Thank you, Mr. Chair.
These are really quick reviews. I have only seven minutes, so I'm actually going to give you some questions that are connected. They're not terribly complicated, and if you need a reminder, there is no problem. It's just easier, and then you can just address them together.
Thank you for your review. I went to your website to try to find papers and I didn't find this one that you're speaking from, so I will try again. It looks like it will be very useful.
I did a similar review on aboriginal safe drinking water, and I'm quite aware of the areas of federal jurisdiction for environmental protection of first nations lands. It's been an issue for a long time in Alberta, particularly where we have oil and gas development on first nations lands, and there has been a lot of toing and froing. The provincial energy board usually goes on and does the hearing but then refuses to make rulings on aboriginal rights. So it's still very complicated.
We had earlier this week the Land Claims Agreements Coalition presenting. One of the concerns raised by the Nisga'a, who are members of that coalition, is that they are frustrated that they're not getting the contracts to build capacity in their own first nation.
My first question to you would be this. Do you see value in actually engaging first nations and helping to build capacity of first nations so they might be more comfortable? Or do you ever employ and engage first nations lawyers or scientists or toxicologists or health experts in your governance and capacity building?
My second question, which you didn't mention, but it may well be in your paper, concerns benefit agreements. That seems to be an issue that keeps cropping up. At Attawapiskat we don't know what the benefit agreement is between them and De Beers. But that's obviously something that could help in capacity building in your land development, whether it's on reserve or whether it's on your traditional lands. Have you ever worked on providing model agreements? Are you aware if any of that kind of work is done here in Canada or in other countries?
The options that you list are a good beginning, but I'm noticing some that you're missing. One would involve the beginning part of your presentation about the potential in federal law. For example, when the Canadian Environmental Protection Act was first enacted in the mid-1980s, it actually set a whole part on federal and aboriginal land. That part is still there, and there has never been any law or regulation enacted there to in fact regulate environmental impacts on aboriginal land. So certainly there is the ability.
I worked in the Yukon and I'm familiar with Yukon law, and somewhat with that of the Northwest Territories. Those governments, to their credit, actually allow for agreements with first nations governments to deliver responsibilities. Federal laws do not do that. So that would be one mechanism.
You have said that maybe there could be an agreement. The problem is, by and large, that federal law doesn't enable them to enter into agreements with first nations. In some cases, that's allowed for in our first nations final agreements. But I've noted that in the Yukon first nation final agreements and self-government agreements, they don't actually give any power to enforce. You could be appointed as a federal enforcement officer but you don't actually have.... I wonder if you could speak to the limitations in the law and in the agreements to actually transfer those duties.
Plus, what I've noticed in talking to first nations is that they don't like having provinces involved. It's interesting; in B.C. they seem to be moving towards looking into these tripartite or bilateral agreements with the provinces. If you move to the prairies, they're absolutely digging in their heels. In fact, they say they don't even want to deal with Aboriginal Affairs; they just want to deal with the crown. So there is some of this historical reluctance to deal with other orders of government. I wonder if you've run into that.
That's probably plenty of questions, if you could try to speak to those.