Aboriginal Affairs - Issue No. 6 - Thursday, October 4, 2001

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations
	B. Henderson	131
	S. Hartwell	133
	R. McLaren	136
	K. Landrock	137
	M. Dalen	139
	J. Wilson	141
	C. van der Meulen	142
	B. Munroe	143
	D. Wagner	145
	A. Doll	147
	B. Zemenchik	148
	F. Alec	150
	A. Campbell	153
	P. Parry	154
	E. Mah	156
	M. Forsythe	158
	R. Fuerst	162
	D. Glaim-Buchholtz (Gyologyet)	164
	K. Buchanan (Nii lax dax'txw)	169
	Y. Lattie (Suu Dii)	172
	H. Smit	174

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:

Frank Alec
Ken Buchanan (Nii lax dax'txw)
Al Campbell
Mary Dalen
Alice Doll
Melanie Forsythe
Richard Fuerst
Darlene Glaim-Buchholtz (Gyologyet, office of the Wet'suwet'en)
Sharon Hartwell (mayor, village of Telkwa)
Bob Henderson
Ken Landrock
Yvonne Lattie (Suu Dii)
Richard McLaren
Eric Mah
Bill Munroe
Paul Parry
Hans Smit (Smithers Exploration Group)
Cor van der Meulen
Dieter Wagner
Janet Wilson (councillor, district of New Hazelton)
Bill Zemenchik

J. Les (Chair): Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Thursday morning edition of the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs hearings. My name is John Les. I'm the MLA for Chilliwack-Sumas and Chair of this committee. Before the other members of the committee introduce themselves, I'd like to make a few remarks about the committee and the work it's been asked to do by the Legislative Assembly.

The committee was established last August 27 by the Legislature to examine and inquire into and make recommendations with respect to all matters and issues concerning questions which the government of British Columbia should submit to voters to implement the government's commitment to give all British Columbians a say on the principles that should guide B.C.'s approach to treaty negotiations, through a one-time provincewide referendum, while ensuring that constitutionally protected aboriginal rights and title are respected. Copies of the committee's terms of reference and other information about the committee process are also available at the information table at the back of the room.

We are very eager to hear the views of a range of British Columbians, and in the process, we hope to build interest and support for the treaty process. To this end, the committee has publicized its hearing process and called for submissions in radio and newspaper ads throughout the province. We'll be accepting written submissions until November 2.

We'll be holding hearings throughout the province and have been already. We were in Prince Rupert yesterday. We're here today, in Fort St. John tomorrow, and in various other communities throughout the province in the coming weeks. Our itinerary for the ensuing weeks is laid out on the committee website. The hearings are being recorded and transcribed by Hansard staff. The transcripts will be available on the committee's website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/.

Following these public hearings, the committee, throughout the next month after the hearings conclude, will prepare a report of its observations and recommendations as to the questions that should be put to the people of British Columbia in a one-time referendum. The report will be tabled in the Legislative Assembly or, if the House is not in session, deposited with the Clerk by November 30. The report will be a public document once it is tabled or deposited.

Now I'd like to ask the various members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with Mr. Lekstrom.

B. Lekstrom: Good morning. My name is Blair Lekstrom. I'm the MLA for Peace River South and a member of the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.

D. Chutter: Good morning. I'm Dave Chutter from Yale-Lillooet. I live just outside Merritt.

R. Visser: Good morning. I am Rod Visser. I am the MLA for the North Island, and I live in Campbell River.

D. MacKay: Good morning. I'm Dennis MacKay, the MLA for Bulkley Valley–Stikine. I'd like to welcome everybody that's here this morning. We look forward to your input.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Hi. I'm Paul Nettleton, the MLA for Prince George–Omineca. I live in Fort St. James.

V. Anderson: I'm Val Anderson from Vancouver-Langara. I like your weather up here.

G. Trumper: Good morning. I'm Gilliam Trumper. I'm the MLA for Alberni-Qualicum, which stretches right across the centre of Vancouver Island.

M. Hunter: I'm Mike Hunter. I'm the MLA for Nanaimo, which is my home. Good morning.

J. Les (Chair): To my immediate left is Kate Ryan-Lloyd. She is the Clerk to this committee. In the back of the room is Tamara Little, who is being retained by the committee to help us with our work.

We have a very full agenda this morning. I say that for the benefit of us all. Presenters will be given 15 minutes to make their presentation. Committee members will have an opportunity to pose questions — and I underline "questions" — if possible. Let's not have committee members making long speeches, because we simply won't have time for that today. So brief questions and hopefully brief answers and all in a context of about a 15-minute time frame. If we do that, we'll get in everybody that is scheduled for this morning, and I'm sure that at the end of today we'll have heard from a lot of people.

The first presenter, then, is Bob Henderson on behalf of the back-country tourism sector.

B. Henderson: I'd like to open by saying that this is perhaps a unique opportunity in a lifetime of working in the tourism sector, because for the first time in my memory I've had the opportunity to appear before a committee of the House to give a face to some of the problems that face northerners.

I'll quickly give you some background. I have to apologize; I don't have a written submission. I was

phoned by Dennis's office on Monday, and I had to clear some of my remarks with some of my compatriots. Although I don't represent any one group, some of my remarks are representative of people in my industry.

For the last 40 years I've worked in the area generally known as Spatsizi as a hunting guide and latterly as a fishing guide. I've also worked as a trainer for people entering the industry, most specifically training native communities from the Queen Charlottes to Fort Nelson.

The industry which I represent is perhaps the oldest industry in the north. There are records dating back to the 1860s of people from afar being guided by both aboriginal and local people in this industry. It's perhaps likely to be one of the industries most impacted by any land claims in the north.

It is my belief that the industry fully supports the land claims process. Unlike most people in the province we can put faces to the people that are making the claim, and we see daily the residue of their activities on the land. We also understand that they have entitlement. We, too, have entitlement. I have 40 years of entitlement on that same land. My children were born and have spent their entire lives in the area.

Those dichotomies have to be addressed somehow. The province in its wisdom has embarked on a referendum process. Certainly, it's my belief that the present process is a total failure, and we have to break out of the box. Although I am not clear that a referendum is going to be the be-all and end-all of a new beginning, it certainly should show some of the deficiencies that are presently there.

I understand why the natives are suspicious of the process. I put it to the committee that the committee should also be careful, because it's going to rear another polarization. Not only is there going to be polarization between the natives and non-natives, but there will be polarization between the north and the south, the urban areas versus the rural areas.

I mentioned earlier that I can put faces to the people I'm dealing with. My urban neighbours have no way of doing this. They have no way of understanding the impacts of what has gone on before. They read it in the newspaper; they see it on Disney films. We've seen a classic example of that in the controversy of the grizzly bear. Every urban person I've ever talked to knows exactly what the biology of a grizzly bear is, yet they've never seen one. Certainly they've never been attacked by one.

That area really concerns me, and I suggest that the committee is going to have to give the opportunity to rural communities to get direct access to the urban press when the issue comes before the people. Otherwise, yet again, the "little old ladies in tennis shoes in West Vancouver" are going to rule the day. A little background. Every time I approached the government when I was executive director of the guides association, my friends like Stephen Rogers and Bill Vander Zalm said: "Yes, you're right, but the little old ladies in West Vancouver will never buy it." I've heard that all my life.

The other issue that Nisga'a has clearly brought to a head is the lack of third-party intervention in a timely manner. I put it to the committee that the mistakes made in Nisga'a, such as the controversy over the Kitwanga valley or the Upper Nass, would have never taken place if they'd talked to the people on the ground at the time of making that negotiation. It is my understanding, upon talking to the people who participated in that process, that by the time they were made aware of what was going on, the process was too far down the road to put a stop to it. That is going to come back and haunt the people of British Columbia forever and a day, and that's wrong. It's plain wrong.

I don't even know if there are any discussions or negotiations going on, on the land in which I have an interest, but if I don't get the opportunity to vet the negotiations for accuracy and to explain the effect on me and my family, then I think the end result is going to be a disaster across the board. So somewhere in the question there has to be the question of the access of third-party interests.

I've probably taken up more than my ten minutes, and I think it probably would be more useful if the committee were to ask questions at this time.

V. Anderson: One of the cards that we've been getting is to suggest the right questions that might be asked. Do you have any particular suggestions that you think are important that people be asked that are clear and concise, in a way that we really deal with the issues that you're concerned about?

B. Henderson: I haven't had an opportunity — hopefully, by November 2 I will be able to make it clear and concise — but the question of the ability for third-party interests to enjoin in the process early on has got to be asked. We have to have the support of the province for that.

Open negotiations are important on both sides. There are people who have been disenfranchised on the native side and those who are going to be too. There are a number of native families already involved in our industry, who have been for years and years, and they'll end up in the same position as the native fishermen who went through the normal process to get their licences.

V. Anderson: Just a follow up. If I understand rightly, you're saying there needs to be public awareness of what decisions are in the process of being discussed and then the opportunity for them to be part of that discussion.

G. Trumper: You talk about the difference between the urban and the rural non-aboriginal and the views of Vancouver, I suppose, and Victoria. Have you any suggestions on how one addresses that issue of making the urban areas more aware of some of the decisions that have affected the northern or the rural areas of British Columbia? Obviously, the Nisga'a is the only one that's really taken place. Have you any suggestions on how to address that very big issue of differences of views?

B. Henderson: I think we have to have access to the regular urban press, and I don't think we do have that access. I think it's not a common occurrence that rural people like to approach the urban press. We certainly don't have the funds to put on a PR campaign nor is that our style. In this instance I think it's going to have to be our style. We're going to have to have access and the funds to advance our own point of view. Either that's done through the referendum process, or…. I don't know; I don't clearly understand that. I think the political fallout of allowing this north-south split to simmer…. I think in my lifetime, if it isn't addressed, it'll become even more prevalent than east-west. People in this area are getting tired of having everything directed from the south.

D. MacKay: Bob, just as a thought. Have you given any thought, perhaps, to: when the negotiators go to the table, should they be dealing with one issue on all the tables? Like, if there are 44 tables at the present time in negotiations, should the negotiators be dealing with one issue only — and that issue is land — and, once the land issue is set aside, then progress to another issue, such as whether or not there should be monetary compensation to the natives? Do you see any advantage to dealing with one issue at a time and getting rid of that one issue and then progressing? I guess it would be kind of like an interim agreement.

B. Henderson: I understand what you're saying, and I understand why, from a legal perspective, that would probably be beneficial, in that then it's fair right across the board. The question I asked myself last night, when I was trying to think about what I was going to say today, was why were we able to go through Treaty 8 and a number of other treaties, which were in their day just as complex as the ones we're dealing with today? It didn't cost half a billion dollars, and it was basically done by one or two people on the government side.

The answer that occurred to me at the time and that I think still has some validity is that person put faces to the problems that were there. By making this thing into a major political event and having a cast of thousands — we're drifting so far away from what really is the attempt to bring land back into the hands of the people who have the entitlement — we may be losing what is the whole purpose of this whole event. If you talk to most natives, it's not about money. It's not about real property, but it's about heritage. You can't deal in heritage with a bunch of lawyers, I'm sorry. I was brought up in a legal family. It's not possible.

R. Visser: Essentially you're saying that the solutions to the treaty issues or the land question are local by nature.

R. Visser: As a local person you're far more eminently capable of solving a lot of these issues.

B. Henderson: It is my sincere belief, as difficult as it is…. This week I have had a number of local issues dealing with natives or first nations or whatever they're calling each other at this point. When you sit across the table face to face with your neighbours and understand what the real issues are, it can be done without costing a million dollars, which is where we're headed.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much, Bob. We'd like to hear much more from you, but as I said earlier, we have to keep our time on track this morning. Thank you for presenting to the committee this morning and sharing your thoughts with us.

S. Hartwell: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I am Mayor Hartwell, representing the village of Telkwa, which lies in traditional Wet'suwet'en territory.

I wish to thank the members of the select standing committee for having the foresight to gather input from the people who will be most affected by the treaty negotiation process. The people of British Columbia want to see a timely, fair and final solution to native negotiations. It is important that the answer for treaties be solved through consultation and negotiation with first nations and affected communities and not through litigation. We need to work together to come to a mutually acceptable agreement.

One of the provincial principles guiding the negotiating process is that privately owned lands will not be on the table. Neither private nor municipal land should be open to treaty negotiations.

Access to land is another consideration of vital importance. People must be able to access public land and/or water through aboriginal land. This is a huge concern to ecotourism operators, guide-outfitters, trappers and fishermen, as well as the general public.

Economically speaking, finality to the treaty negotiation process is very important to British Columbia and local economies. Businesses won't invest if there is uncertainty surrounding the settlement of land and resources. British Columbians, aboriginal communities included, need to get back to business. Certainty and finality with the treaties will root confidence and spur economic activity — and I think we all know what that

We believe that the Indian Act is an archaic piece of legislation, as it essentially places every native as a ward of the state. This approach effectively strips natives of their self-worth and self-determination. The Indian Act must be dissolved and every native recognized as a Canadian citizen with equal rights and privileges.

Recent circumstances indicate that providing large sums of funds to aboriginal bands does not necessarily guarantee that all people in the band benefit from the funds provided. Some financial management controls need to be created to eliminate the abuse that a one-time bulk payout can create. A fair process of fund distribution will eliminate family and gender inequalities within bands and provide all aboriginals with a fair opportunity for a better life.

There are some questions surrounding what level of government the new aboriginal government will be. Telkwa believes that aboriginal governments should be granted the same powers, rights and privileges as municipal governments. Non-aboriginal municipalities differ culturally from aboriginal governments in how they are set up and structured. However, a chief should be equivalent to a mayor. The financial grants and powers provided by the provincial and federal governments to the non-aboriginal municipalities and aboriginal governments should be equal. As well, aboriginal governments should participate on regional district boards prior to treaty negotiations to promote harmony and increase efficiency. We can certainly see the benefit of that.

During the treaty process all the affected communities involved need to continue working cooperatively with first nations in order to build partnerships that lead to strong communities and economically mutually benefiting relationships.

Telkwa is committed to working cooperatively with first nations to help with the transformation to self-government at a municipal level. We don't really want to create another level of government, but we would like to have them as partners at this level. It is important to have a joint commitment and effort in building capacity among the aboriginal communities. We can learn from the first nation community, and they can benefit from our knowledge as well. It's time to break down the barriers, celebrate our strengths and begin building our future together.

In closing, I suggest the principles guiding the treaty negotiation process must include finality. There must be a definite end and solution to the treaty process. There must be certainty. The agreement must stand the test of time and not be open to reversal. There must be equality. The treaty must be negotiated, not litigated.

As Mr. Henderson alluded to, we're spending an awful lot of money that could be better serving British Columbians on a multitude of levels — health care, education, infrastructure — that would benefit the aboriginals and the non-aboriginals.

Fairness in distribution. A process is needed to ensure each aboriginal receives the benefit of the treaty regardless of gender or family affiliation, and we believe that the Indian Act must be dissolved.

Level of government. Recognizing that there are cultural differences, aboriginal governments should have the same powers as municipal governments — no more, no less.

Land. Neither private nor municipally owned land should be open to negotiations. As Mr. Henderson alluded to, he has owned his property for over 40 years. This is a concern to some people who have long-term leases in that particular industry and/or farms, etc.

We have begun the process of rebuilding our relationship with our aboriginal neighbours. What we need now is a timely conclusion. Mutually benefiting partnerships need to be struck in order to help heal the years of indifference and build a stronger future together.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Sharon. Perhaps I might ask you a question. There are many I could ask you, but I'll limit it to one. On the question of the involvement of private land, looking at it from your perspective as a mayor, I can relate to that. I would imagine the concern of the municipal level of government is the potential loss of tax revenue. However, if those lands were on the table on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis and if that land remained under the jurisdiction of the municipality — as is the case now, however owned by a first nation, either individually or collectively through the band — would that be a situation that is acceptable?

S. Hartwell: Are you speaking about individual tracts of land? There were some cases where we were sort of led to believe that the municipalities would be dissolved.

S. Hartwell: You're not going that far. Okay. Well, that's where we were headed with this. If you're talking about buying and selling land, I can't see a problem with that.

J. Les (Chair): Right, but what you're anticipating is something that goes well beyond that.

B. Belsey: Thank you, Sharon, for your presentation. If there were a choice to be made between a settlement that included land and resources or cash, which one would you prefer to see?

B. Belsey: If there were a choice to be made for first nations between land and resources or cash, which one would you prefer to see?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Sharon, for your perspective. I think that as the Chair indicated, it is in fact helpful and will be helpful when we get down to preparing our submissions beyond the public hearings. You make repeated references, Sharon, to certainty and finality throughout your submission. Presumably, then, you and the folks you represent within Telkwa would like to see some reference made to both certainty and finality within the referendum. Is that accurate?

S. Hartwell: I think we've been down this road for so long, and I think we can see the benefit of finding a solution to the treaty process for the very obvious reasons. We're resource-based in the north. We can't expand on any ecotourism or any kind of other activity until these issues are brought to rest. We're virtually at a standstill. If the province is going to grow and expand for the benefit of all of us, we need to have these things finalized. There needs to be some certainty so that when people invest in the province, they are going to be guaranteed that they can be here for five or ten or 20 years and not that somebody's going to come up and say: "Well, things have changed. We're going to renegotiate this."

There's no certainty for people wanting to invest if there's not some finality. I believe both sides want to see finality. For us, I don't want to put it strictly to a money issue, but the money that we could save by not litigating and by working together to solve these treaties is huge money for the province that could benefit all of us, which we desperately need. I mean, that was a clear indication from the conference. We need money to have this province grow, and we can't get it if we're going to be spending it fighting against one another. We have to get this settled.

V. Anderson: You indicated that part of the difficulty of the aboriginal people has been that they have been wards of the state, in effect. That's the term you use. The implication I gather from that is because of that, if you take an aboriginal community and another community right beside it at the present time, the asset base of those would be quite different.

V. Anderson: Are you saying that, therefore, one of the considerations must be that if these two areas were to operate as comparable municipalities, the one with the lower asset base needs to be upgraded, if you like, and needs an initial input in order to bring them into equality with the other and from then on they would be treated the same?

S. Hartwell: I think that's true, Mr. Anderson, but also our concern is for the people living on those lands. They aren't being treated fairly now. They need to be brought up to speed with the rest of them. They need the money to be able to function in the same society that we are. In some cases we're seeing that that's not happening.

M. Hunter: Thank you for your presentation. It's crisp and clear. I do have one question to follow up on the last point, fairness in distribution. A number of witnesses we've heard from already have alluded to the point you're making, that there are different treatments of aboriginal people in different places — gender, family affiliation. Do you have any advice for us in terms of our job, to frame questions that might help us get into that subject without being unnecessarily and unkindly intrusive?

We would like to see a process in place that would guarantee an even distribution of the funds and/or assets at treaty negotiation when it's going to be settled. In some cases, as you've said, it's not being done on an equitable basis. In some cases we've heard, too, that the men are treated differently than the women, which is obviously a concern. I don't know how you would pose the question to find out how you could distribute those funds on an equal basis so that everyone gets the share they're entitled to based on where they live. It shouldn't make a difference. Whether they're male or female, young or old, they should have the same distribution of assets, cash and/or land, whatever that's going to be determined as.

D. MacKay: Sharon, I was going to ask the same question. Mike beat me to it. I'm just going to explore that a tiny bit more and ask you: for the distribution of any asset or anything that comes from the treaty, can you see the aboriginal people that are actually at the table perhaps having a secret ballot amongst themselves to decide whether they want whatever flows from a treaty to go to the individuals or to the band collectively? Is that an avenue of distribution? We

shouldn't be deciding. Let the natives themselves decide whether it goes to them as individuals or to the band collectively.

S. Hartwell: I don't have a problem with that, Dennis. I guess my concern is: how are you going to be sure that they're still going to be distributed on an even basis? Is there going to be an impartial party there to make sure, once that decision has been made, that everybody's going to get the share or the piece that they're entitled to? That would be our concern. We just want to see a process in place that entitles everybody to what's coming to them and not going into a pot. Some of them are working quite well, and some of them are not. I'm not sure whether it should be their decision. In some cases that has worked; in some cases it hasn't. I don't know how you're going to come up with an impartial party to be able to determine that. If the natives want to make a choice of whether it's going to the band or going to…. Maybe that should be an individual choice in certain areas. Maybe some places where it works good, leave it like that. In other cases you might have to have an impartial party do that.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, thank you very much, Your Worship, for coming this morning and sharing your thoughts with us.

R. McLaren: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name is Richard McLaren, and I'm from Kitimat. I am here as a concerned individual, and I don't represent any organized group.

As far as I'm concerned, the choice we have in the treaty process is that we either approach it with a vision of what kind of province we want to live in or we will be forced by expediency to settle for what will appease or appear to settle the problem.

Appeasement did not work for the Romans when they paid the barbarians on their frontiers to go away over 1,600 years ago. Appeasement did not work for Britain and France when they tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, and appeasement has not worked in B.C. in the fractious approach various provincial governments have taken towards land claims over the last 20 years. Appeasement only results in ever-increasing demands, and finally, you have to stand on principle. Far better to stand on principle first.

I remember being in this very hotel — in fact, it was this very room — here in Smithers 20 years ago at a forum on Indian land claims. When I raised the question of what happens to non-natives if land claims were accepted, I was told that I was fearmongering, because land claims did not involve land that was already alienated from the Crown to third parties. They were only concerned for a share of the unalienated Crown land. Since that time we have had native statements such as, "We own this land lock, stock and barrel," and we have native claims to 110 percent of the province's land mass. So much for just a share of the unalienated Crown land. No wonder non-natives in this area feel alienated and are apprehensive about the future. They feel that they have not been adequately represented by either the provincial or federal government.

Canada has become a multiracial, multicultural society where newcomers are welcome. People believe that when they come, they are accorded the same rights as people who have been here for generations, thanks to the Charter of Rights. I think the vast majority of people in Canada accept this vision of our country, and it is one which I think must be reflected in any treaty for it to have broad public acceptance. Any treaty which gives special rights based on race goes against this vision of Canada, and it will not have broad public acceptance. It will eventually lead to social unrest.

A lot of people mistakenly confuse native rights with human rights. Human rights are those rights which everyone in the country agrees to give to everyone else. If one group has rights which only apply to them and do not apply to people outside their group, then these are special rights, not human rights. Any group which believes that its special rights are supreme over everyone else's human rights is supremacist in its thinking. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference in principle between white supremacists in apartheid South Africa and native supremacists in Canada. Both believe that their group's special rights are supreme over everyone else's human rights. Both concepts are racist in nature, and I find both equally offensive.

This concept of supremacy or a hierarchy of group rights, where some are supreme over others, was the essence of the Charlottetown accord constitutional amendment proposal of 1992. Pierre Trudeau saw this at once and spoke out against the accord because of this. In the referendum campaign many ordinary people also saw this and voted against the accord for the same reason. In this federal riding of Skeena 73 percent of the voters voted against the accord. This shows you how much people here dislike supremacist ideas.

My concern is that those very ideas which were rejected by the people in the Charlottetown accord referendum are going to be put into the constitution piece by piece through treaties, without the benefit of a referendum to gain public acceptance. A country cannot claim to have racial equality and have special rights for any racial group. Such an absurdity is what George Orwell wrote about in Animal Farm, when the animals' final slogan becomes: "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

I know you will have many submissions from the chattering lobby groups. I do not represent any organized group, but if you take the time and actually talk to people on the street and in the coffee shops, I think you will find that what I have said this morning is what the silent majority thinks. People want racial equality. We have a Charter of Rights, and they want the Charter of Rights to be supreme. The silent majority is silent because most are too afraid to get up here and say what they think. They are intimidated by the organized na-

tive groups and their supporters, who routinely denounce anyone who disagrees with them as racists or rednecks. This is very unfortunate as it stifles debate. I ask how a desire for racial equality can be racist.

This offensive name-calling must stop. We have to talk about principles. We may disagree on what those principles may be, but at least we should be able to talk about them. I think the referendum should give people an honest choice. Do they want a multicultural, multiracial society where newcomers are welcome and who, when they come, have the same rights as people who've been here for generations, or do they want Animal Farm, where all people are supposed to be equal but where some are more equal than others? I think people should be asked which kind of country they want their children to live in.

B. Lekstrom: Thanks for your presentation, Richard. A question following your presentation about what has to be negotiated. I believe all British Columbians realize that this tour we're doing is not about whether we should or shouldn't negotiate treaties. It's based on what principles British Columbians would like us to put forward.

B. Lekstrom: Would you have a view on the issue of self-government and the rights? If so, what tack should that take? I note that the previous speaker, Sharon, talked about equality as far as local governments being given to local bands, for instance.

R. McLaren: I think she presented it very well in that people, most of all, look at municipal-style governments. If land claims are going to be settled…. A previous question was: what about cash? Yes, cash is very non-discriminatory. It doesn't discriminate against anybody; it flows wherever it goes. It could be land, but if it is land, then the laws of Canada should apply to whatever land is given as part of a settlement. The laws of British Columbia should apply to that land, and the Charter of Rights should apply to that land. In other words, it would be the same as any municipality in Canada.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Richard. Any further questions? Thank you for coming. We appreciate that very much.

K. Landrock: My name is Ken Landrock. I'm not really representing anybody in particular, just ordinary citizens. Some of what I'm going to say has probably been said here before. I just jotted down a few notes when I heard you guys were coming to town.

I'll start off with self-government. Some of it has already been said. Exactly the same as municipal or regional districts, all the jurisdictions at the end of the day must fall under provincial and federal regulations, the same way that non-native communities are currently governed. Whatever legal things are attached to that, that's the way it's got to be at the end of the day.

When it comes to land, only property that is currently reserve land and is occupied should be transferred to fee simple, to the various people that own it or are living on it now, so that when it's all said and done, there are people living in villages, towns and cities the same way as everybody else in Canada. Any Crown lands that are currently under claim should only be conveyed into the system in the same way that you would expand a current town or municipality of any kind. As far as giving out hundreds of thousands of acres of land because they were traditionally used here and there, it's just a non-starter amongst most people that I speak to. Again, somebody referred to the urban-rural split earlier. Quite often in the Nisga'a negotiations, when you hear about it on the news, you hear about a remote corner of northwest British Columbia where nobody lives. Well, even if nobody did live there, it's still Canadian land, Crown land, and I don't think any Canadian is giving Canadian governments the right to just give it away to somebody else.

When it comes to compensation, it should be cash to individuals. It could be given in a lump sum or annually or semi-annually, whatever works best, depending obviously on the amounts of cash involved. The only moneys that should go to bands should be ones that are needed for transition or upgrading of infrastructures, and the funds should be accounted for with the proper methods. That would be if government gave money to the town of Smithers or wherever. Money has to be accounted for.

Finality is a big one. At the end of the day all the treaties must be final in the sense that no more claims of any kind can be brought forward at any time or revisited. The only things that should be subject to revisiting are if something turns out to continue to segregate people according to their races and where it either denies or exceeds the rights, responsibilities, privileges of any of the people involved. Then a guy could relook at the treaty and say: "This isn't correct." I think to embark in the twenty-first century on a treaty-making process which entrenches the differences between people and conveys certain rights to people that other people won't have, basically according to their race or the fact that a particular group was here longer than the last group, just doesn't make sense. Canada has been an opponent of racial segregation around the world, and then in our own country we embark on negotiations with people that often want to have a medieval style of government. I just don't understand that.

As for the question, that's how you would have to formulate the question; for example, "Should land be on the table?" in terms of: "Yes, we'll convey several hundred thousand acres to a particular band."

It's the same with resources. I think the only way is for the various treaty claimants to have input into the resources within their given areas, the same as the rest of us. I don't think they should have special input or any more power to veto a process.

People talk about a huge, uninhabited tract of northern British Columbia, or wherever it may be. Well, there are mining, forestry and tourism resources there that various people have a stake in. There's no reason why local people in general, whether they're natives or non-natives, shouldn't have an equal say at any table to decide how to best utilize those resources or to leave them alone entirely.

I've looked at the Nisga'a model quite extensively, and it's completely wrong in my view. The whole thing is based on race. I recently spoke to an Indian that I know quite well from Moricetown, who was telling me that there are areas, within what's now Nisga'a territory, where they've been fishing and hunting for years, and they're getting kicked off simply because this is Nisga'a territory and they have no rights there. That's no way to have the landscape at the end of the day. That's all I've got to say.

D. MacKay: Obviously, there are going to be questions. How many questions are we going to be able to handle on a referendum when we do come up with the questions? Are we going to have pages and pages of questions? Are we going to do a questionnaire mailout? How do you see that happening? Would you like to be able to answer a bunch of questions as opposed to maybe one or two?

K. Landrock: It probably should be around five questions, simply because you're dealing with deciding the parameters of how the negotiations are supposed to continue. There's the question of land. Should there be land on the table? Should the model be like the Nisga'a model, or should it be a municipal-style model? I think you can condense the issues into those to give you the basic parameters to work around. If you try to make ten or 20 questions, it'll just confuse them.

G. Trumper: I think I heard you say that reserve land should be given to individuals as fee simple?

G. Trumper: So there should be no more reserves? Is that what you're saying?

K. Landrock: There could still be reserve lands in the same way a town or a municipality holds certain lands that they own to develop for infrastructure, schools, or further lot development as people move in, in that same scenario. That's where Crown lands should also be made available to expand the reserve if necessary, but the people that own or live on lots should own their own homes and their own lots. It should be governed accordingly. The band shouldn't be able to say: "Okay, we're going to make this lot available for you, but we're not going to make this lot over here available to you." It should be the case that if you want to buy a lot, you buy a lot.

As far as that urban-rural split, take, for example, the land that's being claimed by the Burrard band, I believe — I could be wrong there — for Stanley Park. I don't think that most of the people on the lower mainland would say: "Yeah, okay, you guys can own it. You can log it, hunt the game on it and do whatever you want with it." We can say: "That's just a little corner of the lower mainland. It's all paved over anyway. Why should we care?" That seems to be the attitude that we get from urban people.

The other thing is that there always seems to be this thing in the media that native people are close to the land and non-native people aren't. Well, the land is just as important to us non-native people as it is to the native people.

It's also important to realize that you don't get your groceries and your beef from Safeway. It's produced somewhere on a farm. For example, even if you say there's no fee simple lands on the table, most farmers around here have grazing leases and things that are attached to the Crown. If that were suddenly taken away or even threatened by some other third order of government, that's not going to lead to any kind of stability. You could no longer effectively farm.

B. Lekstrom: Just a question going back to the issue of compensation. When you touched on that and the possibility of individuals receiving that cash payment, you went on as well to talk about the money that could go to the band per se. Would you see that as being the cash settlement or being tied — I think what I heard you say was being tied — to possible infrastructure upgrades and so on, similar to what municipalities face now with our sharing agreement?

K. Landrock: That's correct. I think it's also important to realize that a lot of the smaller villages that are non-native, compared to the native counterparts…. The native villages have a lot better infrastructures, such as sewer and water systems, than non-native villages of similar sizes simply because the federal government — because of the Indian Act or whatever; I'm not sure of all the reasons why — will provide those services. All you have to do is go down the road to…. Well, look at the villages of Moricetown, Kitwanga, places like that. They've got good water and sewer systems, which is great, but if you look at the non-native part of Kitwanga, for example, everybody's got their own well and septic system. There's not enough money within

the village to be able to put in those types of infrastructures. I think in cases where there's a requirement to bring a village up to a certain level, I don't have a problem with bringing it up to par, but as far as turning over huge sums of money, or any moneys to bands…. It's already been shown that a lot of the money just disappears.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Ken, for coming this morning. We appreciate your input.

M. Dalen: Good morning. I want to thank you for inviting me to make this presentation to the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs. I would also like to thank the native women's care and advocacy group from the Squamish nation and members of that band for their high recommendation for me to be here.

We hear and see the word "matrilineal" based on our tracing descent on maternal line in land claims, corporate actions and negotiations. Still, the women are almost bullied and intimidated into keeping quiet, to put it mildly. Hereditary chiefs descend from women who acquire their names from their mothers' lineage. This is the hereditary chief system. Then you have the elected chiefs and councillors on reserve, the on-reserve system, under DIAND policies. So we live under two systems. We also live under the federal and provincial government laws of Canada, which most find suits them just fine — and the freedom that is there for all Canadian citizens. I strongly recommend that this committee see and hear all of the grass-roots aboriginal people who do not have a voice in the two systems they now live under.

Today we sit here and are supposed to focus on the wording for the B.C. treaty referendum while treaty talks and negotiations with first nations native leaders are ongoing with about 53 more tribal councils and bands. Why do we need treaties in the twenty-first century? Governments and first nations native leaders want treaties. This is supposed to bring certainty and create agreements and settlements so governments of Canada will know where the aboriginal people stand.

Some of us are still struggling to gain recognition after Bill C-31 was passed, and the people are called by their chiefs and councillors Bill C-31s. Some are welcomed back; some are still left out. Then another bill was passed, called Bill C-49, and the people who inherited lands, both on and off reserve, are wrestling with this bill. This is where you have the women's advocacy groups forming and rising up to be heard. More people from the grass-roots level will rise up to be heard.

While the province of British Columbia is focusing on the B.C. treaty referendum, I would ask the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs to review the document on Bill C-49, an act of the framework agreement on first nations land management. I say this because the province is going to negotiate lands and resources. Indian people across Canada are a big industry for governments — and first nations native leaders and negotiators and their associates. They have big salaries given to them by governments to negotiate, and land claims and negotiations go on and on, with no end in sight.

Band members are used on a per-capita basis and hereditary chiefs' names. First nations native leaders and their type of government bureaucracy that some of us find ourselves in, and the red tape that goes with it, are worse than with the old system of Indian agents. No, the native leaders are not frustrated that negotiations are not settled, not with their big salaries we get to see from time to time on paper.

Treaty agreement will not bring freedom to aboriginal people. If you are not living on reserve when the treaty is implemented, you will be left out forever. Even though when it comes to feasts that are held 100 percent of the time on reserve, off-reserve people have to go to help their chiefs with the feasts. This is the hereditary chief system. Off-reserve people have to find or earn their own money for these feasts. We use our own time and money.

Land claim issues and treaties are what happened to people 100 or 114 years ago, or 130 years ago for some — or since time immemorial. Treaties implemented by government should be final settlements, not agreements.

Those of us who have never lived on reserve but have connections to the reserve system know what our grandparents and parents went through with missionaries and Indian agents. I'll focus on my own family's history. My grandparents helped a missionary build a village on an ancient ancestral village site. They cleared the land by hand, and their first homes were built of logs. The first church was built of logs. This village was established and recognized by the provincial government and Indian agents. Our grandparents paid a lease on their lands. On this issue alone Indian Affairs is today in total denial on our concerns and issues important to our families. Our questions put to them fall on deaf ears.

In 1917 my father and his brothers bought land after their grandparents leased lands and built their own homes in the same way as the settlers and missionaries, on acreage they owned and paid taxes on. The people's economy was based on logging, trapping and working on the CN Rail and highways. Some people went to work at the fish canneries each fishing season. We didn't see any money from Indian Affairs.

We find in our research how much Indian Affairs kept tabs on us. My father owned traplines and paid his licence fees and gun permits to the government. These traplines are our inheritance, as we found he had put all of his children's names on the list and trapline documents. Way back then, he was looking towards our future. Our research was done on our own time and money. There are no jobs for people today, but land claims negotiations and treaty talks continue.

There should be money allotted for the taxpayers that are recognized as third party, meaning the non-

native population. There should be representatives chosen by the third party to sit at these negotiation tables to make sure their interests are not negotiated away. They live in uncertainty today.

Every five years we receive a census record form. This is an avenue government should look at to reach individual aboriginal people who wish to opt out of the bands' collective system and tribal councils and have their individual settlements and interests met, so they can get on with their lives.

I find the first nations governance consultation package difficult to answer. I've got it here. The questions in it are focused on reserve issues. Questions posed in the referendum should be focused on final settlements. If settlements are not reached in a certain number of years, meaning soon, a cap should be put on these negotiations to have them end, and individual settlements for those who wish to have their share of lands and money from Indian Affairs should be final. Lands inherited should be carefully considered by governments for those claiming inheritance. If reserves must stay in existence, then take a look at a municipal style of governance.

I've brought some newspapers and newspaper clippings to present to the select standing committee to consider. What is in the news today is most disturbing. The people who regained their status under Bill C-31 and are still being treated by the bands is most appalling. This should not be happening in this day and age.

This committee must look at the circumstances of people who have concerns on issues, such as the one in the Province newspaper, and make decisions based on presentations brought to the select standing committee. I will attach a submission written by my son, Lyle, dated November 4, 1995. I hope you will find it interesting, as it has some concrete suggestions and his observations.

In closing, we all have to look forward with optimism for positive changes for the future and equality for all aboriginal people.

I've also included one of the recent documents. It mentions, in 1987, the whole scheme under the Indian Advancement Act. I'm wondering what that means and where you can acquire that document to have a look at it.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary. Are there questions from members of the committee?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Mary, for a very interesting presentation. There is much that you said here today that we haven't heard before, although we are very early on in the public hearings.

Mary, I know you repeatedly expressed concerns with respect to off-reserve first nations. Have you given any thought to how it is that those concerns might be addressed in terms of a question that could be or should be included in a referendum?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Any thought, Mary, to a question in a referendum that could include your concerns — and others' concerns, I expect — with respect to off-reserve first nations?

M. Dalen: We used to think about that a lot, but we were wondering how to deal with it, because we're not allowed to speak most of the time.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): It's great that you have spoken here today, and it's certainly something that we will think about as we view these submissions.

G. Trumper: Thank you very much for your presentation. Could I ask you, in your report on page 3, the third party that you're referring to? Is that non-reserve natives?

M. Dalen: Yes. Well, they need money, too, to come and express their concerns. They have expressed them to me. I get letters from people caught up in the Nisga'a deal.

G. Trumper: Is there a group or an association up here of non-reserve aboriginal people?

M. Dalen: In my own village we belong to the Meanskinisht Village Historical Association that deals with claims and inheritances. We are accountable to the provincial government.

D. MacKay: Mary, for the past ten years that I've known of, you've been actively pursuing the same agenda that you've brought to us today. I admire you, and I respect the time and effort that it takes from you to attend these hearings. You've driven down from Cedarvale today at your own expense to make a representation to us. I know you've been to Ottawa; you've been in front of the Senate on Nisga'a. I just admire your tenacity for continuing to reach out and get the message across. I certainly have listened with great interest to what you've told us today. We'll give a lot of weight to what you've said to us.

Just to follow up on one of the things you said in your presentation to us. You said that you support the time frame to bring an end to the treaty process. In other words, you support putting an end date to this

process. What do you consider to be a reasonable time frame to bring an end to this?

M. Dalen: Well, it's been going on in our area since 1977. The first court case was thrown out by Judge McEachern, then the appeal. During those times we were not able to do anything. We're caught up in these land claims, and we can't move forward. We're afraid to do anything because we're in the middle of a land claim. From '77 to today is an awful long time. Now we're negotiating. How long are they going to negotiate the same things over and over again?

D. Chutter: Thanks for your presentation, Mary. You mentioned inheritance lands. Could you discuss that a little further and maybe relate it to how that might be considered in questions in a referendum?

M. Dalen: In my case, my grandfather leased five acres of land. We're able to buy land today. Even on-reserve Indian people can buy land off-reserve today. My grandfather leased the land. It was handed down from him to his son and then to my father, to my brother, to my sister and to me. Some of the lands that we were supposed to inherit are caught up on the reserves. Our great-great-uncles and aunts, who at that time were hereditary chiefs, lived under the hereditary chief system until the Indian agents came along and changed the way it…. We had to change.

Thank you very much, Mary, on behalf of the committee, for coming to our meeting today and sharing with us your points of view. We very much appreciate your being here.

M. Dalen: Before I leave, I'd like to mention this Nisga'a mushroom thing. I was on the Seven Sisters planning initiatives. In our planning initiatives we've set aside two little mushroom patches so we could go mushroom picking in a protected area, in a park. I'm told by buyers in the Kitwanga area that people won't go to the Nisga'a lands, because they have to pay $250 to go pick mushrooms there. Buyers quite often pay a fee of over $500 a month. We have had an influx of mushroom-pickers in our village from all over the place. It's loaded.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much. Again, as I said earlier, we very much appreciate the effort you made to be here today.

The next presenter this morning is Janet Wilson, from the district of New Hazelton.

J. Wilson: I'm presenting this letter on behalf of the mayor of the district of New Hazelton, Mayor Pieter Weeber, who sends his regrets that he can't be here today. I would like to thank you for the opportunity.

The district of New Hazelton supports the treaty negotiation process. We recognize that we have unfinished business with our first nations, and until there are settlements, there will be uncertainty and reluctance to invest in lands and resources.

We feel that the settlements should include these following points. There should be allocation of land and/or resources to native groups. These lands will become fee simple, belonging to these groups. Cash settlements should be borne by all Canadians. Finality in agreement that lands and resources outside the fee simple areas will be public property and be administered by the province. We do not wish to see extensive consultation processes with native groups on public lands as this would continue to cause uncertainty and a hindrance to use and develop profits by the investment community and local non-native residents. Some phased-in process, similar to the Nisga'a agreement, where in an excellent time in the future we all become Canadians without special privileges. Exceptions to this might be around the fish and wildlife resources and perhaps allocations for traditional and ceremonial use. Self-government should be in the form of municipal-type governing systems with accountability to the province. As in all communities in land claim areas there is a wide range of opinions about the treaty-settlement process. We cannot think of a single question that could be answered just with yes or no that would cover the full spectrum of opinions. It should be kept in mind that many members of the public do not have the background or the knowledge of the issues to judge the process.

We wish you wisdom and discretion in introducing these sensitive issues in a referendum environment. Thank you.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Janet. Any questions from members of the committee?

D. MacKay: Janet, I'm sorry. I didn't quite hear what you said when you said there should be no consultation on public lands? Is that what you said? It was in the very first part of your presentation, and I don't have a copy of it.

J. Wilson: What you were referring to is that we recognize that we have unfinished business.

D. MacKay: Yes. Then you went on to say something about consultation on public lands.

J. Wilson: "Finality in agreement that lands and resources outside the fee simple areas…." Is that the part you're referring to? Yes, we do not wish to see an extensive consultation process. I think, perhaps as

Mary has said, it's gone on for a very long time. We would like to see finality.

D. MacKay: In other words, what you're opposed to is consultation ad nauseam.

D. MacKay: I'm still confused. "We do not wish to see an extensive consultation process with native groups on public lands." Are you saying that public lands, Crown land, should not be on the table — period?

J. Les (Chair): Any further questions of Janet? Seeing none, I'd like to thank you very much. Give our regards to the mayor.

The next presenter is Cor van der Meulen, who is with the B.C. Agriculture Council.

C. van der Meulen: Good morning. I do represent the B.C. Agriculture Council, TNAC, but I have not had any direction from them in regard to this meeting. These are some of my own comments. I read the last report from the B.C. Treaty Commission. Many of the things that I actually thought about are in that report. I think it gives a fairly good outline of the direction, perhaps, that we should go in as far as treaties are concerned.

Referendum or no referendum, I think we have gone too far down the road of treaty negotiations to turn back or to fundamentally change the direction. I believe that most people of B.C. would agree that we should have a fair and honourable settlement of treaty issues with the aboriginal people of this province that would take into account the needs and values of the aboriginal community as well as the needs and values of the non-aboriginal community. In order to accomplish this, negotiations in good faith on the part of all parties is absolutely necessary. To be successful there has to be a commitment to open and transparent negotiations so that there is no appearance of hidden agendas.

One major point that we have gone over and over again at TNAC is certainty language. As the aboriginal community refuses to accept cede, release and surrender, another way of achieving the goal of certainty has to be explored. I think the model that is implemented in the Nisga'a agreement should be acceptable to all parties if no better method is thought of. Certainty has to be a major goal of treaty-making so that we will all know where we stand.

Lands and resources and cash are a major component of the treaties. There has to be an acceleration of negotiations on these issues so that the aboriginal community does not see the value of these fade over time. This could be accomplished through more vigorous negotiations of treaty-related measures or interim measures. Here I have to say that when we first started, treaty-related measures weren't even thought of, and interim measures was a dirty word. As we have gone on in this process, I think I'm beginning to realize that we have to look at these issues, because the values that are out there now, as far as forestry and other values are concerned, certainly aren't diminished over the years as different companies log lands and so on.

Also, when we talk about lands, resources and cash, this brings compensation for third parties into the picture. I really believe that neither the B.C. government nor the federal government has any clear policy as far as compensation for third parties is concerned. As we go into this, as soon as you start taking land resources from one sector and giving it to another sector, compensation comes in.

Negotiations on self-government are being set aside, but if jurisdictional matters arising out of agreements on land and resources are to be resolved, some issues of governing have to be looked at. The government has recognized that aboriginal rights and title exist but cannot agree with the aboriginals as to the scope and the parameters of those rights. I think a treaty that exhaustively sets out these rights is the way to go. Again, then we will all know where we're at. To continually go to the courts for answers creates a win-lose mentality, but if agreement can be reached through negotiations, acceptance by all parties is more likely.

One thing that has been looked at to accelerate the treaty-making process is a consolidation of issues that are common to all bands. This would eliminate the need to negotiate these issues many times over. In order to accomplish this, there would have to be a main table where all bands in treaty negotiations would be represented. Perhaps this would be too cumbersome, but I am sure that this could be done in some manner.

I would like to keep this short, so I will finish by reminding everyone that there is another community out there besides the aboriginal community. These people are sometimes referred to as third parties. There is a lot of distrust in this community of people, because they are not sure that the governments of the day will not leave them high and dry if they do not have a legally compensable claim due to loss arising from a treaty settlement. There could be no acceptance or finality of treaties if all people are not treated fairly.

M. Hunter: Good morning, Cor. It's nice to see my old TNAC colleague. I just wanted to ask you about TRMs and interim measures. You observed, I think correctly, that these were dirty words not so long ago. I think you're recommending that we use TRMs and interim measures more than has been the case. In terms of looking at a referendum question — aside from the complexities of the concepts, which you and I know something about, having sat around TNAC — do you see this, in my words, not yours, gradual or incremental approach to treaty negotiations as being something we should be thinking about asking?

I guess a subsidiary question and a bit of a concern I have is that it seems to me these approaches tend to

move the upfront costs to British Columbia away from Canada. I'd just like your observations on that. As Mary testified, we need to have an end point. Others have made comments like you. Treaty-related measures, the gradual approach, is somewhere to go. I'm just concerned about technical issues, technical understanding and, again, British Columbia paying some upfront costs that I'm wondering if we should be paying. I'd appreciate your thoughts on that.

C. van der Meulen: I realize that with the agreement made with Canada, B.C. would be on the hook, so to speak, for initial costs if we go to the treaty-related measure or interim measure route. I still think we have to go there. Whether or not we can renegotiate with Canada some of the decisions that were made earlier, before we had thought of accelerating this route on interim measures — I'm not sure whether Canada would be willing to go that route — I think it would be right for them to bear some of the initial cost that is derived from that.

G. Trumper: Thank you for your presentation. Having also sat through TNAC for some time, I have some knowledge on the interim agreements. I'm not sure — and my question was similar to Mike Hunter's question — that I heard you on the answers to whether or not interim agreements were the way to go. Maybe I missed that. Do you have a view on that?

C. van der Meulen: I think it is the way to go. Perhaps one example — although I'm not totally familiar with it — is some years ago, perhaps a couple of years ago, the Kitwancool band was looking at some timber across the valley from the village, which was, according to them, a parcel they would be definitely interested in having — or, at least, a parcel they thought they would include in their treaty settlement land when the time came. This particular parcel or cutblock was awarded to another company, and they started cutting it. Of course, if I were in their shoes, I would be very upset. This is something that was so near to the village that almost any thinking person would say yes, that would be part of treaty settlement land. I think that in those cases, these things have to be considered.

V. Anderson: I appreciated your presentation. When you're looking at questions that might be asked on principle, one that you have suggested here is that common issues might be brought together and dealt with, with all bands at one time. What I'm wondering is if that's the direction in which a question might go, would you favour common issues being dealt with separately? If so, what would be an example of some of those common issues? People would naturally want to know what they might be if we moved in that direction. Would you suggest that a question might go out that way?

C. van der Meulen: I think one particular aspect of treaty negotiations, which is already being looked at as putting together a common issue, would be the fiscal relations. Taxation is a matter that should be common to all treaties, where one band would have one particular form of taxation, perhaps a percentage or whatever you want, and another band have something totally different, like what we see when we do this one by one by one. We see one band perhaps getting a certain benefit and then another band that is still in negotiations saying: "If they got that, we can do better." I think we have to get away from that. The way to do it is to have those types of common issues negotiated at one table. Then, perhaps, there can be some tweaking for individual or particular areas. Still, one single, accepted agreement could cover many, many bands.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Not so much a question of you as a comment, I guess. On behalf of this committee I attended an aboriginal conference last week in Vancouver. One of the speakers was Miles Richardson. I'm quite sure you're familiar with who he is and his involvement within the B.C. Treaty Commission. He referred, as well, to a consolidation of issues, so it's interesting to hear you today make reference to that. Following along, I guess, on the question that Val Anderson asked with respect to how that might fit in a referendum, I think that's something we certainly need to put our minds to. Again, it's very interesting to hear that thought put forward by you. Thank you for doing that.

D. Chutter: In the second paragraph of your notes here, you refer to certainty and how it's dealt with in the Nisga'a agreement, as opposed to the language of cede, release and surrender. Could you just briefly explain how the Nisga'a treaty deals with that?

C. van der Meulen: I think I go into that a little bit further, where the Nisga'a agreement, if I understand it correctly — and I certainly haven't read the whole thing — exhaustively spells out the treaty rights. These treaty rights, the way I understand them, take the place of what were originally aboriginal rights. There is some wording in there that says that any rights that are not spelled out in treaty may still be there, but they will not be exercised. Does that make sense?

J. Les (Chair): Any further questions of Cor? Thank you very much for coming this morning.

B. Munroe: Good morning. Bill Munroe is my name. I can tell by my name tag here, so I'm really glad that I've got it on this side as well for you guys.

I'd like to thank all of you people on the committee for spending time to come up north and listen to some of the concerns and views of northern people, first nations and the rest of B.C. citizens including off-reserve native people. I think it's a shame that we have to segregate between the different types of people. We should all be B.C. citizens, and we should all be Canadian citizens. That's very important. That means equal-

I feel the treaty negotiation process that has gone on today is totally amiss. The process is being handled by lawyers, not by the people that it affects — real people. That's an important part that I think is being overlooked.

I think that you as government must step in and ensure that the treaty negotiation process is being carried out in a fair and equitable manner to all people of B.C. — not to first nations, not to the rest of B.C. nations and not to the people who are living off the reserve that have taken the step forward. It's got to be good for everybody. It can't just be good for a particular interest group. Because we are a multicultural nation, there are certainly other people that live within B.C. that have their own heritage within their own communities and still live within the principles and ways that B.C. has through its municipal systems.

I also forgot to mention that this is Bill Munroe. I'm not talking for any particular group here.

I think a fair and equitable manner is needed, like I say, for all the peoples of our great province. I think you as government must make some good decisions and possibly some not-so-very-good decisions. It should be done very soon so that our province can proceed in a positive business manner. I think there are many business opportunities out there now that we are missing out on because there is this uncertainty. I think it's a process that has to be done by your government, and it should be done very soon.

I think the equality of all people in B.C., the land issues, the money issues…. Self-government should be the same as the government is going through today, as a charter. I'm sure you're aware of that; that is being presented to the municipalities. I think all governments have to be on an equal basis. I don't think you can have special interest groups running different levels of government. They shouldn't be segregated.

I think the referendum that is to be addressed should be in a clearly defined way and not muddled, like many referenda that we've seen. Five to six questions would not be out of context, and I think that is an important issue: not to have too many, but don't be scared to ask for more than one.

I think it's really good to see an open government come back to B.C., one that's letting you people come out and spend the time with us regular people.

J. Les (Chair): Just to clarify. I thought we were all kind of regular. [Laughter.]

V. Anderson: Thank you very much, Bill. Earlier, in another presentation, the comment was made — and I may not get it exactly — that even more important than land and money to the aboriginal people was their heritage. There was distinctiveness.

You raised this: in a multicultural society everyone has a heritage. One of the realities here that we need to face — and why I'm asking — one that has not necessarily been considered in compensation or support, is that part of the history of aboriginal people in Canada is that they were forbidden to express their heritage. They were forbidden to express their language. They were forbidden to do many of the customs that they had been used to. That identity had been taken away from them, and now they're trying to recover it. My question is: can that recovery, which I think we all agree should take place, happen equally or better when you are self-contained within a nation unit of your own or when you are part of the broader multicultural heritage?

B. Munroe: Because we are a multicultural nation — and that's a positive sign — I think we all have to have the same rights and privileges. I don't think you can distinguish between, say, the time element, how long you've been in Canada, or anything like that. That should have nothing to do with it. There are many other cultures within cities, within major centres and non-major centres that support their own and are more than willing to allow other people to get involved if that's what their interests are. First nations issues are…. There have been some injustices out there. I don't think there's any question. We all know that. But I don't know that you can go back in time. They have to be the same as everyone else. We all have to try and work within the realm of what is law for whatever people are in B.C. or in Canada.

D. MacKay: This is a lot easier than the last one, Bill. You suggested perhaps five or six questions on the referendum. We're looking for some suggestions for questions. Obviously, that's the reason for the panel. Do you go to yes or no answers on them? Do you go: "Do you support it or don't you support it? Are you uncertain?" How do you put these questions? How do you see that happening? Any thoughts on that?

B. Munroe: That's an easy question you say? If I had the answers, I'd be sitting there and I wouldn't be here. Is that not true? [Laughter.]

I think that with any referendum you have to have yes or no answers. I don't think you can have a blurb that people have to write out. The wording of the questions should definitely not be ambiguous. We've seen that in another province's referendum. There were some very ambiguous words put forward. And there may be again. Nobody wins in those situations. It has to be pretty straightforward — yes or no answers.

The other thing that plays a part in this — and I don't know how you regulate that, and it's been said by many other people too — is that there are different areas in the province that have different feelings as to what should and shouldn't be done. You're certainly not going to please all of the people all of the time.

Dennis, I just heard about this a couple of days ago, and I was committed until I got home last night, so this is kind of off the cuff. I think you have to make the questions so that they're yes or no answers. Can I spend maybe some more time — I don't know — trying to think up questions, if that's what you're asking? No, I didn't come up with a set of five or six questions. I think that you have to keep it within that range.

D. MacKay: But don't confine it to one. Make it broader and a yes or no answer.

B. Munroe: I think you have to have a broader way of doing it. Maybe you have a yes or no answer on your question sheet, and maybe somebody will want to write a blurb on there. There's a lot of people out there, like me, that run off at the mouth every once in a while and shouldn't. Sometimes, if you have a question and answer period, you may end up putting something down that, you know, really you don't feel but at the moment you do.

The next presenter was scheduled for 2 this afternoon, but he is here and available now, so with the committee's indulgence we'll listen to Mr. Dieter Wagner next.

D. Wagner: Good morning, members of the panel. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to make my views known to you.

I'm Dieter Wagner from Kitimat. In the 1970s I was, for several years, in native affairs — chairman of the B.C. Wildlife Federation and on the native affairs committee of the Canadian Wildlife Federation — so I have some previous insight into some of the issues. I've made a presentation before during the Nisga'a treaty process, and my comments and those of the others were very much belittled. We were also informed by federal negotiators that the federal department of native affairs would be around for another hundred years. This will tell you something about their prime objective.

In my opinion, the referendum questions should be — some of them; there could be more — do you agree that part of any negotiation has to be extinguishment of aboriginal title? Do you agree that any negotiated settlement has to be reasonable and affordable? By the way, there is a copy of this at your desk. You will receive copies of it afterwards. Do you agree that after any settlement, Indian reservations will cease to exist and that the communities will have the same status as any other community in B.C.? I should like to put in there that I'm not anti-native. I've worked with natives, and most of them are absolutely great people.

It is very important that the public should be well-informed before they are asked to vote as to what has happened already and what is being proposed. What we were given to date was very little, greatly deceptive, and often outright lies. A comprehensive and honest analysis of the Nisga'a treaty should be made available.

The treaty will set precedents, and some bands — I cannot call them nations — have already stated that the Nisga'a did not receive enough. Project the settlement with all the natives in the above fashion and then project the cost. In addition, estimate the losses of government revenues. Royalties from forestry, mining, etc., will not go to governments anymore, and it goes further than that. The woods division manager of a large forest company in the area has told me that pulp mills presently pay 25 cents to the government for a cubic metre of pulpwood, but the Nisga'a are guaranteed $6 a cubic metre. The mills will still only pay 25 cents — of course, not to the government, to the Nisga'a — and $5.75 will be made up by government; therefore, you and me.

Also, there will be exclusive fishing and hunting rights on this vast territory. Well, they can go and hunt on other territories as well. People have to pay the natives now to go and pick mushrooms in the Nass Valley. These are only a very few items, but it definitely will not end there. It was also reported that a separate legal system is being worked on at UBC. Does that mean that we have to eventually have extradition treaties as well?

All of my friends and acquaintances who have studied world history agree with me that the present treaty process will result in civil war in this country in the end. The process uses the same blueprint which plunged people into civil war in Ireland, the Balkans and Israel, to name only a few of more recent time. The longer it takes for the first bullets to fly, the more blood will flow. Mr. Chrétien must have realized this in 1967, when he was Minister of Indian Affairs. At that time, he put out a White Paper which was to find ways to integrate natives into the rest of Canadian society. Then someone or some organization got to him. The White Paper was scrapped and, to quote Mel Smith, "The Indian industry was born."

Do these people in Ottawa, be they politicians, lawyers or judges, think they can stop or even reverse an evolutionary process which has shaped this country for the past 300-plus years? That is something the Supreme Court should think about — and maybe you can get the message to them — and something they should be challenged on. The government in South Africa had to change their constitution and get apartheid out of it. We are creating it. Everywhere in the world people have gotten rid of the medieval landlord, but some of our leaders are trying to create the medieval landlord in this country.

Finally, the federal native affairs department has kept their expenditures a great secret. Try and find out how much they spend. I think we all would like to know how our money is spent in this sector as well. How much was spent in the last 30 years? How much was spent in the year 2000 alone? What is the escalation curve of expenditures? How is it expected to grow?

It would be helpful to have these figures broken down into the cost of the federal bureaucracy, of the native bureaucracy and of the moneys that actually did go to individual native Indians. If possible, include

payments from other agencies to natives as well; i.e., unemployment insurance, medicare, etc. Rumour has it that medical costs for the natives are about two and a half to three times what they are for the rest of the population.

I only put this together yesterday afternoon. I could go on for a long time. I only hope that my small contribution will help to shape future policy in this province. Please do accept my apology if any inaccuracies should have come into my presentation. Like I said, I only took yesterday afternoon to put it together. Thank you very much.

D. MacKay: Dieter, thank you for coming from Kitimat to present to us this morning.

For anybody in this room to say that they understand the Nisga'a treaty, which we have now enshrined in the constitution…. I would question their ability to understand that process. I've learned something this morning. The guaranteed stumpage for wood off the Nisga'a core lands came as a surprise to me, but not really a surprise, because I don't understand the Nisga'a treaty as well as I probably should or most of us should.

If I understood you correctly, your concern about continuing to give away Crown land during the treaty process is that it is depriving the province of taxation revenues for the rest of the non-native population. The social programs we enjoy in this province come from the taxation from resource lands. That is being slowly taken away from the provincial government, and our social programs are being eroded because of that. Is that what I read from your…?

D. Wagner: Governments are expected to shell out more and more money towards treaties far into the future. Where is this money coming from if the treaties take away the resources of the government?

M. Hunter: Dieter, thank you for your presentation. I have a question. You suggested three questions early in your presentation, one of which was that at the end of the process we should be asking questions about whether reserves cease to exist, if I understood you correctly. Can you explain to me your motivation for that question? Are you motivated by governance issues, by equality issues, by individual versus collective rights? Could you spend a bit of time on that?

D. Wagner: I'm mainly motivated by the fact that you cannot in one nation separate people and draw dividing lines between them. If you do this, as I suggested, later on it will end up in a civil war, just like it did in some of those countries I mentioned. Everybody has to be equal in the nation; otherwise it's not going to work.

The previous speaker was asked how far that should go. I live in Kitimat, and Kitimat is a real multicultural society. You have many, many nations there. We have a German-Canadian club. We have a Luso-Canadian club. We have a Greek club, an Italian club. Nobody prevents any of these people from getting together and continuing with their heritage or part of their heritage. Nobody prevents me from wearing lederhosen if I so feel, so why do we have to carry this whole thing to that extreme with the native population? I just cannot comprehend this. Does that answer your question?

B. Belsey: Dieter, welcome, and thank you very much. I have seen Dieter in his lederhosen a long time ago. [Laughter.]

Dieter, you've mentioned how land claim settlements could be more divisive, and you gave some examples of Ireland and Israel. I'm just wondering: if we didn't have land claims, is there some other method or way that you could share with us that may work?

D. Wagner: I'm not suggesting that we don't have land claims and that we don't have some kind of settlement, but once this process is over, these lands, whatever is being done, should be treated like municipalities and not like a separate nation with its own separate laws. Does that answer?

B. Belsey: Yes. I'm just trying to think. If we have land claims, certainly the way we've gone today and with the Nisga'a treaty, if we have some other format, I guess then what you're saying is something along the municipal government format or maybe a cash settlement instead of….

D. Wagner: A cash settlement would, I think, be a much better idea, but the land settlements should not include surface rights and so on, so the government does not lose the revenue for all of the population of the province and the country.

J. Les (Chair): Any other questions? Thank you, Dieter, for coming to talk to us this morning.

That concludes this morning's session for the committee. We will reconvene at approximately 2 o'clock this afternoon. Again, I thank all of you for the presentations that we've heard this morning. For now, we stand recessed.

J. Les (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to call the meeting of the committee back to order. We've had a very busy morning so far today, with a lot of presentations made to the committee, and I see we have a number of people this afternoon who would like to give us their thoughts on this process.

Remember that the mandate of the committee, of course, is to report to government at the end of November, suggesting the questions that should be asked in a one-time provincewide referendum. If you could think about that a little bit, give us some suggestions as to the kinds of things you feel would be worthwhile areas of comment in a referendum, that would be very helpful to us.

We heard some very good presentations this morning that have certainly given us food for thought, as we did yesterday and as we did in several previous weeks in Vancouver and Victoria. Our first presenter this afternoon is Alice Doll, and I'd like to ask her to come up now and speak to the committee.

A. Doll: I didn't plan on being here speaking, but I did voice some of my thoughts, and some of the people here thought that I should speak to you. Apparently, I have ideas that very few have mentioned.

I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Alice Doll, formerly from Kitwanga and now living in Smithers. My family moved to Kitwanga in '28, and I lived there until March 2000. I'm 80 years old.

For the last 70 years I paid a great deal of attention to the people in Kitwanga, both Indian and non-Indian. Because I'm a transplanted Canadian, everything was strange to me. I feel that I had a better, more objective outlook on how things were here than people who were born and raised in this country. In the 70 years that I was in Kitwanga, I watched the changes. They were phenomenal — the way the Indian people lived when we came and when I left, in the year 2000. No doubt, in the next 70 years they will be just as great as they have been in the last ones. That's why I feel that something should be done, and these are my thoughts on the subject.

First of all, we must ascertain who is an Indian. We have a lot of what we call paper Indians, and I don't think that a person should be called an aborigine — it's politically correct to say it that way — because we don't know whether they're aborigine or what. We have no idea who was here when they came. However, they were here when we came, so they're aboriginal to us. I don't think that anybody should be considered an aboriginal unless they are a minimum of 50 percent, biologically, of aboriginal race. We have too many hangers on, and they are the ones that are causing the trouble.

I was involved in education in the Terrace school district. One of the things that the women I grew up with wanted — they were the same age as I, and they had teenage children, the same as I — was to fight for amalgamation in education so that their children would grow up to be responsible Canadian citizens of Indian origin. I worked for that, and we had school amalgamation. But it's changed now because a lot of them have gone against that, so that's beside the point.

Anyway, another thing that I found among the Indian people was that they suffered from a lack of self-respect. I feel that self-respect comes to a person if he has responsibility. They can't have responsibility unless they own their own home and the land on which it sits — clear title, just like we do. They must have that responsibility. That teaches them responsibility, and that brings about self-respect.

My idea would be — of course, this is far-fetched, I suppose — why can't we survey the reserves into lots and give each person who has a home there clear title to his house and property? The empty lots are left for those who wish to build on them in their later years, when they come of age. Instead of having the villages, have municipalities and have an ordinary municipal government, elected by the people, and have the council members' salaries controlled by the people that elect them. The people would be taxed the same as we are taxed. They would have to have people there that were carpenters. They would have to have electricians and plumbers and everything to take care of their municipal needs.

They would need money for that. The Department of Indian Affairs spends billions of dollars on Indian affairs. If you were to take that money and allocate it to each individual Indian, they could easily get $1,000 a month for the rest of their life. We would start that, say, a year and a half from a certain given date, and every man, woman and child living would get that $1,000 a month for the rest of his life. Anybody born after that given date would not be eligible. It's only for those who are a minimum of 50 percent biological Indian.

They could live in their communities, and for accepting this offer, they would give up their Indian privileges. They would be taxed the same as the rest of us in everything — their education, hospital taxes, municipal taxes, PST, GST and whatever, just like we are. The rest of the Crown land would belong to all of us, Indian and non-Indian.

I feel some people would say that this is another handout. It isn't a handout, because they need this help in order to make the transition from being totally dependent on the Indian department or their band office. Right now if they want or need anything, they go to the band office or else to the Indian department. They would have to be taught to be responsible for themselves, but they need help with that, and that's what the money would be for.

The money would no longer go into the pockets of the bureaucrats. We'd save a lot of money if we got rid of all the white bureaucrats and all the Indian bureaucrats. They would have fantastic salaries. They'd be rich. It would all go to the individual people.

They would give up the rights to the Crown lands all around them, but they would still have the use of these Crown lands, because they'd be making their living off of them the same as the rest of us.

Although they'd be living in this Indian municipality, they wouldn't be required to stay there. They could

In 50 years, we would have no Indians as a class as we do now. They'd all be Canadians of Indian origin.

Another thing this would bring about is that it would stabilize their family life. If a man and his wife have three children, that means $5,000 a month for the five of them, but if they break up, then they lose that money. It would hold them together and make them responsible for seeing to it that their children got an education, because they'd be paying for that education.

Right now it doesn't matter because they don't have to pay for it. If their children want to, they can go to university for ten or 15 years and never graduate. I've seen it done, and it's not fair. It's not fair to the people that are paying for it, and it's not fair to the Indian children that are going to these schools, because it doesn't mean anything to them. Many of them only do that in order to jump on the bandwagon and skim the money off the department, and that's wrong.

Another thing we must look at is that these things that we change can't be done overnight. It's long range. It will take years to change all this, but we must change it, because the demographics of B.C. are changing very rapidly. All you have to do is to go down south and see it. B.C.'s government and Canada's government have been founded on Christian principles, and we are very much our brothers' keepers. We consider that our duty, but there are people in this world who are not raised that way. What happens if the demographics change to such an extent that the way the Indian people live now…? They can't do it under a government that will be elected, say, 50 years from now in B.C. They're going to be at a disadvantage because they won't be able to cope. If we do this system, then by that time they will have learned to be responsible for themselves, and come what may, they will be able to cope with it.

Like I say, we're not looking at it just for tomorrow or the next month or even the next year. This is looking down the road for the next three or four generations. I've seen the changes in the last 70 years. They're phenomenal, and there's no reason to suppose they won't be just as phenomenal in the next 70 years. We must prepare for it.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much. Are there questions from committee members?

D. MacKay: I just wanted to ask you: you mentioned that you've seen a change in the native population from the time you first went to Kitwanga in 1928 to the present date. Has it improved?

A. Doll: It showed great signs of improvement in the fifties and the early sixties, and since then it has improved very much for certain ones. It went down the drain for others. Before that time we didn't have any druggies or alcoholics that were lie-abouts. There would be one person in the village that would make a brew and make himself ridiculous. Everybody just took it as human nature and let it go at that, but after that it became far more prevalent.

D. MacKay: There was an improvement in the quality of life for people that you work with?

D. MacKay: Just one final question. When you spoke about the people that wanted assimilation at the school you taught at, was that the native women themselves that spoke to you?

A. Doll: The men as a rule wouldn't speak to me because I was a woman. It was the women that came to me.

A. Doll: Yes, it worked very nicely. A lot of these people that went to our schools went on. I could name quite a few by name that have just gone away and made themselves responsible Canadian citizens. They weren't ashamed of their native origins. One chap especially is a teacher in the arts, and he's very active in teaching Indian arts in southern B.C. — things like that. They didn't go away and forget their Indianness. They were still of Indian origin, but they also became responsible Canadian citizens.

On behalf of the committee I want to thank you, Alice, for talking to us this afternoon. We've had many presentations. However, yours is based on a lot of intimate firsthand knowledge, and that is very valuable. We'll be reviewing what you have told us this afternoon, and I think it will help us to understand the issues we're dealing with. Thank you very much.

