure we understand it clearly. I agree with your concerns. Thank you very much for presenting them today. They needed to be presented. You hear them in some places but not in public too often.

In one scenario one could have private land ownership within the treaty process, within the treaty lands, so that same as we have private land ownership within a municipality, the land always stays in the municipality. On the other hand, you could have land ownership as a private individual, which in effect would take the land out of the reserve process and make it separate. Which of the two are you suggesting? It makes a significant difference if the land maintains the reserve area, even though it's private ownership, or it goes out and divides the area. I know the latter has happened in the United States, so that in essence the reserve ceased to be.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: From our own experience in our own band, I think the reserves are going to cease to be, inclusive or exclusive of this process, anyway.

What I envisage to get rid of these complications on native women's rights issues is, for example, that a nation would have private property or fee simple land for the native people, but they could collectively hold lands that they were going to use for economic development. It's complicated. I don't know how it's going to work. But to get rid of, especially, the layers of: "Can we apply this act? No, we can't, because we're native women and the Charter doesn't apply and the Human Rights Act doesn't apply…." I just see that if the native people had individual private property rights, then they would have protections, and they wouldn't have all the complication surrounding it.

M. Hunter: Thank you, Wendy. That was a very clear and disturbing presentation. I understand the conundrum that is posed by the lack of the application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on section 35 of the constitution, and I now understand better the implications of Bill C-49.

To follow up on Mr. Anderson's question, can you point us to any research that you're aware of that deals with this question of the legal status, potential status, of land on reserve? My experience tells me that aboriginal leadership is going to resist the idea of individual fee simple title on the reserve. Can you add anything to what you said in terms of sources, or does your material include further reference that we can follow up on that issue?

W. Lockhart Lundberg: I don't really have specific information about the land question, as you mentioned. I just brought the material relating to the women's issues and Bill C-31. I do have a copy of Bill C-49, which I do recommend that you examine, because as I said, I think it was an attempt at a legislative end to the treaty talks. It's going to give the 14 first nations, if it's implemented, a lot of power to enact laws and to develop their lands, and as I said, it'll create problems for native women and band members that are even unaware of it at the moment.

M. Hunter: Just a quick follow-up. I did look at Bill C-49 a long time ago. Is Squamish the only community to which Bill C-49 applies in B.C., or are there others?

W. Lockhart Lundberg: No, they're not. Some of them are, I believe, in Ontario. I can list them out here, if you'd like. They are Westbank; Musqueam; Fort George, also known as Lheit-Lit'en and Lheidli T'enneh; Anderson Lake, or N'Quatqua; Squamish; Siksika Nation; John Smith, also known as Muskoday; Cowessess; The Pas, or Opaskwayak Cree; Nipissing Band of Ojibways; Scugog; Chippewas of Rama; Chippewas of Georgina Island; and Saint Mary's.

V. Anderson: I'll just follow up on that. If I understand rightly, what they have received in Bill C-49 is not ownership rights but management rights.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: Yeah. It's called the land management legislation, as I've said. But if you read it carefully, it's going to give them other powers — for example, to enact laws. To us that's a very frightening thing.

J. Les (Chair): Just to further clarify, the land would still be held in the name of the federal Crown, but the management thereof would be strengthened in the hands of the band council.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. I found it very informative. For your information and as I'm sure you're aware, Chief Mavis Erickson is the chief of the Carrier-Sekani tribal council headquartered out of Prince George. Mavis Erickson is from Fort St. James, which is my hometown where I live with my family. She comes from quite a large and influential family, so I'll be reading this report with a great deal of interest. I met with the vice-chief of the Carrier-Sekani tribal council and the northern chiefs on Friday in Fort St. James, and we talked very briefly about women's issues. I'm delighted you're here today, and as I say, I'll certainly be reading this with interest, as I know will all members of this committee. Again, thank you very much.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: Thank you very much. It is an excellent report that she has prepared. She did a study, travelling across Canada last year for about six months. It gives historical information and also outlines the complexities that I've discussed.

I really do encourage the committee to have the legal counsel — I don't know if it's the Ministry of Attorney General — examine these issues, because we are hoping that there will be protections in place for native women before treaties become a reality — or self-government or whatever it's going to be. There has to be something in place prior to protect the native women. Otherwise, the native women will continue to be vulnerable, and they will have to fight with their own communities and their own band councils. The problem again, and that follows, is that the native women don't have the resources to bring their issues to the courts to have them resolved there. There's really not the step further that they can do. We're really hoping

that whatever comes out of this process is going to protect them at the beginning.

J. Les (Chair): Wendy, I would deduce from your submission this afternoon, if you were to take a close look at the Nisga'a agreement, that you would find a lot of difficulties there from your perspective, from a native woman's perspective.

W. Lockhart Lundberg: I did. Actually, I examined it, and I did formally request to appear at the Senate hearings on the Nisga'a treaty, but we weren't invited to attend. I understand there were two individual native women presenters, but as I mentioned, there was no national representation of native women. The problem I had with the Nisga'a treaty is that it stopped short, I feel. The legal people may tell you differently. But from my interpretation, it wasn't clear that the B.C. Family Relations Act would apply to native women to give them that protection, for example, in respect of the division of matrimonial property. That's one of the concerns I see already with a treaty that's in existence. We're hoping that it's not going to say that the protection should be the same as a statute, or something will apply. We want it to be there in stone that the native women are going to have the same protections, because as I said, they're not going to have the resources to go to the courts and have these matters looked at by the courts in their favour.

J. Les (Chair): Further questions? Okay. It looks like the committee is tapped out in terms of questions.

You've given us a tremendous volume of material to research and to read, and I appreciate you bringing that with you. We will be studying that carefully, as well as some of the other references that you've made this afternoon. I want to thank both you and Maisie for coming this afternoon and sharing your thoughts with us. Hopefully, it will encourage others who have similar concerns to come forward as well.

I believe that concludes the business of the committee for today. We stand adjourned until next week, September 26.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS