Number one, early meaningful engagement is a term we utilize quite often, and it's so important because, oftentimes, what happens is that the engagement or consultation occurs after there is much deliberation and planning on behalf of the proponent and on behalf of the respective levels of government, those being the province, potentially the municipality and also the federal government. We come in a bit late and, obviously, that relationship starts off on the wrong foot.
I think another important point is that there needs to be appropriate capacity and funding provided to first nations to meaningfully understand what a project is and how it can potentially impact our rights, those being inherent rights and treaty rights as well.
When you think about it as a first nation leader, as a chief council technician on a first nation, leadership is dealing with many different things during a day, week or month, so when we're looking at major projects that may impact lands or territories, nations don't often have the capacity to be able to respond to duty to consult trigger letters or to better understand from a scientific or technical perspective what the project is and how it's going to impact them. For our situation here in Saskatchewan, that's precisely why we developed and implemented the centre of excellence that I run—to be able to be there as a capacity organization for first nations.
When it comes to aspects of consultation, I think it's extremely important that we don't leave out accommodation as well and what that means to the nation. If we dig deeper, I firmly believe, after the many discussions we've had with elders and leadership over a number of years, that consultation mechanisms need to be developed by the first nations themselves. When it's an imposed consultative process, whether it's by the province or the federal government, again, it becomes very problematic because our interpretation of rights may differ and vary from those interpretations of the respective levels of government as well—the rural municipality, the province and the federal government.
Consultation is an extremely important component when it comes to the development of critical minerals and when it comes to the development of major projects. We cannot all see the future, but we need to prepare as best we can. I'm sure it's been heard many times by many of the members around the table that first nations are here to stay. We have reserves. These are our treaty and traditional territories, and we're not going anywhere. As we look at consultation and further down the road to accommodation, what does the journey look like in between? We need to balance the socio-economic benefits of a potential project against the potential adverse impacts these projects may have to lands and waters, and also to practising our inherent and treaty rights as first nations peoples. Again, those understandings and interpretations may differ from those perspectives of the provincial and federal governments.