B. Zemenchik: Good afternoon. My name is Bill Zemenchik. I've lived in the north since the mid-sixties. I lived up in Cassiar country between the reserves of Tahltan, which is in Telegraph Creek — the Iskut band. At that time, the Dease Lake band didn't exist, and we had a small band out at Good Hope Lake. I'm quite familiar with the natives and their problems over the years — and their successes, I might add.

I'm basically here on behalf of my family and friends and also the natives who would not attend or who are fed up with Indian appeasement meetings. After attending and presenting our concerns at 16 meetings during the Nisga'a treaty discussions resulted in our concerns being totally ignored, here I am again, only because you are new kids on the block who may, in fact, be interested in uniting Canada and its people, as opposed to the present and past agenda of dividing

As an example, the Nisga'a agreement has many areas of concern which divide British Columbians. Even some Nisga'a are totally unhappy with it. I will point out one major financial commitment which is, I think, unbelievable. I'll quote directly from the Nisga'a Final Agreement. You'll find this paragraph on fiscal financing on page 212, paragraph 8: "The funding for the Nisga'a Nation and Nisga'a Villages is a shared responsibility of the Parties and it is the shared objective of the Parties that, where feasible, the reliance of the Nisga'a Nation and Nisga'a Villages on transfers will be reduced over time."

The key words are "feasible" and "over time." Who would refuse an open cash account like this? Remember, in addition the taxpayer will continue to fund all grants, committees and social services — i.e., education, health, social services, child and family care — and any programs funded by the feds or the province that exist and are available to us as well. This money that I was talking about earlier is over and above.

More and more native individuals are voicing concerns with self-government as this limits their own opportunities. We agree something must be done for the Indians — not necessarily treaties, which divide communities. We also believe every individual native on reserves should be consulted to establish what, in fact, they want to ensure opportunities for them and their families.

All inhabited reservations will never be self-sustaining. They will continue to be social and monetary problems forever, particularly the ones that are in isolated areas. I've noted here a few — Hartley Bay, Port Simpson, Bella Bella — that are hard to get at. What are you going to do in the long term for these places? This exists. It's not necessarily limited to natives either. Take a look at Ocean Falls. There's another community that's been abandoned — and rightly so, because there are no economic opportunities there, or limited ones, anyway.

The points I'm stressing for your serious consideration for your referendum are the following. Equality. We should do what is necessary to provide equal opportunities to individual Indians. With this go equal responsibilities. At some point we become equal Canadians. I think the previous speaker spoke eloquently on that. But do not limit the opportunities to the reservations, as is currently done.

Finality. Final agreements should not be financially open-ended, read: "The taxpayer funds forever." A finite time limit is mandatory. Otherwise, what incentive is there to be self-sufficient?

The following we should also be aware of. Under the Indian Act British Columbia's obligation to the Indians was satisfied upon providing land for reservations, yet in the Nisga'a final agreement we are paying out cash in addition to providing the land in this agreement. Also, I might add, I missed out some of the resources. How does that balance out? I think that's something the provincial government should look at seriously.

There are hundreds of uninhabited and unused reserved lands for Indians in British Columbia. All you have to do is look at a map, and you'll see they're totally vacant. Not even a native person on them, nor have they ever used them. They should be transferred back to the province from federal jurisdiction if they're not going to be used.

In closing, I would like to say the following. I think it's unbelievable for one segment of society to have an agreement with another segment of society to fund and treat differently that society. Even Trudeau, who was a past strong Liberal, said: "We must all be equal under the law, and we must not sign treaties among ourselves." Yet we are spending billions annually dividing Canadians by race, laws and opportunities, and I think it's wrong.

I think we should look at doing something for the natives. I think there are opportunities. The previous speaker, Alice, spoke on the individual native. I feel strongly that we should. I'll give you some examples. I worked in the town of Cassiar for 25 years. There were something like 35 native families who lived there when the mine needed help. Nobody would move to the north. They all wanted to live in the Vancouver area. The company had to provide incentives for non-natives and natives to encourage people to come into the valley to work for the mine. Quite a number of natives from Telegraph Creek, Iskut, Good Hope Lake and Teslin moved into Cassiar. The reason is that the company had an easy plan for employees to purchase housing. You could buy a house for $500 down. The company held the mortgage. If you didn't have the $500, we'd deduct that off your paycheque over six or seven months or whatever you were comfortable with. The company would assist you and your family to move into the home. We also had a full training program for operators and apprenticeships — in all skills. Both the non-natives and natives took advantage of it. Today many of those same individuals — Cassiar has shut down now — have moved into various parts of the province and into Alberta and are earning a living. They have been off the reserve.

This is the point of my presentation. Take a serious look at talking to each of the native individuals to find out what they want. Encourage this. Perhaps they don't want to be on a reserve. Maybe they'd like to be settled, whether it's in Smithers or somewhere else. We can build a home for them. We're doing it on the reserves now. We should take a serious look at it.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Yes, Bill. In your submission you suggest that treaties divide Canadians. You should know that as government members we're committed to the treaty process. I think we can talk about equality, finality and things of that sort but in the

context of the treaty process. That's my comment with respect to your submissions.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): You suggest, on page 1 of your submissions, that treaties divide Canadians. Then you go on to talk about equality and finality. How do you reconcile those two positions?

B. Zemenchik: Well, we are dividing Canadians. We're dividing the natives as well. I'm not just saying the whites and the natives. We're also dividing the natives on the reserves. Some of them that are in leadership positions are taking advantage of the ones that are not. We hear that in the news. We've talked to the individual natives. You see it all the time.

Just stop and think for a minute. Imagine that you're on a reserve — you and all your family, your in-laws and out-laws, are all living on a 40-acre piece of land — and your favourite brother-in-law, whom you can't stand, might be in charge of the whole thing. You have to go to him for anything that you need. It creates problems. That's where I'm coming from.

V. Anderson: Thank you, Bill. Following that up, we have been mandated by the courts to say that there needs to be a new relationship with the aboriginal people in Canada to what we've had in the past. Part of the process that we're engaged in is trying to fulfill that directive, and in doing that, we've been asked to try and find the principles on which we could agree in order to move ahead with that. Can you give us some suggestions, from your experience, of the principles by which we could move ahead to establish a positive relationship which is beneficial to all?

B. Zemenchik: I'm not saying we don't help the natives. I know we have to, and I totally support that. What I'm stressing here is how we do it and how we achieve our objectives. Each and every native is different. Each and every native, on the reserves where they're located, has different opportunities or lack of them.

I think the first step is to find out, item 1, what each and every Indian on that reserve would like. If we were going to help and assist that person — and I'm not limiting it to just financial — then let's find out what they really want. Maybe they want their own house and their own deeded land right on that reserve, and it's theirs. Then fine. That's one consideration. Maybe they want to move off that reserve and would like an opportunity in Smithers. If that's the case, then fine. Let's look at buying a piece of property for them here and put a house on it.

We'll give you some training where there are some job opportunities. We'll fund you for X period of time and assist you. After that, then you're on your own. We still end up with equality. It's going to take a little time, because we've reached a plateau now where we have been very divisive, I think, overall. We've got to get over that hump and get to where we can bring the people back together again — not just the whites and the Indians but also the Indians with the Indians.

D. MacKay: I just want to follow up on your comment about equality, where you said we should not limit the opportunities on reservations. I assume you're talking about if there were settlements, the natives should have some say as to whether they receive benefits that might come from a treaty collectively or as individuals. Should the natives have a referendum amongst themselves as to what it is they want? Do they want to be treated as individuals so they have choices as to whether they receive a piece of property on a reserve, if that's what they want, and that should be considered? Should they be given an opportunity on the reserve to tell us what they want as opposed to us imposing it on them?

B. Zemenchik: I think I answered your question when I answered Val Anderson's question. We ask each individual native what they would like. What help? What assistance? I don't think it's an issue where you can go in and say: "Well, we'll take a poll. What does the majority want?" You're dealing with people's lives here. I think you have to concentrate on each person and give them an opportunity.

We're going to spend the money anyway. We're spending it now, $7.5 billion just in DIAND, and that's not counting other programs that are financed under other ministries. It isn't just money. The two things I'm against are open-ended money and not giving equal opportunities to the natives. You're being divisive both between us and the natives and also between the natives themselves. I feel strongly on that. Any questions?

D. MacKay: Just one more question, Bill. You talk about the finite time. Do you have a suggested time for the treaty? Are you suggesting the treaty process should have an end date to it?

B. Zemenchik: No. I didn't get into a lot of issues. I could spend a lot of time here. Really, what I'm getting at here with the finite time is if you sign a treaty — for example, like the Nisga'a one — then we make a commitment, a financial commitment. In this case I read out that paragraph where it says that the funding will carry on, you see, where feasible. If the Nisga'a nation eventually, at some point, can end up being balanced, then perhaps we'll quit the transfer payments, but it doesn't say that they have to do that. It doesn't say they have to achieve that objective to be balanced within five, ten, 50 or 150 years. It doesn't say that.

F. Alec: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Frank Alec, and I'm from a band called Lake

Babine nation. I think the lady before me had mentioned something about bureaucrats and stuff like that. Actually, I evolved into a technocrat. Right now my responsibility at one of the offices of Lake Babine nation is as a forestry and housing specialist. In that area of administering the programs, what I deal with in the forestry sector are direct consultations with the government industry — within the Kispiox, Bulkley-Cassiar, Morice, Lakes and Fort St. James forest district offices. As far as the Department of Indian Affairs funding, I am responsible for on-reserve housing programs, such as social housing on reserve, which is section 95 of the National Housing Act, and another program called the new on-reserve housing approach plan, which comes from the Department of Indian Affairs.

Now, I guess the reason why I'm going over all of this is because…. The point I'm trying to make is that we have evolved into an area of what we see in front of us today — technology and modernization. As for myself, I have six children and my partner. My wife's position has evolved into…. Her title is domestic engineer. She likes that title.

The whole fact of the matter is that when I was listening in on the treaty process, as I was sitting in my office reading the news and having all these opinions being brought forward by the citizens of British Columbia and sometimes other provinces, my conclusion was that, first of all, I think you've got to have some sort of understanding between the people of British Columbia and the first nations citizens.

Now, the understanding I've tried to promulgate with the government industry is to come up with a cross-cultural exchange. I think, in some instances, that has happened but in more of a full-blown type of arena. I think that's called for, because that way, this uncertainty of how you view an aboriginal or an Indian or a native will certainly clear the picture. You'll have a clearer picture.

I won't go into the details of the treaty and what should be in there, because to me it just makes it more complex. What I'm trying to focus on here is our move toward an understanding, the understanding between cultures and the understanding of how we view our culture, as compared to the business that is in front of us.

Now, we're starting to realize the big difference here, the difference of how government and industry are driven by business as compared to when business slows down, however the government slows it down or whatever the situation is. We seem to be the ones that fall within the stumbling blocks because of the uncertainty of treaties, the uncertainty of what should go into a treaty and, most of all, the big question: the land base.

There are a lot of complexities involved in the components of the treaty. When I was looking into what a treaty should look like, I didn't bother looking at any of those components that were already there. Why try to change it? The abstracts are all there. The history is all there. All that needs to be done is to get your archives and all the people who are involved down in Victoria and put it in front of you. It's all chunked out and ready for servicing. That's all I can say on the treaty issue.

I'd like to focus back on developing this understanding. Like I said, we realize the difference — I do anyway —between politics and business. When these two mix, you know as well as I do that business doesn't go as fast as it should. Treaty is a business if you want to treat it that way, but if you want to treat it like politics, it won't go. Somewhere along the line, when you look at the components of the treaty, make a business out of it. Leave the components or the elements that are involved that are political to the feds. Everything is already there.

At the same time as I'm sitting here, I'm thinking that in two weeks' time I'm going to go back up and set my traps again. Every year I set my traps. Yet on the weekdays I put my tie on. I'm sitting back in the office, administering, making sure that accountable business practices are in place, making sure that the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted, but on the weekends I'm out in the bush checking my traps. Mind you, I don't undermine all the Greenpeace activists and all that. That's politics. To me reality is being out there, and reality is the business right in front of me.

The lady before me had mentioned something about responsibility. She's right. I have the responsibility right now, at the age of 42, of trying to make a point and trying to make a difference for my children. My children are going to an elementary school in Burns Lake right now. They get along fine with the other children in school. They're doing great. I must commend the school system. Their education is getting up there. It's way better than what I went through. My ten-year-old and my nine-year-old are more computer-literate than I am.

F. Alec: One of the final points I wanted to share with this committee is this understanding, the developing of this business relationship and the understanding of what the first nations cultures are all about. I'm pretty sure some speakers have mentioned that, but sitting back there and listening to some of the speakers and to the news…. Now that I have the opportunity, it's my responsibility to say this is how I perceive it. This is how far I've gone in this modern world.

My father — God bless his soul — told me this before he passed on. "Learn their ways. Learn their language. Learn their laws. See what it's all about, and then start talking to them, because if you don't, your kids will. Take that responsibility." My responsibility sitting here right now is, first of all, not to rant, not to rage, not to say this is not working that way or it's a waste of money or anything. Really, it's up to the individuals who are in the forefront here, who will be the driving process, and now I see the opportunity.

I'll support the process when I know that it's going to work for both parties, but I also know the difference if it's going to be one sided. I also know the difference if it's not going to work for us. Somebody mentioned finality. Finality, to me, is that we finally created this understanding. It's not monetary. I mean, I can sit here all afternoon and waste your time until 8:30 to come up with an analytical point of view. It'll be too much. I'll become an accountant by the time I'm finished. The point is that the components are there — a lot of good people have spoken on them — on the part of the first nation groups and on the part of the government as well, both federal and provincial. Now it's time to lay the differences aside, the barriers, and look at that understanding — that word, understanding.

Like I said, I didn't come with any numbers. I just came with this message that I feel right here and how it will kind of help you and how it will help me, as well, and my family. Down the road, once we get that established, then you'll be able to understand a lot more what this land basically means to us. Right now there are a lot of words thrown out there, like sustenance and what this land means to us.

The gentleman before me was right; there are different groups. I respect those groups, as they respect the nation that I'm from. That was there long before the Europeans came, but now the reality is sitting right in front of me.

With that, I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to put my point out, as part of the process that's going to be listened to. Thanks.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Frank. We really appreciate your coming out and sharing your thoughts with us.

V. Anderson: Thank you very much, Frank, for coming and sharing your experience in learning to live in two cultures and between those cultures and moving back and forth on a regular basis, I would think.

You pointed out — I think quite appropriately — the difference between a business solution and a political solution. You indicated quite strongly a business solution could work and a political solution probably wouldn't work. Prior to that, you had also indicated that for understanding, we would need to appreciate both the differences and the similarities between the two cultures. You can't go too far into that at the moment, but are there a couple of highlights that could illustrate what you mean by that?

F. Alec: Okay. The understanding is pretty broad the way I pointed it out in my delivery here. The way I view it, B.C. is one group that is representing the taxpayers, the mayors, the municipalities, the districts and so on. This group of people will have to view the first nations out there and understand that there is a diversity and that for each group and each territory there is a history. At the same time, the understanding that I'm referring to in this perspective is that there is an opportunity for business as well, if you look at it that way. I don't know if I answered your question or if I made that clarification.

V. Anderson: Would that difference in understanding be any different from realizing that each of the municipalities — the small villages and towns across the community — are also different and need to be dealt with differently?

F. Alec: That's a good point. On the part of the first nations, I will speak of the nation that I'm from. You have to understand that there are differences between the municipalities and how each municipality is driven by business and industry. At this point in time I know for sure that there's a lot of legislation out there that I have to go through in order to get the consultations going in the forest industry. It's not only the forest industry. There's the ministry of environment, lands and parks and other ministries that have hordes and hordes of legislation and laws. So yes, we've got to understand that as well, that there are differences within the government.

V. Anderson: The aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities that would enable us to have a meeting place that we understand.

F. Alec: The one area of similarity that I would perceive right now is the understanding of how we got here up to this point in time — okay? Our forefathers did something when they created this arrangement. For me, like I mentioned, my respected parent that has passed on told me that there's honour in this and this is what you've got to do.

That's basically a common area, the commonality, that I want, and now I'm on the playing field here.

B. Belsey: Frank, thank you very much for your presentation. As our mandate is to come up with some recommendations for our government to move forward with the referendum, I'm just wondering if you could help me understand how a question could be posed that would address your concerns or your point that treaties are like businesses. Can you help me with what a question might look like?

F. Alec: It may be straightforward and not put in a high vocabulary. You may want to pose it in this fashion: "Would you like this treaty process to have a bunch of dollar signs on it, or would you like this understanding of how our relationship will continue to prosper?"

J. Les (Chair): Any further questions? Thank you very much, Frank. Again, we appreciate your being here this afternoon. Hopefully, your input, too, can help lead to the successful process moving forward.

A. Campbell: I couldn't bear to give you 13 copies, so there are 14 copies here.

I'd just like to introduce myself briefly. I was born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I grew up in British Columbia in Trail and Christina Lake. I have lived in the Bulkley Valley for the last 25 years. I'm a geologist.

My presentation is brief. I want to thank you for travelling so that all British Columbians can be heard, can be seen to be heard and can hear what other people have to say. I recognize the legitimacy of this referendum process on the basis of your election campaign promise, followed by an overwhelming victory. I consider the referendum to be a valid process generally for soliciting public involvement and for engaging political opinion, but ultimately your government was elected to govern, and that's what I want to see.

With regard to the focus of the referendum question that you posed, I want you to pick one that addresses the widely shared national vision of Canada that we are a multicultural society, respectful of all the cultures that make up Canada, and that each Canadian is equal under the law. I want to see guiding principles for the referendum question that are fundamentally positive; that is, regardless of how the referendum unfolds in its outcome, I want it to be a positive one. Positive organizational choices tend to create new possibilities. They open up good prospects, boundless futures, and a negative choice could terminate our fortunes. This issue is a core issue in Canada. We just can't afford that. I really want the question itself to be positive in its nature.

Finally, I really like your process so far of voicing publicly what you hear on the radio, in the news media. This is part of a really well-run consensus process. Good for you.

G. Trumper: Thank you very much for your presentation. You've certainly outlined the focus and the principles you would like to see. Do you have suggestions for any of the questions that could be asked?

A. Campbell: Well, your job as the government is to come up with that question. I could tell that you'd ask me that. I didn't realize it would be the very first question.

The fundamental concern for all of us in Canada…. It's not just British Columbia; it's Canada, and B.C. can take a leadership role in this. The fundamental question is governance.

V. Anderson: I appreciate your concern about positive questions, and I appreciate that in the final analysis we have been given a responsibility to reflect what we hear, but we have to hear it first. What we do need is samples of positive questions from a variety of people who may approach it differently. Then somehow we have to bring consensus to that. If you could give us a sample of what for you is a positive question, what's an issue that is of principal importance, either now or later, that would be most helpful.

A. Campbell: That's the old politics-and-business question. I'll do that for you. I'll draft some samples, perhaps from different perspectives.

J. Les (Chair): You mentioned, Al, that governance to you is a central issue. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

A. Campbell: Well, I think it appears to many people that native Canadians aren't equal under the law. If you view the cultural past of native British Columbians and their relationship, say, with the Anglican church schools, we realize that wasn't an equal sort of experience legally with regard to the experience that we had going to J. Lloyd Crowe High School in Trail, for example. It wasn't the same by any stretch of the imagination, and that had to do with the way native communities were governed compared to the way other communities in British Columbia were governed. It's a key issue.

J. Les (Chair): Moving forward now and addressing the treaty process, which is about the future…. It's in that context, I guess, that I'm asking you: how does the question of governance come into that equation?

A. Campbell: Well, the question itself might focus particularly on who would develop a governance model or how the governance model would be developed. After all, that's what treaty negotiation is about. Ultimately, it defines the community. With the Nisga'a treaty, that's what it did. The question, when put to referendum, ought to focus on that governance model with regard to all of the province and not just one partisan group. Did that answer your question? I'm not trying to skirt around it.

J. Les (Chair): No, no. I'm just trying to plumb your thoughts. Looking for those nuggets is what I'm doing. Maybe that's language you would understand.

D. MacKay: Al, I'm just going to go a bit further. You say we are a multicultural society, and I don't think there's any doubt that we are today. When we look back, governments that were elected to govern previously have got us into the situation we find ourselves in today with the Terms of Union, which was an act of an elected government, and now we have the Supreme Court of Canada telling us that land claims may or may not have been extinguished under the Terms of Union.

You say that we've been elected to govern, and we accept that. The committee has been asked to try to find a way out of this mess that previous governments have forced us into today. I guess that if we had the answers or what we thought were the principles that should guide treaty negotiations, we wouldn't be here today asking for input. Because we don't have the answers, we were kind of hoping that the people who are here presenting to us today would be able to give us some suggestions that we're going to be able to use down the road so we don't have to go through this with the next generation and the generation that follows.

A. Campbell: Dennis, again, it's very important that the question that gets formulated be positive.

A. Campbell: Is the referendum going to have more than one question involved?

A. Campbell: Structurally that becomes difficult. It's very important that the questions lead one way or the other and that both ways are positive. If it's multi-tiered and the courses ultimately precipitate out in a positive and constructive way, the judgment about what questions to formulate…. You know, it is a political process. The setting up of alternate choices, alternate governance structures is the job of governors.

A. Campbell: It sounds like you do like some brainstorming pieces. I'll do that.

M. Hunter: Al, I appreciate that offer. I keep going back and reading what you said about the focus of the questions: "focus on the widely shared national vision of Canada."

M. Hunter: Maybe my encouragement to you, my request to you, if you are prepared to help by doing some more thinking on this, is that it's not clear to me that we all have this national vision of Canada. Each of us has a subjective view about what the country is. There are certainly some common threads, but I would say that if we do have this shared national vision, how come we're not there yet, and how come we have all these questions in front of us?

A. Campbell: With respect I disagree. We are there; we are a multicultural country. You're here today because you're trying to govern it.

M. Hunter: Let me pursue this a minute then. If you're right, then why do we want to focus on those questions if we already know the answers?

M. Hunter: You say we that we are there, that we have the national vision. So why would we want to focus on that to ask the questions if we know what the vision is?

A. Campbell: I think British Columbians are expecting a referendum question that leads toward resolution of longstanding land claims issues in British Columbia. These land claims issues have evolved over time. It's a natural sort of process that has unfolded with the history of British Columbia.

Dennis, you're right. The way British Columbia was settled was non-violent. There was no big battle that led to the settling — no victors, no losers. That's why we're here now. That's kind of neat. I'm proud of that.

P. Parry: I'm a logger, I guess. That's what I'm supposed to be. I'm not working right now. I've lived here all my life, which is close to 50 years. I've been associated with the natives. I went to school with them. I've known them probably since I was five or six years old. I guess that's what I am.

I'm against any land claims. I don't agree with them. I have no problem with first nations people who work or want to work. We always got along great, and I think they are very special people. What I've learned by growing up with and around them is that every one of them has a sense of humour and enjoys a good laugh. They love the outdoors and are easy to talk to.

They love sports. They're generally good company. A lot of my close friends are first nations people.

