I'm going to keep things as brief as I can, and not try to go over everything that has been gone over. They're all good points, but you don't need to hear me say them again.
The Mississaugas of Credit are about 2,600 people. We have treaty lands of basically from out near the Rouge, down near London, out past Guelph, and to Niagara Falls. As a matter of fact, the only assertion of title that Canada can make is through a treaty with the Mississaugas, within our treaty territories. One of the things we've done recently is we've realigned with the other Mississauga communities. There are six of us, and within that there are about 10,000 people. Historically, there were many more thousands of Mississauga people than that.
I must say that this process has been very telling for me, because I came into this thinking that when we talk about the specific claims and negotiations, it must stop being adversarial and it must become reconciliatory.
One of the things I want to touch on is how the claims are funded. There must be a better way to do it than simply having a cap and an upper limit on certain processes that we need to engage in. I've heard that other governments have used grant funding in the process, so maybe that's a model.
The separation of indigenous communities from the claims assessment process means it is obviously not a partnership. Basically, there's no dialogue during Canada's assessment stage. I know people have touched on this already, but for two to five years, or however long it takes—I know it's set now at three—it simply disappears and we don't hear anymore about it until, “Hello, here's our decision.” That's problematic, and it creates an adversarial relationship as opposed to a relationship where we could work together.
I must touch on this one. The Mississaugas have successfully settled three land claims, although I don't know how successful the Toronto Purchase one was in my eyes. We have many more outstanding. We have title claim to areas in the Rouge. We have made a title claim to all the waters of our traditional treaty lands. That's a very good read, by the way. If you get an opportunity to read that, it's very interesting, and a nice way to pass an evening.
The water claims were going along; we were working with a proponent who was hoping to put electrical lines underneath the lake-bed, which is our claim territory, where we say we have ownership. Things were going along okay, and then NRCan made a ruling without consulting us and discussing the impacts on our treaty assertions—our title assertions, actually, not our treaty assertions. Once that happened, we had no choice but to file for a judicial review, and that's where we are right now with the federal government.
That's one of the issues I believe was mentioned earlier. I know your government has many hands, but it doesn't seem like some of your hands know what the other ones are doing, so sometimes decisions are made at a certain level when in fact they're still working on a process.
Right now we've engaged the government in a round table, if you will, talking about how to ensure that this doesn't happen in the future, among other things, and how we can protect the assertions of title claims—maybe even treaty claims—from a perspective of what the federal government can do, such as put processes in place. I'm hoping that if it's a successful project, other first nations can build on it if they so choose.
The table was also to talk about governance, getting out of the Indian Act and that type of thing. It's very interesting, and we have some hope that it may lead to good work in the future.
I talked about the judicial review. Now we've contacted Ontario, because Ontario would have to do an easement, and we told Ontario that given there's a judicial review on this, we don't expect you to proceed with an easement.
Then we scrambled around and made sure that we had our workers on the ground contact their workers on the ground to say, here's where we're at, don't do this. It was just to make sure that something didn't happen without everybody knowing what's going on.
I'm not going to touch too much on this, because it's been touched on over and over, about the extinguishing of rights. It cannot be the way that we proceed under this type of process.
With regard to our water beds, our lake-beds, Canada will require that our title be extinguished as part of reaching a settlement of some type. This fosters the very same thinking of 200 years ago, when my people said, “This is about sharing the land. This is about using it. This is about safeguarding.” Your people said, “No, this is about owning. It is about ours and acquiring.” I think that kind of philosophy needs to be looked at again.
I'm not going to go into all the points that I have here, but I am going to talk a little more about some processes.
Within the specific claims process, it's so adversarial that there is no way to resolve claims. I mean, I've sat at the table with people who genuinely had affection for each other, but it is still an adversarial process. Meetings take place in the cities and not very often in the communities. There is strict adherence: you cannot inform your membership, you can't keep them updated. That really causes problems with building relations internally, as well as externally.
One of the things the government should be doing is that it should be mandatory that people involved in the negotiation process understand the indigenous perspective, understand our world views. I think there should be mandatory training for these types of processes.
I also think there needs to be some type of involvement in ceremony. I'd love to see some smudging in some protocols. Maybe you don't use them, but you wouldn't believe the effect they have on people in a room when there are adversarial relationships. It's very soothing and works to calm things down.
We also talked about open dialogue, what is on the table, how broadly we are speaking, when do issues get dealt with. This is more I guess on my side of the table. If we're in negotiations and we're having issues that come between us right at the get-go, they get pushed aside and we deal with everything around them until at the end of the day, 10 years later.... What happened in our claim was that the Toronto Islands were included in the claim. From the beginning we said that there was no way that the Toronto Islands were ever going to be a part of this claim. At the end of the day, because we didn't do the work on it immediately, the government said take it or leave it, take another 10 years and go to court. We really didn't have any options, so it must be very plain as to what's on the table.
Also, now I'm going to ask something that might be a little strange, but it's my last point. Do we always need a lawyer in the room? They're vital to the process, don't get me wrong, but any one of us can say “without prejudice”. At some point in time, you're actually going to have a table that talks about reconciliation. If you're going to talk about reconciliation—