About 30 years ago someone told them that they were mistreated and hard done by. It's been going backwards ever since. Being shoved onto reserves didn't help matters. I don't know if any of you guys have ever been to a funeral or a potlatch or not, but if you ever get a chance to go see one, it brings you closer to what they're all about. You'll see how close they are. Everybody, the whole reserve and lots of other reserves, comes to these things. Different from our society or so-called town-civilized life, the first nations people get together, and the word spreads quickly of how hard they have it sometimes.

I drive a logging truck. Sometimes I pass by reserves at 3 o'clock in the morning — brand-new houses, brand-new schools all lit up like there's no tomorrow. I know that I'm paying for this and so are my children. They will inherit this bill. This is not the way the real world works. My children may never own a house, yet they have to pay taxes so a first nations person can have one free. The eastern federal government set this up so they didn't have to listen to someone whine. There is no western federal government here.

The feelings between non-natives and natives have changed for me and for a lot of people. I don't think it's helping the natives at all. My friends who are first nations people never talk about this and probably never will. I have no problems with natives being granted title to their existing home place. Like, if they had full title to where they live now, I'd have no problem with that. Or if there is an unoccupied Crown land acre — an acre is probably all anybody should ask for — I'd have no problem with that. If they want to use their traditional methods of hunting and trapping and some fishing methods, that wouldn't bother me, but it would mean no guns, no pickups, no all-terrain vehicles, no nets or dams, no metal traps. Traditionally they never logged or mined — oil or precious metals.

I think the sooner we crash the reserve barriers down and mix, the better off everyone else will be. Instead of the government sending money to the administrative councils, they should divide it equally to each full-blooded first nations person. Schools and lights wouldn't be very important anymore. Don Gosnell wouldn't be living in a $2 million house right now.

I think the real solution is creating a strong work environment where everybody is equal. We all feel better if we are treated equally. We feel better if we can support ourselves and families. It works for any race and colour. Tradition is our own responsibility. I shouldn't have to pay for somebody that wants a totem pole or a canoe or something. If I want that myself, I can do it myself. Somebody shouldn't have to pay for that for me.

This area is having hard times right now. The local provincial government has lost control of its assets to big companies. Big companies dictate to forestry how to go about their business. There's very little work for a small operator anymore. This affects everyone, including first nations. Big companies control most of the work, even though the resources are owned equally by everyone. This has to change.

So what are we to do, Paul? You basically say: "Let's all just move ahead, and everybody will be equal, and life is good." None of these things happen in a vacuum. We've got court decisions that have been made, for example, which clearly instruct us that we have to determine what this aboriginal right is, and we have to negotiate that. We don't have the ability to ignore that. We've got to get on with it and do that.

P. Parry: Like I said, I have no problem with the reserve land. I don't know if you understand how that works. When they're on the reserve and they have a house there, that's not their house. They have no title to that house at all. If they move away, somebody else can move into that house. I have no problem if they have title to that house. I have no problem with that. Say they want to live out here someplace and say there's an acre that's available, or there should be some made up, then I have no problem with that either. I don't know if you've seen how big an area it is. It's huge. What are we supposed to do then? We'd have to move. That's our only choice.

If they're going to have all the resources, all the power, I don't call that…. That's what they really want. I don't think that's going to make anybody very happy.

V. Anderson: We have some people who come to us and say: "Yes, there are problems and concerns that we need to work at." That's why we're here. Some people are saying quite clearly that the situation for many aboriginal people is much better than it used to be. They're getting a better education; they're graduating from university. The relationships and understanding between aboriginals and non-aboriginals has grown considerably, as some people see it.

On the other hand, we have others, like I heard you today, who I think would agree with you that in many ways the relationships they used to have in a friendly way, even in a small community, are not as good today as they were previously. Can you express a little more clearly what you mean by the changes that have taken place over the last while in your experience where you live?

P. Parry: There was no such thing as a difference before. When I grew up, some of my best friends were natives. We never knew there was this big problem. To me, it's way worse now. Like I say, I work with a lot of first nations people all the time, and we never talk about this stuff. It's a very touchy subject. You and I might be able to talk about something else, but that doesn't even come into the conversation anymore. Living here it's not 3 percent of the population; they're probably 25 percent of the population around here — in my environment, anyways. Here there are a lot more native people than compared to other towns.

V. Anderson: I could use an illustration. If my wife and I have real concern for each other, but there are some topics that we never discuss with each other because we're afraid to, then we need to do something about that. I hear you saying the same thing, that if there are some topics that we can't discuss with each other in our community, then we need to do something about that. Is that a fair analysis?

P. Parry: Yeah, there are a lot of things that have got to be done. I think the Nisga'a feel that was the biggest crime of the century. It didn't make any sense at all. I don't understand it. To this day I don't understand it. If that's going to happen to the whole province…. Is that what's supposed to happen? Is that the idea?

V. Anderson: I'd like to follow up on that. At the very least whatever we do we should be able to understand it. You may agree or disagree, but it's still important that we understand it.

P. Parry: I don't know what anybody needs the land for. To use it is fine. I don't have any problem with that either. If they want to trap and hunt and fish, if they want to use their spears and tomahawks and whatever, that's fine, but when I have to go pay for a brand-new four-wheel drive and a rifle, there's nothing traditional about that, and there never has been. That's what happens around here. That's what we see. That's what we pay for.

I think the sooner that everybody's sort of equal, the better off everyone will be. It'll make them feel better too. Right now there is a lot of…. I don't know how you'd say it, but it's not as good as it used to be, that's for sure — the feelings towards each other and that stuff.

E. Mah: You give me five microphones, so I'm not outnumbered here. Is that how it works?

E. Mah: My name is Eric Mah, as you can see from the written handout I gave you. I apologize if it's not written out that well. I had a problem with my arm. I'm a certified general accountant. I've been a 26-year resident of Smithers. We've graduated and raised four children in the Bulkley Valley here. We have two presently under our guardianship.

I believe that it's a common perception in our community that native persons are the beneficiaries of legislation that gives them preferential rights. To understand how this works, I'd like to give you a hypothetical situation. I'm going to use the game of golf and the name Lee. I'm not intending to offend anybody. It could be any other game and any other name. Suppose your local golf club was too crowded, and there was no choice but to limit the attendance at that club. Instead of allocating the use on some equitable basis, you decide that only those persons with the last name of Lee would be allowed to play on Sunday afternoons. Suppose we also later determine that the club has extra profits, and only the Lees should play for free and so on.

As a Lee you would soon likely sense that your world would be changing, that people you meet in the club on other days would not be as friendly as they used to be. Some people who were acquaintances in the past won't be greeting you at all. You go back to your own group of Lees and things would be okay until we decide to make a rule that you have to go to the clubhouse on Saturdays. You have to be there with people who are not Lees. The heartbreaker comes when your kid comes home some day and complains that kids are calling him names at school. They're calling him a Lee like it's something bad. It doesn't take much to imagine how difficult this situation can become, particularly if you're giving more benefits to the Lees all the time and requiring, at the same time, that they integrate and participate in daily life with everyone else.

Now, when you look at our community of adults, most of us have matured, hopefully, beyond this point, so this hypothetical situation of transition from one form of organization to another really doesn't apply to us as adults. The legal segregation of native people in our society has been in place for a very long time, so this transition period has passed a long time ago, but with our children, to me, it's very evident, particularly when they hit the teenage years in this valley. The friendships between native and non-native teens seem to dissolve, because they're faced with this transition. They come from being children who could play alongside each other and not recognize or acknowledge a racial difference, but when these rules are suddenly brought into their lives, they are gradually hammered apart.

As I said, we have four children who graduated in the valley here, and I'm happy to say they're all doing very well in their lives, but this has been a disappointment for everyone. Boys who played together on the same hockey team for years and years, who learned to drink together and party together and who then are faced with these rules suddenly are just not comfortable being together anymore, because one is living under a different set of rules than the other.

Now, most people in this community are not inherently racist people, but if you make a law that imposes race segregation, it's very difficult to keep a racially tolerant point of view — that's to all people. What you are doing to our young people here is teaching them that racial tolerance is something that you put on a poster with a happy face and you hang it on the wall. It's an ideal that you seek to achieve, but you will never achieve it here. You're teaching them that it's not achievable. The rules say that you can't do it. The law says that you must segregate one group of people, according to race, from the rest of the population. That's what the law has been telling us.

It's unfortunate that this has gone on for such a very long time. I don't know how long it's been — well over 100 years, maybe 150 years. I don't know how old the Indian Act is, but it's probably one of the most colossal failures that this country has ever participated in. The effects of that act and the principle of keeping native people separate from the rest of the community have had a devastating and debilitating effect on all native people across this entire country for dozens of generations — generation after generation. What I'm asking you here today is: in this process of treaty negotiation can you find the means and the courage to stand up and stop this? It is a monumental challenge; it's a huge challenge. It's a huge admission of failure on the part of our federal government and all people across Canada.

In my last remark here I would ask that in the treaty negotiation process you look for a principle, a guideline, from both sides of the table, from both native and non-native governments, that you work towards eliminating race segregation in our laws. That's all I ask for. I don't care if we've got one acre left under title. Eliminate this problem, and I think you'll have 90 percent of it beat.

When the Nisga'a agreement was signed several years ago, a previous Premier referred to the fact that as far as the Nisga'a was concerned, this was the end of the Indian Act. I found that kind of interesting in that there are numerous references to the Indian Act in the Nisga'a agreement. When I hear you speak today, would it be accurate for me to suggest that your recommendation to us is that in this referendum process we should address the Indian Act and its eventual elimination?

E. Mah: I'm not sure whether it even falls within your jurisdiction. It's a federal act, and you're looking at a provincial referendum and so on. I don't know whether you'd directly address that or not.

J. Les (Chair): You don't need to worry about our jurisdiction. I guess we'll need to do that at some point, but I want a broad exploration of the issues.

E. Mah: What I'd like to see in the referendum, perhaps, is a commitment from both sides that you work toward eliminating race segregation. You know, people here are maybe pointing the finger at native people and saying: "You get this, and you get that." These so-called benefits haven't done them a bit of good, as far as I can see. Not one bit.

I don't know anyone who complains to me about native people getting this and getting that. If I ask them, "Would you like to go and be a native person?" they'll say no for sure, and I've just explained why.

I don't know how many of these kids at the high school pretend they're not native. If they've got fair skin, they're not going to come out and say they're native people. They hide. The reason is that this business of segregating native people from the rest of the population has created this problem. It's created this huge resentment against native people. It's growing because the population is growing.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Eric, you've certainly highlighted some very practical problems here in your community and in, I expect, other communities. You've pointed, as well, to the Indian Act and some of the difficulties associated with that act. I'm sure you also understand the task we have before us as a committee. I'm just wondering if you've given any thought to principles and/or questions that might help in terms of addressing some of the concerns you've outlined.

E. Mah: As I said, the principle of eliminating segregation would be one I feel is of utmost importance. Whether it's properly addressed through a referendum or whether it's going to help or hinder us, I don't know.

V. Anderson: Following up your presentation, Eric, thank you very much for highlighting what I think is something we all need to consider. It may not be within the scope of what we're doing, but at this point we have that to decide as we go along. Are you suggesting that a referendum question might be, in the sense that most aboriginal and non-aboriginal people might consider this in working at our relationships in B.C., that one of the things we do is work together for the elimination of the Indian Act?

E. Mah: Certainly. One of the things I would like to see is an entire community involvement in this process, not a process that involves just a native band and the government but the entire community together helping negotiate some settlement.

V. Anderson: To follow that up, are you indicating that you don't really feel that the settlements we're looking at in B.C. can ever be fully successfully achieved in the context of still being under the Indian Act, which affects all of us?

D. MacKay: One of the things we have to face is going to be a difficult task. I'm like many people. I have a problem with having been assigned a task, then they tell us about the roadblocks that are in the road, like the Supreme Court of Canada decisions and the Indian Act. The Indian Act keeps coming up in my mind. They say: "That's a good idea, but you have to realize there's a roadblock in the road." That roadblock might be the Indian Act or a Supreme Court of Canada decision that was based in part, I suppose, on the Indian Act.

I sometimes think that if we as individuals can't overturn an act that's…. I'm like you; I don't know how old the Indian Act is, but it's well over a hundred years old. The natives have been under the thumb of the fed-

eral government now since, I suppose, the Terms of Union back in 1871. It's a huge task, but if that roadblock is going to be there forever, we're never going to solve this problem of segregation that we have today. This segregation stems from the Indian Act.

I'm like you. I sometimes wonder why we are even doing this, because the Indian Act is there. If we can't change that, we might as well go home. Like you, I support the idea that we have to get rid of these regulations that support segregation. The Indian Act is one stumbling block. Somehow, if we want to get rid of this problem, that's one of the first things that we're going to have to look at — finding a way to get rid of it. I guess it's one of many things that we're going to have to do to get rid of this problem that we're finding ourselves in today. We don't have this problem with other multicultural people in this country. The only problem we have it with is the native population, and that's because of the Indian Act. So somewhere down the road we've got to be able to find a way to get around that, or scratch it off the books.

J. Les (Chair): Any other questions or comments? No? Thank you very much, Eric. We appreciate your attendance.

Is Richard Fuerst here? Then I believe we have Melanie Forsythe here. Good afternoon.

M. Forsythe: Good afternoon. I wasn't actually planning to speak to you, but listening to the other people, I felt compelled to come and speak about being half native and half white.

I was born and raised in Smithers to an Irish father and a full Wet'suwet'en mother, who is a wing chief among our Wet'suwet'en people. We belong to the Gitdumden clan The one thing that I see from both sides, having grown up in a house that's white and native, is that natives and non-natives agree that the current system does not work. Actually, there was racism. I grew up in the seventies, and a lot of people called me names, and there was racism.

One of the incidents that my mother went through in the mid-eighties was when she was walking down the street with my sister. They were shopping on a Saturday. I ended up staying home because I wanted to watch Star Trek. Anyways, my dad and I are at home, and we get a knock on the door. By the way, we've always lived in the town of Smithers. My mom paid off her house with her own money, and we've always worked. We've never really benefited from the so-called benefits of living on a reserve.

There was a policewoman who knocked on the door. She interviewed me. I was eight years old. She goes: "Have you been here all day, and are you sure you've been here all day?" And I'm, like, "Yeah." Apparently, a native woman with two daughters had stolen something at an electronics store, and my mom and sister ended up walking by the wrong place at the wrong time. What happened was that this white guy at the store pointed out my mom and sister and assumed that the other daughter just went home. His thought was, "They all look the same," so he thought he got the right person.

That was a huge insult to my mom. She actually went to court and won. Then she had to do a shame feast. Within our feast system there was shame over her, her name and our clan when something like that happened, because you did have a standard. I talked to my father, because I couldn't understand why people were saying all these things like: "You get a house for free. You get everything for free. You're a native, so you get everything for free." And I'm, like: "Can you explain to me why people perceive that?" So my dad sat me down and said: "There's the sugar theory." This sugar theory is: when the natives were taken off their land, roughly 50 years ago in this area, in exchange for giving up their land…. In my personal life my grandmother, Timber Wolf — she had the native name before my mother — had 250 acres of land which she horse-logged. She had a trapline. She was also a farmer, and she raised eight children — alone, with no help from the government. She never gave that up; she always lived on that land. It was taken from her. From talking to my mother, in the mid-fifties or sixties those 250 acres were just taken from her. She had no concept of how to deal with the white people and the white type of world.

Anyways, going back to the sugar theory, when people are taken off the land, the land that they hunt, fish, trap, farm and log on, like my native people…. If that's all you know, if from the moment you're born you practically go out and hunt for your food every week…. If you need something, you go out there and hunt it. If you're taken off a land that's the only thing you ever have known, then what can you do? What do you know how to do? It's about changing and adapting. Well, my people never were given the chance to change or adapt, because they were just given things.

I'll use the Moricetown reserve as an example. They were plopped on the reserve and then: "Oh here, live in this house, and this is what you get per month." The same system is also true for first generation, second generation, three or four times generations of people who are on the welfare system.

I don't know if you've gone around the community. Have you seen anybody in a store hire a native person? Have you seen any businesses other than sort of government-funded businesses that employ native people? I don't, and I've been here all my life.

I'm different, because I've actually gone out and got an education. That, in fact, has changed, because under the Indian Act that was guaranteed. Medical, education — it's my understanding those were always guaranteed. Since I went to school, in the early 1990s, I was sort of guaranteed a position for education, which is the only benefit I've gotten all of my life. I just recently went back to school, and I paid the tuition myself. I was able to get some funding, but because the funding is dwindling, the services that we were guaranteed under the Indian Act are starting to dwindle as well.

What I'm seeing right now is that natives are sick of the way it is. They want to become productive mem-

bers of society. I feel — and this is my opinion obviously — that you, the white community, say you want change, but you're not willing to actually do the work to get that change in there, if you know what I mean. We want jobs; we want to pay taxes. I have always paid taxes, so that's not really an issue. We just want to be a part of society and not have this scapegoat mentality that I've seen most of my life.

I'm quite tired of that actually. I am half, but I look more like my mother, so people assume I'm full native. Right now every member of my family works. They all work in the logging industry. As a matter of fact, my older sister's husband has his own business, because the only way to create jobs for native people is for some native people to create businesses for those specific people.

As far as the new cars and stuff, I remember I bought a new car — I don't know — maybe ten years ago. I purchased that car. I've always worked. I remember the rumour around town was that I must have won it at bingo. I played bingo once, and it was a horrible experience, so I've never played again. One of the things that my mom always said — she's a high hereditary chief within our system — is to always have your hands moving. So I work full-time, but I also have a part-time business on the side. My white father says to be independent and create things yourself. So that's the perspective I've gotten from my white father.

Regarding the treaty, I think it should be settled. It would be best for everyone. If you look at communities like Moricetown, as a municipality it's just a better thing all the way around. You won't see as much…. I understand that native communities across Canada have the highest suicide rate, the highest pregnancy rate and the highest poverty rate.

If you give people self-governance and the ability to create jobs for themselves — obviously people around here don't give jobs to natives — you'll start seeing things build and grow. Then they have something that they can call their own rather than just sitting. I don't even know, because I've never lived on a reserve, but the perception is that they just sit there and get money. I don't think that's true.

Most of the comments I've heard just now are from the white community. They're saying one thing and then another thing. It's difficult as a native person to try to talk to a white person when they keep flip-flopping. What do you need from me? What do you need for me to do? What are the steps? I'm willing to work at something new, and if you're willing to work at something new, let's work together.

I am a reporter. I report for a newsletter. I know that native people haven't really shown up for this committee, but there is fear that all the progress that we've made so far in the last seven years as part of the treaty negotiations process will be unravelled or just thrown out for something new. All the work that we've done up to this point will just be thrown out. We don't like that. I don't like that.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Melanie, for a very interesting presentation. We appreciate it very much.

Reflecting on the treaty process that we've witnessed over the last seven or eight years, I believe it's accurate to say that a lot of people feel that there hasn't been that much progress, particularly when you look at the effort, energy and money that went into that process. Could you share your thoughts in terms of what's transpired over the last eight years and what you feel could be done to make the process more productive for all of us?

M. Forsythe: I'm just learning about the treaty, actually. I've just recently moved back to Smithers, and I work at the treaty office. It's something new for me.

There's too much bureaucracy. If you ever explain to somebody…. This is a theme in my life: "Let go of things; go with the flow." I'm always one of those people. "Show me the steps — step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4."

We have a goal. Both sides have a goal. What's before us right now isn't working, so we need a goal, a vision of what we want to see, very clearly. I hate the word "realistic" — it's annoying — but we need realistic steps to go towards that goal.

I think there's too much emotion. I actually started getting emotional because the perceptions, the stereotypes and the scapegoating of natives have been there all of my life, and I'm just tired of it. If we can get the steps together and work together, I think the native communities are willing to do whatever it takes to make a change for the better, because right now it is true that we have the highest poverty rate, the highest pregnancy rate, and the suicides are up.

I've done four newsletters, and there has been an average of two deaths in each one that I've done, in the eulogies. While this process was going on, I was talking to my older sister's husband. He's a logger and has had his business for 25 years. He says that one thing that's happening right now is the resources are being extracted off our territory — without us. We're not involved.

I guess maybe there's a perception in the non-native community that if natives started getting jobs, then they'll start losing jobs. I think there is fear there, but I don't think that's true. I think that jobs are jobs, and the more you create, the more there'll be, actually. Keep it simple, realistic steps towards the future.

J. Les (Chair): You talked about a vision earlier. What is that in your mind? What is your vision of the future?

M. Forsythe: You know, we're all human. Native people have the same goals, dreams, desires as anybody else. The perception is that they don't want to work. Believe me; we had a chiefs' meeting on Monday with the Attorney General, Geoff Plant, present. One of the chiefs stood up and spoke about how frustrating it is for him because he hasn't worked for seven years, just because there hasn't been work. I could feel the sorrow, the sort of devastation, because not only is it

hurtful that you can't pay your bills or you can't purchase a TV — you know, material things or something — there's a self-worth that comes with a job, like you're being productive, you're making a difference. I think that if you have that within our community, then the people will start realizing that the power is all within themselves, and they'll be making changes and differences and reaching out to the community. If I can make a difference in my life, then I'll want to help somebody else out.

So my vision is having a municipality somewhat like the Smithers municipality and self-government, because only natives can know the needs of natives — can they not? With the sugar theory, everything sort of being given to you and you getting trained to getting everything…. That's what I was told was the sugar theory. I don't know whether it's right or not, but that's just sort of my simplistic form.

You have to start weaning people. How about training programs? How about more educational funding? How about programs specifically geared towards native people, maybe a native perspective, or learning about their own culture within school? You know, that's the start of pride.

Somebody was talking about native teenagers who are embarrassed to tell that they're native. Every native person that I know is proud to be who they are, because we've done wonderful things, especially my grandmother and mother. We work in a society where women are like the people of power, and I really like that system. I don't know. Women get results. What can I say? It's just a personal sort of background, rather than talking and talking. That's my vision. That is hopefully the model to work towards.

I've only been at the treaty office for the last four months, and you have a crew of people just working very hard for their people to get there. Yeah, I don't know how to educate. I was thinking that you put out some kind of educational program or pamphlet to people expressing where the natives are. Let's say, for example, you grow up and you see this: for 20 years natives are just living on the reserve. That's not the reality now. I think a lot of people still have the perceptions from 20 years ago. They're just stuck in their mindset.

One of the things I guess my mom taught me, too, is to learn the white person's way. Get educated. Get out there. Go get a job on your own. Work in white offices. Learn as much as you can from them in order to play their game.

V. Anderson: Thank you for your vision and your ability to express it. The task that we've been given is to try and find a way where we can all work together better, exactly as you have suggested. The specific task that we've been given is to find a set of questions — maybe one, maybe five; we've had different suggestions — that are simple. One person said to write it in grade 6 language, which would enable aboriginal and non-aboriginal and all the multicultural people we've got to come together with a common agreement about how we can work together. Have you any suggestions, from your experience, as to what those questions might be or how they might be worded?

M. Forsythe: From my perspective it's such an explosive issue. It's such an emotional issue. You know what? I don't have an answer to how you can get past the emotion. You've seen all these people speaking in front of you. They're very emotional because they're individuals. As individuals you have different individual needs. I'd say that the questions would have to be simplistic in order to sort of be like the very basic questions about…. You have to find out a vision in order to have five questions with that vision in mind, a model or something, and then maybe build around that, I was thinking.

I applaud you for your hard work. I can't imagine having five questions to try to change the way it's been for the last 50 years.

V. Anderson: If I hear you right, what comes to my mind — and whether it's feasible or the right way to go, I don't know…. In trying to stretch into the new box that you have pushed us into, there may be a preamble to the question which summarizes the vision. Then the question might be: are these the ways to get to that vision? Is that the kind of thing you're presenting?

M. Forsythe: I don't know. The vision could be a municipality for current native band situations. Maybe some questions could be: do you think there should be self-government, where natives govern themselves, and do you think there should be specific laws governing native people for themselves? We apparently govern ourselves differently. I've never been in trouble, so I don't actually know. For example, where native people go back into the community instead of going to jail and are taken under the wing of, let's say, a chief and taught the old ways and maybe get one-on-one attention…. Maybe they haven't gotten one-on-one attention their whole lives. Start building their self-esteem, their self-worth, and then maybe you'll get results that way. Deal with native people differently, because we are. We just have a different history, a different background and a different culture. We continue that culture today with the fee system and what have you.

I don't know how you can have a question where there will be no emotion. That's what I'm afraid of, actually. If you pose a question to non-aboriginals and they have these five questions in front of them, they'll have perceptions inside their minds about native people and what native people get. That's my concern: do you want to educate those non-natives to the actual new reality? Their perceptions might be 20 years old, you know. The reality is that everyone I know works. The reality is that I've never lived on a reserve, so I never had the so-called perks or benefits of those things. We want to go forward as well.

G. Trumper: Actually, Val stole my questions, but I want to thank you for your very thoughtful presentation. I think you've given us a lot of food for thought. I very much appreciate you coming and listening and deciding that you needed to say something. Thank you very much, and good luck.

M. Forsythe: Actually, I was going to ask you a question. Are you going to be going to native communities specifically?

J. Les (Chair): We would like to. This week we won't be able to do that for lack of time, but in the course of the next several weeks we will very likely be doing that.

J. Les (Chair): In this area that won't be possible. We're in Fort St. John tomorrow, so we're already out of the area, but in other places in B.C. we'd certainly like to do that if possible.

B. Lekstrom: You touched on the issue of self-government and how we look at this. I have a municipal background, and I look at the structure we work under. Do you believe that a self-government structure similar to what we in municipalities and regional districts operate under would work for first nations self-government?

M. Forsythe: I think so, actually. I used to cover council meetings. I think there is a structure in place already. I work at the office of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, and theirs actually is somewhat similar to council meetings already. I think there's already a structure there, and there is a hierarchy as well. We don't do anything without the chiefs' approval, so they know what's going on at all times. It's their decision, not ours.

I know that at the Moricetown band it's elected, so it is somewhat like the council meetings. It's very similar, from my understanding anyway. I don't think there would be too much of a change actually, because really they're dealing with water, sewer, whatever issues — bylaws or whatever. I don't know if they have bylaws out there, but it's somewhat similar.

B. Lekstrom: Maybe a follow-up, if I could, and moving on to something else. You were told to go out into our world and learn the ways. One of the goals, I think — and I'm looking to you for some direction on that — is that we work towards one society that recognizes all our unique cultures. Would that be a fair statement as to what you're talking about? I don't see how we can effectively live under different societies. We can live under different cultures, but I think we've got to strive towards one society.

B. Lekstrom: Under one society. That's what I'm saying. We strive for that, but everybody is unique — each one of those, I would think.

M. Forsythe: I think, from my perspective, it wouldn't be that different. Maybe I'm ignorant about that, but I would think it would be somewhat the same. Maybe if you had an umbrella, this is the way it works, and then on an individual level…. You know what? The needs of Smithers aren't the same as the needs of Vancouver. If you have an umbrella, this is what you can work under. Maybe that could be part of the overall plan and then give native councils leeway and flexibility to work within their own communities.

I think that under a native model you'd need more flexibility and an open-door policy in the sense that…. I haven't had a lot of experience with native councils and stuff, but along with working at the office of the Wet'suwet'en, a lot of the people from the community come in and ask for certain programs, job opportunities. They actually come to you directly. So that might happen if there was a council. They might go directly to them and go: "Can you help me out here?" So we'll be more one on one, I foresee, in the system. I think that would work.

There's just one more thing I'd like to explore. You made a comment earlier that you yourself have never lived on reserve and, therefore, some of the entitlements that accrue to people who live on reserve have not been available to you. It seems to be at least an intended feature of the treaties that are being thought about that you need to live in the traditional territory or on the reserve in order to be entitled to the benefits that flow from the treaty. That seems to me to be a limiting feature for someone such as yourself who might want to live in, let's say, Vancouver for a few years to further your career or what have you. Give me your perspective on that; in other words, having rights that accrue to a person specifically because they live in a certain area and that those rights aren't as mobile as the other rights that we all seem to enjoy.

M. Forsythe: Well, I've lived in Vancouver on and off for five years, so I've actually been there. I have always paid rent; I've always worked. I never got a free house or a free car or even a job, I don't think, just because I'm native. I remember back maybe ten years ago, when I first started working, it was actually a hin-

drance to be native and try to get a job. Now they've got that law that you get a certain number of people that are of certain ethnic backgrounds to work with you in a job. That's something new for me.

Also in Vancouver the non-taxation is not available. Like, you can't go into a store and get no tax. That's one of the things, when I'm talking with people in the cities — for example, with students or co-workers…. Especially in the cities they don't really know what it's like in, say, a smaller northern community, where I'm from. They're like: "How is it there? How does it work there?" They're quite uneducated in the way the system works.

I don't know. I've never felt like we've benefited — my mom and myself. She actually purchased her house on her own. In one sense we are members of the band. However, we don't benefit financially from it, if you know what I mean. We do get dental and medical, and for the first three years of my education I got my education paid for up to a point. I remember back to when I went to BCIT, seven years ago now. I paid half. They only pay a certain amount for housing and a certain amount for books. I remember I worked for one year, went to college for a year, worked for two years, went to college for two years, and then worked and went again most recently.

I'd actually like to see…. I don't know. I've sort of been used to not really getting the benefits. So if all of a sudden…. Are you saying that you might, for non-natives who don't live on reserves, give them the option of no tax? The way it works right now is there aren't really any businesses on the reserve in order to get benefit from it; that is, at least locally. There is Kaywood in Moricetown. That's one business, and I don't see too many people going out to Kaywood to get lumber to get the tax-free benefit.

J. Les (Chair): Let me maybe reframe it and bring it into something that you're very familiar with. You mentioned the house that you live in. Because it's not on a reserve, you weren't eligible for the same housing funding, presumably, that you would have had available to you, had you been living on reserve — correct?

M. Forsythe: You know, my Mom is a hereditary wing chief — Timber Wolf — Mabel Forsythe. She's very proud that she paid for her house on her own. I remember her last payment, when the deed to the house was hers. That was a very proud day, but she also learned, from a very early age, how to rely on herself. That was her mother's doing. Her mother had to do everything. I am very proud of my grandmother. I didn't know her that well. She passed on when I was very young, but I still hear the stories today, and that gives me a sense that I rely on me. In yoga you have to be able to hold your own weight as one of the exercises. That's very symbolic of an "I take care of myself" kind of attitude.

I can't think of anything else to say, but if you have any more questions, I'll try to answer them.

J. Les (Chair): You've been very patient with us. We've enjoyed listening to you. I know I speak on behalf of us all when I say thank you. You know, this is not an easy process for us to try and sort through and come up with some recommendations, but there are occasions when there's reason to hope, and this is one of them.

R. Fuerst: You'll have to forgive me. I had more stuff, but I got my times mixed up, so I just wrote down a few notes from what I could remember of my presentation. I'd just like to applaud the panel for giving us this opportunity to come and talk. The last ten years, as far as trying to get in and get on one of these panels with the former government — or even finding out that one was available — has been like butting your head up against the wall. I applaud you for giving us this opportunity to speak and have our say.

Growing up as a young white person in Canada, I've always had a problem with that connotation, as far as people foisting blame on white people. I don't know what a white person is. I look around this room and I see Canadians. I see my neighbours. I really have a problem with those connotations. Maybe political correctness has got the best of me — I'm not sure — but as far as going on, for the rest of the thing, I'm just going to refer to us as Canadians.

When you look at the treaty, especially the one that was recently settled with the Nisga'a, I think sometimes you have to take a step back and look at what opportunities there are for a young Canadian person growing up in this country. The country that my father and my grandfather grew up in is totally different from the country we're growing up in now. The opportunities that were once there aren't there anymore. It's a tough row to hoe for a person, especially in the north, to make a living. I think you can see, from the amount of houses for sale and foreclosures and repossessions around the north, that it's not all wine and roses to grow up in Canada anymore, especially in the north. I think we have to realize that. When you set aside vast amounts of money and resources for one group of people, it's hard enough as it is in this day and age to compete. When you give somebody the opportunity to have unlimited resources, unlimited funding, it makes it even tougher. I'm not saying that's maybe not the way to go, but I think you have to include people in the process of it.

I've worked on native reserves before. I've worked with the people, and they're wonderful people. Like the lady said, they are hard-working, but I think throwing good money after bad on the reserves isn't the way to go. You see the power struggles on the reserve. We've had fellows hired from one reserve that they wouldn't let work on certain projects. You see that

power struggle happening there, and I don't think throwing a bunch of money at the problem is going to solve it.

Also, I don't think the native self-government thing is the way to go either. All through my life we grew up hearing about the apartheid systems that there were in various parts of the world and that we still see today. I don't think having a race-based government is the way to bring people closer. I don't know how things are going to pan out as far as the treaties go from now on, but if you're a person living within these areas, I'm just concerned, if you don't fall into that racial background, what your rights will be. I'm very concerned about that.

I think there is a definite need for education on both sides. You listened to the young lady that was just speaking, and she had some great points. There's things there that you could definitely learn from her, but I think there has to be a need, on the flip side, for them to learn from us, especially people that are younger, because we have a different mindset. She talked about a 20-year-old mindset. Well, I don't have the benefit of age to have that 20-year-old mindset. I'm going from what I know from the time I was in high school ten years ago.

I think of our history too. My grandfather and my great-grandfather fought two world wars for this country, and there's a lot of history in this country for everybody that came here, whether you were Italian or German or Dutch or whatever. A lot of history on our side, as Canadians of non-native descent, sometimes gets pushed aside. I think it's important for us to see that the reason why we have the freedoms and the opportunities to have this has a lot to do with our history as well, and I think that should be taken into account.

I also think we need to get more young people involved in this process. I look around at the various meetings I've been to, and you don't see many high-school–age students or people in college that take the time to come and actually get involved in the process. I think that's a real detriment to it, because it is the young generation that is going to have to deal with the connotations of what happens with these claims.

I also feel that a lot people get a bad rap when this referendum issue is brought up. I've listened to many commentators speak about it, saying that people will have a bias just based on race. I think that really diminishes thoughts of people's intelligence. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person and able to make my own decisions if I have all the facts. I think one thing we've missed out on in this process is the ability to actually get all the facts, because it's been so closed-door to everybody.

I just want to touch on this. Like I said, growing up nowadays, there are no special opportunities for you if you're a white person. You get up every day and hope that you have a job the next day, which is the reality of it. I'm pushing 30 years old now, and I'm scared for my future. I don't know whether to buy a house. I don't know whether to have children. My life is just as much in limbo as most people's on a reserve, I would think, just because of the economic realities of our modern-day world.

I think, at the end of the day, when we talk about people's perceptions about native people, a lot of it is unfounded and a lot of it is misrepresented, but I think there has to come a time when — I think political correctness has gotten us so unwilling to call a snake a snake or a duck a duck — sometimes we have to take a step back and just realize that sometimes people have to take responsibility for their actions. If a person is of native descent, I don't see any reason why they can't live under the same laws and freedoms that the rest of us enjoy and have to live under. I've witnessed this. My sister had to go through a bout of this before, and it's a tough thing to see.

Also, as far as going and negotiating these land claims, I watched the NDP, to the natives' credit, being totally out-negotiated during the negotiation practices. I think that if it does come down, we do have a responsibility to negotiate these. When it comes down to negotiations, they're playing for keeps. I would expect my representation, whatever form it may take, to be playing the same way. To their credit, they've done a masterful job of getting their needs and their wants out there.

I wish I'd brought my presentation. I had a lot more I wanted to touch on. I guess that's probably about it.

D. MacKay: Just a comment, Richard. For those of us that live in the north, we understand the problems that the economic downturn is playing on a large number of families, native and non-native. We have a lot of problems up here from an economic standpoint. You now have a group of people up here who are going to have to come up with some questions to put on a referendum to help our negotiators define the principles they're going to negotiate on our behalf. Now, if you had an opportunity — and I'm suggesting you do have an opportunity here today — to tell the negotiators what principles you want them to negotiate on your behalf, what would you tell them?

R. Fuerst: Well, I think at the end of the day I would want finality. It's the main thing we're looking at. For the last ten years we've been just tossing the ball around, not knowing where it was going to land, and I think finality is one thing we're looking for. Maybe I'm incorrect in this, but from reading the Nisga'a Final Agreement, and I've read it a few times, it's an open-ended treaty. It can be renegotiated if a better deal comes further down the line. That's no way to build any kind of stability — waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. There has to be a point where we say: "This is it. No more."

Our final presentation this afternoon is from Darlene Glaim-Buchholtz. Good afternoon.

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Good afternoon. First of all, I want to thank you all here for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'm Gyologyet. That's my chief name from the Cassyex house of the Gitdumden clan within the Wet'suwet'en nation. As a hereditary chief I speak to you on behalf of the office of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs located here in Smithers as well as in Moricetown.

It is important that the government of British Columbia and the hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en continue an ongoing dialogue regarding the past, the present and the future of our territories and on behalf of all British Columbia. There are many things that need to be said and discussed. Many injustices have taken place. Many challenges exist, and many opportunities are available to us. We can deal with these injustices. We can meet these challenges, and we can successfully take advantage of these opportunities if we work together in a spirit of recognition, respect and reconciliation.

We are concerned about the government's position that there be a referendum regarding the treaty process in British Columbia. We recognize that there are deep problems with the treaty process. We are not pleased with it. To date it has not been a process which has enabled us to achieve the kind of progress which is necessary.

Nevertheless, treaty-making is an important aspect of the political and legal fabric in Canada. Treaty-making is critical to the future of this province, and we would want to see nothing which would disturb the possibility of a meaningful and effective treaty-making process. Let us be clear. The alternatives to treaty-making are continued injustice and uncertainty, increased litigation and ongoing disharmony.

We are worried about the referendum because it may be a very divisive process. As a result of posing a simple yes or no question to British Columbians, there may be a polarization in this province at a time in which we do not need to have more adversity. We are concerned that this polarization may be a harbinger of ill will and bad feelings that will be with us for years to come. We feel that the referendum may be a negative measure when we need positive steps to increase who we are as British Columbians, sharing this province together, and with who we want to be. We agree that British Columbians need to be asked many questions. Those questions have to do with recognition, respect and reconciliation.

With regard to reconciliation, we need to ask British Columbians: do you recognize the fact that we as Wet'suwet'en and as aboriginal people lived upon this land — governed, owned and possessed it — long before any other people came here? Do you recognize that this is an historical fact? Do you recognize the fact that the courts of Canada have said that aboriginal title, the aboriginal right to own and exclusively use the land, is a constitutionally protected right? Do you recognize that we have the right to be involved in all decisions concerning our land and resources, particularly those that will affect the health and protection of these treasures in the future?

With regard to respect, we need to ask British Columbians: do you respect our language, our culture and our history? Do you respect the wisdom of our elders? Do you respect the need to rebuild healthy communities among our people? Do you respect the need to make sure that British Columbians do not forget how this province was established and what happened to us, whether it be in the residential schools, on our reserves or in a pyramid of other ways, as effort after effort was made to disinherit us from all that we had and held dear?

With regard to reconciliation, we need to ask British Columbians: how can true unity come about? What is the meaning of a just and lasting reconciliation? How can the treaty process be redesigned so that it is a process which heals rather than divides, that builds rather than holds us back?

Indeed, many questions need to be raised and answered. We need a treaty process which will provide certainty, but most importantly, we need a treaty process which will provide justice. These are the real questions that need to be put forward before British Columbians. How can we achieve justice? How can we truly recognize and respect aboriginal peoples? How can we achieve the kind of just and lasting reconciliation which our people and the province so deeply need and deserve? That's the questions and a bit of a summary of the presentation I wanted to make here today on behalf of the chiefs.

We've been involved with the treaty process now for seven years. We have felt that it's been slow, and at times it's been very frustrating. The losses of our elders, the uncertainty to our young people…. The lack of leadership within the treaty process has been frustrating for them; communication's been frustrating. Only to see that your government has come forward after the principles and guidelines to the treaty process were set — we're now reviewing those. We've spent, after this fiscal year…. Our bill, which we borrowed, is going to be up to $5.6 million. What's going to happen to that if you change the game now? Are you going to take over the bill for us so that we don't have to pay that back? Because you're changing the game after this far into the negotiation process.

This process, to me, just seems that it's bringing us backwards, and that's why I've tried to present here today some positive things that this committee can do in order to make this referendum more of a positive thing than a negative, in that we have gone through this process after this length of time and hope that we can continue with where we are at. Like I say, since I started this, seven years have now passed, and we've lost several chiefs at our table. Even in this room I watched one of our elders have a stroke, fall to the floor, and nobody would even get beside him and help him up. Is there that much dissension that has to be caused over this issue? I realize people don't feel like

they know what has happened to aboriginal people in this province, but that's our job, to deal with it here. It should be some of the leadership within British Columbia, like the MLAs, sitting here at the tables.

This has been a difficult process personally and professionally. It affects our families. It affects the school district here in Smithers. We've seen in the paper practically six months of issues related to the Moricetown children attending school here. It's unnecessary that our children have to feel that they're something different in the school. We would like to see a settlement here as much as any of you would. We don't like to have a difficult time going into the supermarkets here and seeing people that we've seen all of our lives. Now we're finally getting to the issue of the land question, and it keeps going backwards rather than forwards. I would like to see my children prosper in this country as much as anybody else. I don't know if there's certainty either. Should I buy a new car? Should I buy a new house? I pay for a house here in town. This wasn't my passion as I started to develop some kind of professional life, and it's becoming that.

There's a lot of people who are making money off this process — sure there is. It takes a lot of educated people. I just met the Minister Responsible for Treaty Negotiations this week after he had been involved with the Delgamuukw-Gisday'wa court case. We spent about $10 million of our money on that process as well. There hasn't been anybody I know that didn't help with that court case to make sure our issues were brought to the courts of Canada, beginning with British Columbia. That's how far our chiefs have had to go with this issue — to no avail, as far as this treaty process. This was when they saw that we could finally settle issues here. We have the provincial and the federal teams who have two people taking care of six or ten files in this area. Just to get their attention you have to get a calendar in advance of six months — just to get our meetings scheduled.

I have time to answer your questions, if you have some questions, but I wanted to reiterate. I know you've probably heard lots of people frustrated in Smithers, in this community, through some of our signings just to try and develop relationships, through the political accord we signed with the province and the federal government. That was a measure to try to get our people involved with the economic fabric within the traditional territory of our people. What we saw there was a reception of people with placards, all thinking that we're going to take over everything. That's not true. We want to be involved with our land, make decisions on our land and have some say in what goes on. After all, our people come from here. We've been here for thousands of years, not just 100 or 120. I've seen a lot of devastation happen to my family, other families around me within the Wet'suwet'en community. It gets hard after a while seeing nothing but all the social problems that we have.

We'd like to see some positive results over this treaty process. We're not here just to have them spend the money of British Columbians or borrow money from the federal government. That's not our goal. I just wanted to be clear about that.

B. Lekstrom: Thanks, Darlene. The question I would have in listening to what you've said…. I think most people are frustrated on both sides of the table. You say what we're doing isn't working. I see the process we're involved in here today and throughout the month as going out and talking with British Columbians to find out what will work. The principles you've talked on have been part of the system that really, truly isn't working right now — not every one of them or all of them. I think our goal is the same as your goal, and that's to reach agreement and move on so that we can have some certainty.

I know there is some apprehension on the participation of first nations in this process, but I would put it out that I believe it's a good process to help us set a direction for British Columbians on knowing what we want to negotiate. I said yesterday that if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. That appears to me to be the position we're in right now.

So we're going out wanting to talk to all British Columbians. It's a bit of a struggle when there is a boycott happening, but we want to hear from everybody, because at the end of the day there's no doubt in my mind that both sides want the same thing. That's a resolve to the issues that we face as British Columbians and as Canadians.

Is there any recommendation you would have when we talk about questions and put them out there? What may work for all British Columbians? I believe a positive approach breeds positive results and a negative approach breeds negative results. I'm looking at this as a positive. I'm looking to you, if you have an idea on a question per se that would encompass all people and that they would feel comfortable answering. It's a long-winded question, eh?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: I went through the three general areas, and those were recognition, respect and reconciliation.

As far as the principles that you're looking for, I think they need to be respectful, balanced and as non-adversarial as they can be. Aboriginal rights exist. We've proven that through the court case. Our aboriginal rights are here. I think we need to work on developing relationships and partnerships with all levels of government and industry.

I referenced the political accord. These aren't questions per se, I guess, but in terms of what we're looking at in developing our communities, it takes that time. We have to take steps to be able to walk before we're going to run. We've got high unemployment records and lots of social problems within our communities. It's going to take some flexibility to be able to be successful.

The treaty process needs to result in clear, understandable, pragmatic agreements so that all groups will know what they are agreeing to. We need to produce agreements which evolve as needed to meet changing circumstances. Laws do change. Look at the Firearm Act. That law changed. As a result of that, we've had to deal with that change in our community as well — register people's firearms and so on.

We need to entail more of that transference of existing economic development program funds to exchange aboriginals and resource development and resource-based employment opportunities. Currently aboriginal groups are being encouraged to engage in resource-based economic development activities under existing legislation and regulations. More often than not, the existing legislation, regulation and land use plans go against the aboriginal desires around sustainable development and protection.

What is really sad about this trend is that aboriginal groups are invited by governments to compete for tenures, and aboriginal tenure bids have to be just as good as or better than those bids submitted by deep-pocketed experienced developers. We're inexperienced in a lot of these areas.

Include sign-off provisions for aboriginal groups in land use planning. The basis of the issues around title and rights goes back to the land, recognizing that all land will never be turned back. Then aboriginal groups must have a say in the use to which land is put.

I can probably go on, as well, in terms of different ideas as to how to improve the process. Our chief negotiator was unable to make it here today, so I've taken the role as an assistant negotiator to be here on his behalf. I've hopefully answered your question a bit.

M. Hunter: You've made it very clear. You've expressed your concerns about the referendum. Nevertheless, you have expressed some thoughts and some concepts — recognition, respect, reconciliation — that are consistent themes I've heard from aboriginal leaders before.

I think it's worth my while stressing to you — and I think my colleagues would agree — that we believe that along with the referendum comes the commitment to negotiate treaties. I think it's important — and I would ask that you make sure that message is carried back — as you assess your role in this process, that you do understand that each one of us here is a part of a government that believes very strongly that treaties need to be done.

I think you heard from our Attorney General. I don't know what he said to you, but I think it's fair that we do understand our constitutional, legal and, as I think most of us understand, the moral and economic responsibilities around this whole subject. I took a couple of your themes, recognition and respect, as where I think we have a problem.

In my community of Nanaimo, where negotiations are allegedly at a fairly advanced stage, the problem is that people on the non-aboriginal side feel that recognition and respect have not been afforded to them. That is expressed in the way people say: "Well, I didn't know what was going on. You can't be doing this. You can't be doing that."

I think my own feeling — and I hope you'll convey it — is that this isn't about derailing a process that has to be done. Everybody agrees that the opportunity costs are huge for everybody, and we have to get on with it. I wanted to say that.

I also wanted to ask you a question. I didn't get all your questions down, but you talked in terms of recognition. You thought we might ask a question about recognizing that ownership was in the hands of your people before contact. That's a historical fact. I want to understand why you would recommend that we ask questions about fact. I'm not sure I understand. Why would we ask questions about legal situations which, to the government of British Columbia, if not to the government of Canada, are clear? Can you just pursue that a little bit for me, please?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: I think those are statements more than they are questions to you. Those are questions that I think all British Columbians need to know in terms of our rights. You know, we've had to take those to court through the Delgamuukw-Gisday'wa court case to fight for our rights as aboriginal people.

In terms of the questions that your committee is looking to ask, that's maybe too much of an open-ended question. I don't know what kinds of questions you're trying to form for this referendum, but I guess those are things I believe people in British Columbia need to understand — the legal and constitutional rights of aboriginal people in British Columbia and Canada.

M. Hunter: I'm certainly not going to disagree with that observation, Darlene. Would you propose preambular material in referendum questions to state those facts? Was that a lead-in to that?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: I think it's important. I think they go hand in hand. I don't know if you're going to have some kind of historical overview of why we're in the treaty process in the first place. Lots of people don't understand why.

M. Hunter: I don't know the answer to that either, but I don't think we're going to present a couple of million voters with a telephone book that they have to read before they answer the questions either. I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

G. Trumper: Thank you, Darlene, for your presentation. Can I ask you how far along you are in the treaty process here?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: We're in the fourth stage. We've been there for two or three years now. We've been in the agreement-in-principle stage for some time.

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: No. We've initialled a protocol agreement on lands and resources and so on.

G. Trumper: I certainly would like to reiterate something that Mike Hunter said, and I would agree with you over the slow process. I sat representing local government with the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council, and it was incredibly slow and frustrating for everyone. They actually got to the stage where 60 percent of them turned down the initialled AIP. We certainly hope that the direction we're taking will make it sooner rather than later. So we need a better way of doing it.

Do you have any suggestions as to how you see the process being not so much speeded up but streamlined in getting to the end result? How would you see improvements being made?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: The substantive issues that are listed in our framework are quite extensive, as all framework agreements probably are. I often think of how the Nisga'a finally got to their final stage by having — what was it? — a five-day lockup or something like that. It was a long process. To some extent I think that would help with chief negotiators meeting more often to try to get down to the issues. We've also suggested the idea of a skinny AIP outlining, to some extent, smaller, less detailed information.

For a while we felt that we were getting to more of a final agreement than an agreement-in-principal. That's certainly something to look at. Then again, as for communication, there needs to be a lot more dialogue within the Wet'suwet'en community in terms of what the expectations are. I think that is sometimes an issue.

Within the Bulkley Valley we have our MLA here, Dennis MacKay, who probably needs me to explain the process. I hear that the Liberal Party is becoming more for than against the treaty negotiation process, taking into consideration the Nisga'a agreement and the court case that was going to be held. I think that support needs to be there at all levels. You don't have to agree with everything that's in the treaty process, but there has to be some leadership in the area shown to the general public. Every time there's something in the papers about aboriginal issues, it just crushes relationship-building. We've tried to make this process more positive and deal with our issues at the table as much as we can, rather than having disagreements in front of the community of Smithers, for instance.

I don't know. As far as speeding it up, I think those are some general comments that I have.

G. Trumper: Could I just follow up on that? I don't know whether you've got any here, but do you see any benefits in getting to the end product, which really is the treaty, which is the icing on the cake? Do you see a benefit to maybe going through some specific interim agreements on specific things and building on that in getting to the end, rather than the whole thing all at once?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Again, that's been one of our chief's directions to us: to try wherever we can to build relationships. That was the purpose of the political accord on lands and resources: to try to get involved in the economy as well as to identify protection issues. To get involved at a real level, we've been speaking to municipalities throughout the traditional territory from Smithers to Burns Lake. We've had meetings with the regional district to try to identify areas where we could work together on common issues.

What else have we done? With our main tables we always have a public education process, whether it be on the topic of the day…. We've met with the school district, for instance, because we're negotiating on education. We've tried to develop interim measures on child welfare. We've got an accord with your government — well, of course, it will be up for renewal this coming year — but that's been a measure to try and improve on human and social services, lands and resource issues and economic initiatives. So that political accord has built a relationship with a lot of your ministry staff, your line staff and communities. It's been a very positive start for us. That was generally to avoid court cases. We all know where those go. We're still hearing a little bit about our last one in terms of cost. It's a big price for no relationship building. We need to do these things at a community level and try to build from there.

V. Anderson: Thank you very much, Darlene, for helping us to understand. I can express that one of our tasks is to help us come to common principles that everybody understands and can work and go ahead with, with a vision.

One of the questions that has come up is that there seems to be a general agreement that the process so far hasn't met expectations. I was wondering whether that's a difficulty in the initial principles which were being used, or is it a difficulty in that the initial process didn't fit the principles? In other words, is it the process that we really need to examine, which we maybe do, or do we need to go back and review the principles, or are some of the principles valid at this point and others that need to be changed?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Well, I think the principles were good. I mean, I don't know if you're going to add to those principles that you already have been negotiating under. Maybe you could fine-tune them in terms of what means more than the other, but I think there are a lot of things that have to be realized at the table.

There are, first of all, your policies within your government that we're negotiating based on what our mandates are. We have to look at policies, regulations, all the different laws, the constitution. There are so many considerations. When you hear that the negotiation process is one of the most difficult negotiations ever hitting Canada, I believe it's true, because it's very complex with the three parties. When we're negotiating land, it's with B.C. When we're negotiating fisheries, it's with the federal government. I'm not sure if just the

principles are going to make this thing speed up. I think there is the education process, the technical research that's required and so on, on various subjects.

V. Anderson: One question to follow up with. Would you say that a principle that we might put forward is to urge better and renewed understanding in coming together between the federal and the provincial so that they might be working better together than they have? Has that been a problem? Because they weren't working together. Could it be improved?

Sometimes I think it's an issue in terms of…. Like, if it's a provincial topic, obviously the provincial negotiators are spending a lot of time preparing, and the federal team sort of…. We sort of give each other jobs so that not one side is kind of going to sleep or something. They're usually recording the decisions that are being made if the one party is not with the mandate of the day. I think, of course, there are always times when we could be better prepared for the negotiations.

There are regional people here who work in the community of Smithers. There are others that are in Prince George. Sometimes they're in Prince Rupert. It depends on the topic. With fisheries we have people now from Prince Rupert and Vancouver. Just to organize a meeting is fairly complex. We've tried to work on things that affect our whole territory — for example, wildlife. In general, we've just tried to work at it so that we're able to complete as much as we can. Then if we have really strong ideas on different things, we end up leaving those for the chief negotiators to discuss at our main table.

V. Anderson: My final comment. It may be difficult to get the general public to understand all these principles, but if there were key principles which could be part of going forward in our understanding that you could let us know about at a later time perhaps, I think that would be most helpful.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): If it sounds like there's an echo in here, it's because there probably is. I was going to ask you a question about principles as well.

You made reference in your submission to principles to which first nations had already agreed to with respect to the negotiations that have been ongoing for some years. Presumably, then, you're making reference to the principles that are outlined within the terms of reference of the B.C. Treaty Commission. I think there are some 18 or 19 principles enumerated there. First of all, are you comfortable with those principles as outlined in the B.C. Treaty Commission terms of reference?

Beyond that, I think you understand the task that is before us with respect to principles and pointing to certain principles, asking questions in and around certain principles, in turn providing provincial negotiators with some principles or guidelines with respect to treaty negotiations from the perspective of the provincial government. Are there principles there — that is, within the principles with which you're very familiar — that we should be looking to in terms of our task?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Well, I don't want to comment on many. I don't know them all off by heart or anything, with all the principles that have been laid out. The principles that we've gone by are respect, recognition and reconciliation. Those are the primary principles that we've been going by. It's there. For one, respect is really important in terms of our relationship. In terms of reconciliation, we need to reconcile a lot of outstanding differences. Recognition that all of this has taken place, and we need to address it. We can't just leave it. Those are our main principles.

I don't want to go into whether I accepted all of those others that the B.C. Treaty Commission or the provincial government have outlined. What I think is that, again, we really need to recognize the principles that are laid out there as well as all the issues and how they need to be addressed. There are legal implications, and there's the constitution of Canada and all of the different rules and regulations that we all abide by at this time. Again, I think it's complex. The principles are there, yes, but there are also lots of other things that we have to look at.

D. MacKay: Darlene, I don't think there's any secret about my opposition to the Nisga'a treaty. I think the reason that I was so opposed to the Nisga'a treaty is the fact that it was done in secret. The people were never consulted. I was never consulted as a resident, as a taxpayer in the province as to whether or not I was willing to give up a piece of the northwest part of this province to a select group of individuals based on their background because they were natives. That part of the province belongs to me. It belongs to my children. It belongs to my grandchildren. It belongs to you. It belongs to your children. But for some reason, a treaty was signed where a portion of that land was given away to the exclusion of my children. I took exception to that, because I wasn't asked to have any input into that. When I did try to find out what was going on, I wasn't privy to that information.

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: You know, our people weren't privy to the land being given out to all the different settlers and everybody in British Columbia, here or the northwest either. My grandmother never, ever signed anything to give away her traditional territory. That has been sold, and there's still Crown land left. Our

people have had our places burnt down on those territories. We had an elder who was crying at our meeting this week about how she grew up there, was born there. Now she just wants to have a place there so that she can return as an elder and have some peace of mind that her territory is going to be there for her grandchildren as well. I recognize your place in this country as well, but we also have a place here, and we want to have some say in what happens to it and be able to go out there to where our people were born. I just wanted to say that.

D. MacKay: Okay. You mentioned also that you agreed that B.C. citizens must be asked many questions. I like to think that this forum we've undertaken today is doing just that. We're going out there. We're asking the people what they think should be the principles that are going to guide future treaties. On May 16 of this year we were elected by a huge majority of the people of this province on a number of commitments. One of our commitments was to hold a one-time provincewide referendum. We are going to live up to the commitments that we made to the people of this province when they elected us as a government.

Here we are today. This is our second stop, and we are going to travel around the province asking for input and asking for some suggestions into the principles that should guide the treaty process. I don't believe that previous governments did that. You have to look at the Northwest Territories, where a huge portion of Canada was once again given away. That was my inheritance as far as I'm concerned.

In order for this process to come to a happy resolution, we have to include the people of the province. The Nisga'a people were entitled to vote on the Nisga'a issue. The rest of the province was never asked to vote on it. This way you have the one-time referendum. The people of the province will understand what the principles are in the treaty process. They're going to have some feeling that they had some input into a treaty process that's going to affect them and future generations.

I'm disappointed that you're opposed to the referendum, but you're entitled to your views, and I'm entitled to mine. I appreciate your input, and I'd like to thank you very much, Darlene, for coming out today.

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Thank you. In response I'd just like to say here we are. We used to be the majority in this territory; now we're the minority. Having people vote on a legally responsible process here makes it very difficult to make this process end someplace. Again, it's just going to be divisive in its nature if we think we're going to be able to have a referendum for the non-native community to vote. I mean, our people definitely have to vote to ensure that it's what they want, because it's a collective voice. I realize it's a collective voice for you as well, and that's how you got elected here, but as well, you were elected as the voice for the people in this area. I think having a referendum on every treaty is just going to be costing you a lot more money for something that your representation as MLAs, through the democratic system that we have here, should be able to take care of. I disagree with that too. People should vote.

D. Chutter: A quick question, Darlene. You commented that your objective, I believe, is to have decision-making input into the land, not necessarily exclusive use. Several aboriginal leaders in my riding have used, as their objective, the word "sharing" — sharing the land and sharing communities. Is that a description or a word that you would use as well?

D. Glaim-Buchholtz: Yeah, we've used that concept, but we haven't defined it as clearly as it needs to be in terms of what co-jurisdiction means. We have to live somewhere, obviously. That's been said. Right now we have people who live amongst the reserve type of community as well as off. In terms of that, co-jurisdiction has to be…. That's what we're at the table, trying to come up with a solution. It's definitely something that needs a lot more discussion.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Darlene, for coming to visit with us this afternoon. We appreciate what you've said, and we'll take it all into consideration in the weeks ahead.

J. Les (Chair): We're now going to recess this hearing until 6:30. At that point, I believe we have another three presenters.

J. Les (Chair): The hearing of the standing committee resumes. Our first presenter this evening is Mr. Ken Buchanan. Good evening.

K. Buchanan: Good evening Mr. Les, Mr. Nettleton, members of the committee. My name is Ken Buchanan. My Gitxsan name is Nii lax dax'txw. I've been honoured by the Gitxsan nation by being adopted into the Wilp Wii Gaak. I sit on the village of Hazelton council in the north-central municipal association. I work for a Gitxsan corporation, and I'm an adviser to the Gitxsan negotiation team. I am not here to speak on behalf of the Gitxsan simgiigyet.

I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak on this very important issue. I should say from the outset that I am very disappointed with the lack of advertising and notice that you have provided to us. It's inexcusable for a committee of this size — and it's such an important issue — to basically have it in the paper yesterday and expect people to be able to prepare and give a presentation. We had no notice.

Firstly, on behalf of the village of Hazelton I wish to advise that our council has not changed its stand on the treaty referendum. We continue to oppose the referendum. We believe the expense of the referendum should be reviewed and applied to local treaty negotiations. Treaties need to be settled to provide economic stability within our area.

The Gitxsan hereditary chiefs will not be making a presentation today — I understand Suu Dii will be following me — although they consider this matter extremely important. They were not given sufficient time to prepare a presentation. This week is the annual summit for the Gitxsan. The Gitxsan are a nation that prefer and insist upon providing oral presentations. They are an oral nation. I'm saddened that the simgiigyet were not able to attend. I would request strongly that the committee make arrangements to meet with the Gitxsan simgiigyet at some point in the future. I understand the Gitxsan legal counsel has made some applications for that.

Personally I believe the referendum is a divisive, expensive process for the Premier to obtain public opinion. This government was elected to lead and make decisions, not to spend millions asking for public opinion. In this case the majority of citizens of this province are being asked to decide very important issues for a minority. In this case the minority is a first nations people, people who have constitutional right to treaty settlements, to live on their traditional lands.

Who will get to vote? In the last two decades the population of British Columbia has grown substantially, primarily from new immigrants. These immigrants now outnumber the first nations people. Should the immigrants have a say in how the first nations people are to be treated going into the future? I think not.

What truly is needed is for the government to get serious about treaty negotiations. Give the negotiators the authority to negotiate the issues, not just some of the issues but all of the issues. The negotiators for the province come to the table with their hands tied, and at times gagged, on certain issues. They tend to burn out, quit and leave for various reasons. Success or failure in the treaty process will not change their lifestyle. It will not make a difference to their families, their children or their grandchildren. They already have many of the good things in life. They have a job to do, and they do the best they can.

On the other side of the table sit the first nations. The negotiators have the enviable task of representing their people. How the negotiations go is going to affect the future of their families, their children's future and their children's children's future. They are negotiating for the land they have always lived on, for the territory they have used to provide for themselves for thousands of years. They are negotiating for what has always been theirs. What gives the government the right to say that the land belongs to the government? It should be up to the government to prove ownership, not the first nations.

Meanwhile, people on the reserves are living in poverty. Unemployment rates are in the 80 percent range, and the health and mortality rates would be unacceptable in most civilized nations. The negotiators have to go back to their annual assemblies and report little or no progress on key issues. They also have to report the current level of debt that has been incurred since the last annual assembly. The debt just keeps rising.

When they look out around the room, more elders have passed on — passed on before seeing results, before seeing changes to the living conditions of their grandchildren. That was very evident when the Attorney General was at our annual assembly on Monday. Elders were speaking on those very issues.

The treaty process is taking far longer than the original expectations and costing far more than expected. Why is that? I believe the government has not had the political will to settle and is not living by the rule of law. Mandates from the governments have not been built on the court rulings since 1982.

This referendum process is another expensive time-wasting attempt to derail the treaty process. Asking the general public to vote on an issue when they have little or no understanding of the issues is not right. Will they decide after educating themselves, or will they decide based on their preconceived, stereotypical ideas?

I am not in favour of the referendum process. Our village council is not in favour of the process. Our regional district is not in favour. The B.C. Treaty Commission is not in favour, and even the federal Minister of Indian Affairs has been reported not to favour this approach. And, of course, the Gitxsan nation is not in favour.

As a concerned taxpayer of this province I listened to the news reports last night concerning the fiscal state of our province: cutbacks, layoffs, no additional funds for health and education. Meanwhile, we have this large group of MLAs travelling the province at substantial expense. I questioned the Attorney General, Minister Plant, on Monday, and he said that he did not know what the cost of this process was nor did he have any idea what the referendum process may cost. I'm asking you tonight to provide those figures. I'm sure, given the fiscal restraints within the province, that the accounting departments can know what the cost is.

I would strongly urge you to stop the process and put the funds to better use. The Gitxsan have requested a number of interim measures that would immediately improve their economic stability and future. I'm sure many other first nations have also. Take the millions or tens of millions of dollars and put them to good use, not waste them.

Trying to negotiate treaties to complete conclusions appears more and more to be too large a task. I would recommend that the process change and have smaller parts of the greater picture negotiated part by part rather than taking years before any results are realized. We want to see results, big or small. I noticed this afternoon in the transcripts of the caucus meeting yesterday, where the Attorney General was speaking to caucus, that his opinions seem to mirror wanting to get things negotiated part by part as opposed to the whole

thing. It has kind of led me to think that maybe the decisions have already been made. What is the use of this if he's already got some idea that's going to speed up the treaty process?

Before concluding, I would be remiss not to mention our surprise — and, some people have told me, shock — when we heard that our local MLA, Dennis MacKay, had been appointed to this committee. Mr. MacKay has not visited with our village council or our mayor since the election. More shocking, he had no involvement with the Gitxsan first nation, the hereditary chiefs or the Gitxsan treaty society. We were honoured to have Minister Plant attend the Gitxsan summit this week; however, Mr. MacKay was visibly absent. If Mr. MacKay is expected to make knowledgeable contributions to your process, then he should be out visiting the local first nations. In Mr. Plant's presentation yesterday he stated that the Gitxsan views and expectations of treaty were quite different than other areas of the province. You have to look at all sides and all people's expectations. He should also be out finding out the issues, experiencing the poverty and living conditions. He should be visiting with our elders and leaders to learn firsthand what is needed, and I'd like to invite him to come visit us. It's the least we should expect from our MLA.

B. Belsey: Thank you very much for your presentation. In one section here you've made reference to government and negotiations. Do you break down whether it's federal government or provincial government, or is it just all governments that you refer to?

K. Buchanan: I would think all governments but more specifically the provincial government.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Ken, I know your village is opposed to an incremental approach with respect to treaty settlement. Is that the case? Isn't that something you would favour?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I understand your opposition to the referendum, but do you have any words of advice with respect to principles, in and around the treaties, that perhaps would be helpful to us?

K. Buchanan: Well, things have to move. We can't continue with the high unemployment rates and the poverty. There's got to be positive things happening, and you can't wait 20 years. It's been too many years already. You know, settling issues as they come…. When interim measures are presented and then nothing happens or very small things happen, it's just total frustration.

B. Lekstrom: Thanks, Ken, for your presentation. I guess what I would look for, and see if we find agreement on first, is that I don't believe the process we're presently working under right now is working effectively. I'm looking to see if you would agree with that.

K. Buchanan: Yes, but because the province doesn't have the will to make it happen.

B. Lekstrom: Okay. If the province doesn't have the will, as you say, and we as a new government and a select committee of the Legislature, which is an all-party committee…. The invitation was put out. We're looking for ways to improve that. That's really how I see this process and the referendum.

I know some people are concerned that it may be something that it isn't. In my eyes it's a way to try and refocus us as to what British Columbians would like under the principles of negotiations so that we can move this forward. As you indicated, it has taken far too long, not just on the issue of settlement. It affects all of us as British Columbians, with this time frame dragging on and on. We seem to have developed an industry unto itself with negotiations.

Just a general question. Do you have any other ideas on how we could move negotiations forward?

K. Buchanan: Well, I think that if the governments had the will to settle…. Certainly the first nations do. They're the ones living in the poverty and in the bad situation, fighting for what was theirs and is theirs. The government has to accept some of those principles and come to the table and be prepared to do this within a three- or four-year framework. You will never have it done when the negotiators can't talk about certain issues, don't have the authority, are very vague on what they're able to say — what they can say, what they can't say. They haven't been given enough authority. Then, to settle things, like I say, in parts, as opposed to the whole….

I read something we received today. Sorry, I don't know the author's name. Someone wrote an article where he stated it was his impression that when your government changed its mind on fighting the Nisga'a claim in court, you brought in this referendum approach to use public opinion as opposed to the legal courts to get your way, and I tend to agree with that.

B. Lekstrom: Maybe I could just follow up with one more question, certainly recognizing you're opposed to it. That's one of the great things about our society. We can all express our views and have that. Knowing that this process is proceeding as we sit here today, do you have a recommendation on a question you think would be worthwhile? Although you're opposed to the process, do you have something you could add to say: "I may be opposed, but if you're going ahead, here's something that would be important to add to those questions"?

K. Buchanan: No, I don't think so. Given that the people who are going to vote don't know the issues, haven't been to the reserves and haven't been out to see the issues, they can't make a knowledgable decision on it. If it does go ahead, which it seems it's going to, whether we like it or not….

I was asking the Attorney General on Monday what kind of budget is going to be out there for the first nations. How is this education process supposed to work? Are there going to be moneys available? Again, it's going to be millions put into a public education forum in what appears to be a relatively short period of time. It's just more money that's going to be wasted.

J. Les (Chair): On that almost similar topic — you make mention of it in your presentation, as well — that the public of British Columbia is not well informed about the issues, would you agree with me that is a major impediment to successful treaty-making?

K. Buchanan: No. I think the public opinion polls that have been carried out for some time now have said the majority of British Columbians are in favour of negotiating the treaties.

K. Buchanan: They've recognized that it's an issue that has to be dealt with.

K. Buchanan: And I don't think asking them what questions should be asked or just putting a set of questions to them is going to solve anything. They've recognized they don't know all the issues. They just want this to be dealt with, and you're elected to do that.

J. Les (Chair): But you would agree with me, I presume, that this is a major undertaking.

J. Les (Chair): Yes, very significant for the future of, first of all, first nations people and, secondly, for all residents of British Columbia — both current and future. It's one thing for people, notionally, to say we're in favour of settling treaties with first nations, but when that same opinion is ill informed in terms of what issues are at play and what a treaty might look like, I believe that there's potential for treaties to be settled and for people coming along after the fact and asking: "What have you done? We never agreed with this." Aren't we better off foreclosing that eventuality ahead of time so that people will be more cognizant of what treaty-making is all about so that once the treaty is settled, we'll be able to get on with good relationships in our various communities around the province?

K. Buchanan: Well, good relationships, but the first nations people are still going to be here. Just because there are some signatures on a document that say this is a treaty…. It takes years, and it's going to be forever a relationship between the Crown and the Crown of the first nations, whatever form of government they have. It's not going to just disappear.

Back to your question. I think people within the province — and opinion polls have been pretty high for many years — don't know the issues per se, but they realize that for the good of all, the treaties have to be settled. Maybe they don't want to or they don't know the specifics or the technical aspects of it, but they want it dealt with.

If the government had the will to give the authority to the negotiators, it could be done. If you've ever gone to a treaty negotiation, there are just too many issues that can't be discussed or that they can't give an answer to.

B. Belsey: If this referendum were to give those negotiating a clear mandate to negotiate, would that be a good reason to move ahead with a referendum?

K. Buchanan: I don't see, personally, any way that this referendum is going to give them a clear mandate to settle and to settle fairly.

J. Les (Chair): The next presenter this evening is Yvonne Lattie. Good evening.

Y. Lattie: Good evening. [The presenter spoke a language other than English.]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my way of honouring you. I am Yvonne Lattie, by my English name. Suu Dii is my Gitxsan name. I am from the house of Gwininitxw. I am a wing chief in that house. My grandfather, Wosimmidik, Robert Simpson, is from the house of Miluluk, of which Chief Hiiwas, Gloria Wilson, is also a member.

I am here, basically, to give you a little bit of background about who I am. I am Gitxsan. My father is European. I am from a matrilineal society; therefore, I follow under my mother, but I honour also my father. We have always been taught, right from birth, that we are only here for a brief time, that everything that is passed on to us is only passed on to us for a short period of time and that we must take care of all that is passed on to us so that it is passed on to the next generation.

I really believe that in order for the rest of B.C. to become involved in a referendum, they must understand who we are and what we are about and understand a bit of our culture. I think it's really unfair for

our MLAs to put the rest of B.C. on the spot by getting them to decide on something they don't understand.

As a Gitxsan person I myself cannot understand the treaty, basically because we believe in gwalxyeinsxw, which is: "To pass from one generation to the other." That is how we conserve the land and all its resources. We never took more than what we needed. We only took enough to sustain our lives and keep us comfortable to ensure that the next generation and all of the unborn generations were taken care of.

It seems that our whole north, specifically the Hazelton area, has suffered drastically from decisions made through multinational companies that have come in and taken over many of our resources and are trying to show us a way to survive. We have not been able to survive in this way. Many of us are unemployed.

I have lived off-reserve all of my life. I have paid taxes all of my life. I have built my own home. I am a single mother who has raised her children. I am a proud Gitxsan woman, and I am a proud mother of seven children to whom the legacy must be passed on and then on to their children.

When you say we must settle on land claims and settle for a very small portion of our territories, it is not what we are about, and it is not who we are. We cannot settle on something that has been handed down to us. We have been given the responsibility to ensure that it is passed to the next generation in the same order. How can you or anyone else tell us? We have been given a home, a breadbox. From our breadbox our survival comes. Now, if you were to take the water away, what would we be left with? We wouldn't survive, because we need the salmon to survive. We need to have balance to survive.

Because our house knows it is essential that we work with our neighbours, we have approached the guide-outfitters that work in our territory. We have approached the rafting expeditions that travel through our territory. We are going to work hand in hand with them, because when it comes down to it, we all see what is out there as being necessary for survival. We need clean water. We need clean air. We do need the wildlife. There must be a balance.

For the rest of B.C. — for instance, people in Vancouver — to make a decision on how we are to survive on a land 1,000 miles away does not make sense. I just don't know how to get across to people that they must understand us before they can judge us and before they can decide how we should live or what we should do.

We've been instructed, and the instruction never goes away. It's always there. When I was young, my grandmother told me many stories. She told me of many teachings. I thought, as I grew older, that I was not listening, but when the time came that all of these instructions were needed for my children, it all returned, because it is a part of who I am.

Chief Hiiwas and myself went into the area of the Sustut. It hit us like a ton of bricks — we had never been there — to see all of the culturally modified trees that are pre-1846. Puberty trees. Do any of you know what a puberty tree is? A puberty tree is a way our women protected the young ladies during their menstrual cycle. During the menstrual cycle it was believed that they were very, very powerful, and so to protect the men, they would bend the trees as a sign that men were not allowed in this area.

We've carried this tradition on for many, many years. We went to an area of a potlatch site. Barbeau's recordings and his books record people from Gitanyow, people from Kitwancool, being over in the Sustut area at a feast. They had walked the trails. It took them many days to get there, but it is a part of our culture to do these things.

There are recordings of a bridge that crossed the Sustut, pictures taken in 1899. We tried and we tried and we tried to protect this historic site. We contacted everybody we could possibly think of contacting to tell them the importance of our culture and the importance of our history, but in the end we lost. The area is going to have a bridge cross in the exact location as our ancient bridge.

When these decisions are being made, people look around and they don't understand who we are. How can people in Vancouver know who we are when our own local people don't know who we are? This is a part of who we are. This is a part of our history. It was as if I were to give you a book and took many of the pages out. Would you be able to understand that book? It's like me passing the history to my children and explaining to them: "This is the history of our people." If I am not able to put the whole puzzle together, how can I give them a complete picture of who they are? While we're sitting in treaty, sitting at the negotiating table, our history is wiped off the land. How do we protect our history?

Our people, as I found out the other day, are borrowing money for treaty negotiations. This is the legacy of my children and my grandchildren. My grandmother did not give me instructions that someone could negotiate on behalf of my children or my grandchildren. This is pochyetis. This is the passing on of what was intended for the use of these house members.

Can you go to the people of B.C. and tell them and get them to feel a little bit of what I'm feeling and get them to understand a little bit of the pain I'm experiencing? I don't think so. Unless you educate these people out there in what we are all about, how can you honestly believe that things will come down fairly?

I came here this evening. I've been in a meeting all day. We have a lot of issues that we have to deal with as a Gitxsan nation, and we understand that we do need good leadership. We do understand that something must happen, but we also understand that we must work together with our neighbours. It doesn't matter what colour our neighbours are. We must work together. If we are to succeed as a nation, we must work together. If we are going to find balance and harmony, we must work together. In order for you to understand us, you have to experience a little bit of who we are. You have to be on the land and feel what we feel and walk through the territories as we walk

through it. We will explain to you many of our sites, many of the sites which next year may not be there.

Already we are being wiped off our territories. Are we also going to get wiped off in a referendum? Is a referendum really fair? Are we taking to the Gitxsan a referendum asking them how they feel about the people that are not of Gitxsan descent who are living on their territories? No, because we realize that time must go on. It gets more difficult as time goes on, because it gets harder and harder for people to listen. It seems like they've already formed their opinions. It seems like somebody has already whispered in their ear that as Gitxsan we're going to get millions and millions of dollars for our territory. We don't want millions and millions of dollars for our territory. All we want is to be able to pass this land on to the next generation and the generation after it, ensuring the survival of these people.

If you look around you now and you look at these bare mountains and you look at all of our mills that are down, they have taken the prime from our territories. What are we left with? As Gitxsan people we never took the prime; we only took what was needed. I really hope that somehow I have come across and that you understand a little bit about who we are as Gitxsan people. As Gitxsan mothers it is our responsibility to ensure that the next several generations are taken care of. You will see that Gitxsan women are going to start getting up and start taking the lead.

J. Les (Chair): Are there any questions from committee members? Thank you for sharing with us this evening. We appreciate you coming.

Y. Lattie: I can't understand why nobody has any questions. I really believe that in order to understand who we are, you must have questions. If you don't have questions, then why not?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): I for one don't want you to interpret my silence as a lack of interest. I have a great deal of interest in what you have to say, and I've listened very carefully, as I'm sure my colleagues have. I would love to take the time to spend some time in your village and to listen and to learn. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time. Again, don't interpret our silence as a lack of interest. We're very interested in what you have to say.

V. Anderson: I was interested, and I can appreciate your feeling that coming from Vancouver we might not know your area, because we are far distant from it, although no doubt people have travelled there. What about the non-aboriginal people who live in and about your community area? Would you feel that they have a fair understanding of your needs as you have a fair understanding of their needs? They are your neighbours on a regular basis.

Y. Lattie: I believe there are some of our neighbours that do understand and, like any other nation, there are people that don't understand. So I cannot say that everybody understands, but there are a fair number of people that do understand. Many of our neighbours are also unemployed.

V. Anderson: I wanted to get at that. Probably there's a realization that the same is true in every region in the province — that the people living in the region, the neighbours and friends, would have a fair understanding of each other, the issues and the problems. You highlight that it's maybe something we need to take into account. Maybe there's some way that our response can note that and respond to that awareness of people who do have the personal experience — and our neighbours — expressing themselves.

H. Smit: Good evening. Copies are coming around. I just printed them out as requested.

My name is Hans Smit. I'm a professional geologist living in the Telkwa area. I'm speaking here on behalf of the Smithers Exploration Group. I want to kind of put a face to the people living up in this part of the world who work in the mineral industry, an industry that at one time was quite a major employer on the mining side and somewhat still is in this area. I still know a fair number of people working in the mineral exploration industry here, as myself, but we're all working outside the province. We're working in Alaska, Africa and South America, but we're not working out of our homes anymore.

It concerns us and certainly the whole aboriginal question and treaties affect us. The uncertainty there is one of the major reasons why there isn't exploration happening here. As well as being a geologist, I work for a junior mining company. I go around soliciting funds, trying to raise money for B.C. It doesn't work. It does work for other areas. I know the feelings well. I know the comments. Also, living here I understand some of the problems that come here and some of the concerns of the first nations.

The Smithers Exploration Group is a non-profit organization — really wide-based people who work in the exploration industry in northwestern B.C. — a declining group. We had 40 people; now we have ten. What does the mineral industry in B.C. need? These are things you'll hear from people who work in Vancouver and from people who work anywhere in the mineral industry in B.C.

We need secure mineral tenure. It takes a long time to find a mine — usually, on average, ten years. Once you find it, it takes another ten to 40 years to mine it and recoup your money. You have to know when you start exploring that if you find something, which is always a big if, that you can properly develop it under a stable regime of regulatory and investment. Without that, people don't want to invest, and we're seeing that

now. People don't know in B.C. if you get to keep it or who's going to own the land.

You need a regulatory regime that stays more or less stable. We know the world changes, and few of us complain about it. We still have a few old guard. You know, why do we have to fill out all these forms? Most of us realize that there are many other needs on the land. We have to do a good job. We have to watch our tailings, but we have to know that we can get permitted if we do a good job in a reasonable amount of time.

We need a fair tax structure. We can't go and spend $400 million building a mine if we don't know what the tax structure's going to be in the next 20 years — quite often, profits, plus or minus 10 percent. If taxes go up 10 percent, there's no profit left.

We need access to a large land base. Exploration takes a lot of area. It's a needle in a haystack. There are areas we know where to look and not to look right now. You basically don't know where that mine is out in B.C. The actual mines take very little room. I mean, if you fly from here to Vancouver, if you're lucky, you can see the old mine out of Houston. That's about the only mine you see between here and Vancouver. It probably produced — I don't know the exact numbers — tens of millions, certainly, in the economy, probably $100 million. The actual mining area isn't large, but if we don't have a large area to explore, because we don't know where that mine is, the mining industry will shrink.

What does the mining industry need from the treaty process? Like I say, it's a real one. I go to Toronto and Europe. I talk to people, and they won't invest in B.C. You can have a really nice property. You can sing and dance all you want, but you can't raise money. One of the reasons is this question of who owns the land and can you keep it? So I'm all for the treaty process. I mean, I think there are some legitimate reasons why it's taken this long, but it's time to get at it.

One of the things the mining industry needs, obviously, is finality. We have to know that if the agreements are made — and there's give and take on all sides, compromise — that has to be it. If the feeling is still there that well, yeah, but now your mine is pretty close to that area and maybe we'll change the boundaries of this or we'll change the rules there, people still aren't going to invest. Any agreements, if they're going to be of any benefit, have to have finality to them.

I think they also should have uniformity. If we have a province where there are 30 different jurisdictions under mineral tenure — and I'm sure other industries would be the same — and if there are different mineral tenures, how do you own the land? If there are different regulatory regimes — who controls the final say about whether you can or mine or not or who runs the regulatory regime — investment won't happen in this province. What you need is to know what the rules are. You might not even like some of the rules, but if you know what they are and the reward is possibly there, people will invest.

Fairness. I and many in the industry think the mineral industry is basically being ignored by first nations and negotiators on all sides. It's basically been a throw-away. If you look at the Nisga'a agreement, it's not even really targeted in that agreement. If you look at the mineral industry, which is now the third-largest industry in B.C. — it used to be the second-largest — it's been an important contributor to the economy, and it deserves for people to know about that industry. Negotiators should be up to speed on the industry and its uniqueness — just how hard it is to find mines and how much it hurts if you have a mine and it gets taken away. Your company loses that value. All the other people who explored and didn't find a mine aren't going to come back either. It's like a lottery ticket. If you have a lottery ticket and you don't get your reward, knowing that if you won you'd get a dollar back, you're kind of mad and so is everybody else who bought that lottery ticket, because it wasn't on a real lottery.

So there has to be fairness, there has to be finality, and it has to result in a known identity: what are the rules, where can we look, and who owns the land? In truth, the mining industry doesn't care who owns the land as long as they know who owns it. An investor out of London doesn't care whether they're paying taxes to a first nation, to the government or to a personal despot. They don't really care. The outside investor wants finality. They'll let us decide who and what, but that's what they're looking for.

We who live in northwestern B.C. have a bit more of a local flavour in how we see the mineral industry and how the treaty negotiation affects it. We live here. We want to live here. Most of us moved here by choice. Certainly for those who are working in the mining industry and are still living here, it's definitely by choice. It's not because business is booming.

I think the first reason is that we in northwestern B.C. welcome more involvement, hopefully, by the first nations. There have been some great examples: the Tahltans working with Eskay Creek and Golden Bear. Personally, I think what's going to drive the mineral industry in northwestern B.C. is if the first nations become active participants and partners in it. They want to live here. They will live here. They've always lived here. This is, I think, a way to foster real economic growth within first nations, because they'll be tied here. A lot of other mining people say: "Well, if it's no good here, I'll go work in Papua New Guinea." The first nations, as partners, are going to be strong supporters because they want mining here — done properly, looking after the environment, but employing people who live here.

We also want equality. We don't want to increase opportunities for one group by taking away opportunities from another group. There's lots of mineral potential out there. We increase first nations' opportunities by increasing the overall opportunities.

Then there's timeliness. The airport here in Smithers used to have 737s. They never really admitted it to the public, but they used to bump passengers for samples because it was a big business here. I can't remember, but I think there were $20 million or $30 million in exploration coming through Smithers at one time. Now it might be $1 million or $2 million. There is more than

that, but people like me are working in Alaska most of the time. I still spend my money here, but I'm not hiring cooks or pilots here. For us timeliness is important. We need to see a resurgence soon or there will not be an exploration base in northwestern B.C. anymore. Exploration might happen again, but it won't be by people living here. It will be by people living in Vancouver or Toronto, the way things are going. Pretty soon Toronto is going to be the centre of exploration in Canada, and I don't want to move to Toronto.

I think interim measurement agreements are required now to address mineral resource components. I think there's probably quite a bit of willpower on all sides of that. Some of the issues we're discussing are going to take a long time. Final agreements. I don't think anybody thinks it's going to happen in two years. People are selling houses now, and people are going broke in this community now. Plus, first nations aren't getting the opportunities that — say, the Tahltans with Eskay Creek…. The people here would like to see the resources, at least the mining side, removed from the interim measurements part of agreements to get things moving now. I think it helps all the way. Once people are working, once there's money flowing in, I think people can be much more thoughtful about some of the harder, long-term questions — like first nations government, schooling, who owns what will come easier. If people are starving…. Starving is a little exaggeration. If people are hungry, people are selling their houses. I don't think it's the best time for them to think about some of the other goals and the fact that the world is going to change up here and there's going to be some sharing between people that hasn't historically happened.

I think a vibrant mineral industry in northern British Columbia will provide positive benefits for all the residents in the area. I think good faith negotiations that fairly address the mineral industry and really put that potential forward are needed right now.

V. Anderson: Not in the mineral industry, but there has been development up in the northeast in oil and gas. What do you see is the effect of that development upon the people up there, including the aboriginal people?

H. Smit: I'm not well versed on it. There would be people who can answer that question better than I can. The oil and the mineral industries are basically separate industries.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): Just a comment, Hans. Thanks for your presentation. Some years ago I attended an aboriginal mining conference in the Yukon and more recently — a year and a half, two years ago or something like that — attended one in Yellowknife. The diamond mine outside of Yellowknife presented tremendous opportunities for your industry as well as for the first nations in and around that region. It has worked in other jurisdictions, and certainly we're hopeful for good things here in British Columbia, working together with your industry.

H. Smit: Yeah, I think you will find the industry was not ready for it ten or 20 years ago. The industry is just a bunch of people, and a lot of people weren't ready for it and still were old guard, we'll say. Right now you'll find most of the people in the mineral industry are quite proactive and really, if it were up to, "Okay, you guys run the mineral industry, and you make deals with first nations," it would have been done three years ago. You look at Ekady, the diamond mine there. I mean, it's working there.

If you look within B.C., where it has happened — Eskay Creek, Golden Bear — everything I've heard, I'm sure that not everybody is happy, but on the whole, that's worked very well. That basically has gone beside the government. I've worked in the Yukon some, and our most success with first nations was when we didn't involve the government, which is sad. We were the leaders, not the government. I always think the government should be leading things such as this, but that's to my mind what government is supposed to do: provide the frameworks that we then follow. In the mineral industry that hasn't happened.

H. Smit: Yeah, a lot of it's federal. A lot of them couldn't be bothered very much.

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): This is just an aside. There was a great IMAX presentation on Gold Fever. Maybe you saw it last year at the mining conference?

P. Nettleton (Deputy Chair): It probably warmed a geologist's heart, like your own, all that great footage of all that beautiful country. That was just a great presentation.

D. MacKay: Hans, you mentioned the removal of mining from interim agreements to see if we can't get the mining economy back on its feet and moving again. Are you talking about sites that have been identified as potential mines? Exploration would cover the whole province, pretty well.

H. Smit: There are very few sites in B.C. right now that are waiting to be mined, especially at today's mineral prices, so it's back to exploration. What you need to do is find ways. There is a position paper from the B.C.–Yukon Chamber of Mines. It's basically floating ideas for discussion. Again, trying to be part of the leaders, trying to solve some of these questions is that…. If you only deal with settlement land, which might be 5, 10 or 15 percent — who knows? — of B.C.

and each first nation owns the mineral rights there, the chance that any one of them has a mine on there is not very good, especially for some of the people who live in areas where the mineral potential is low. One of them would be that there is a royalty and all first nations share on some basis, whether closer gets more or whatever. Any mines that happen in B.C. pay a certain amount of royalty, and instead of paying it directly to the government, they pay it into a fund that goes to first nations.

We're trying to find ways that right now will be moving it forward that people can agree on. If you wait till final agreements…. You know, that's what they did in Alaska. They finally waited months. We've been working quite a bit there. First nations, which are set up as corporations there, have about 10 percent of the land of Alaska, and they own the mineral rights. You can go work there, or you make a deal with the first nations.

Some of those areas are great to work with. They're good partners. Some are still asking unrealistic amounts for involvement, but some are good places to work in. You sign agreements — legal agreements, business agreements. They're a little different than if it were a regular landowner, because you're signing on impact benefit agreements, on hiring agreements, but it works. Ten percent of the land…. As opposed to having the whole area alienated, you know where it is first nations and where it isn't, and if you make a deal with a first nation, great.

G. Trumper: Thank you for your presentation. I'm not sure whether I heard you correctly or not. Have there been exploration proposals up in this area which you have discussed with the first nations here?

H. Smit: I haven't personally, but certainly there are a number. Some of the mines up here — notably the ones in the Tahltan areas, with Eskay and Golden Bear — have impact benefit agreements that have been working. If you look at, say, the LRMP of that area, the Tahltans were pretty keen on keeping areas open for mining and road access for their areas, because now they're part of it. I mean, I can see why a group of people would have no wish to help to support an industry if they're not getting anything back. I understand that.

G. Trumper: I come from Vancouver Island, and first nations…. Where I live, it's sort of open. The exploration thing has started again. They are very involved, right from the beginning. Whether anything comes of it is another matter, but they are certainly very involved in the whole process right from the beginning. They are hoping that something will happen to help them. Certainly, from a company's perspective that was the first thing they did after they sort of talked to a few people. They went and talked to the first nations, and they are working with them to try and move things along. Otherwise it wouldn't happen; it just wouldn't happen.

H. Smit: I think you'll see most companies more than willing to be proactive about it, but we need government legality around that. We need to be able to prove to investors, from within B.C. as well as outside of B.C., that there is finality, that you can make agreements and agreements stick and that you are allowed to mine if you do it properly in these areas. Without that we're not really able to raise very much money here.

M. Hunter: Hans, could you just educate me? You talked about Alaska, and I just want to ask a specific question. Your presentation's quite about one mineral tenure system, one regulatory system. How does that work in Alaska on the corporation lands?

H. Smit: About 50 percent of Alaska you look in; the other 50 percent you basically don't. The first division is 50 percent is federal land; 50 percent is state land and native land. The federal land, hardly anybody looks. A lot of it is because it's out of bounds to mining. The other is because the regulatory regime there is not very friendly to mining.

H. Smit: No. On state land you go state, similar to here. On native land you actually have to make a deal. They own the mineral rights, and you have to make a deal with the mineral title owner.

M. Hunter: You say that things work okay in Alaska, but the regulatory system there is different from what you're asking us to consider.

H. Smit: It depends on what comes out of treaty agreements. If it's 10 percent of the land owned by first nations — corporations, bands, however it's set up — and you know where those areas are and you can go make a deal, or not make a deal, with that group and you know what the rules are for the other 90 percent, that works. If it's where there are settlement lands and in between the settlement lands, where in this area you

have to do this sort of thing, but in this other area, because there's another first nation, the rules are different — not on the settlement land but in the bigger area — it doesn't work.

It's not only on the mineral tenure but very importantly on the regulatory. If you don't know what the regulatory regime is — and you already have a bit of a black eye here from some things — then it's really hard to invest. If it changes over time, like I say, even if you don't like it, then you can say: "Well, I think it's too strict. I don't like the arsenic numbers, but this mine is good enough. We'll just have to eat the cost of doing that." If you don't know what it is, you don't know what the costs are…. It's a business. We don't do it for fun. I ski and climb for fun. I don't look for minerals for fun. It has to make sense economically.

That was the last speaker I had on my speakers list. Is there anyone else present here this evening that would like to speak to the committee? Seeing no one, I will declare this evening's meeting adjourned and thank everyone for their participation today. We will pack up and head off to Fort St. John.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE
ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS