First Nations treaty negotiations in B.C. have slowed to a crawl, and unless the government and First Nations re-commit to accelerate the process, the province?s chief commissioner believes it should be abandoned.
Last week, Sophie Pierre asked for a one-year extension to her three-year term as BC Treaty Commission chief commissioner in an attempt to get negotiations back online.
Pierre told Business in Vancouver the ?lack of urgency? in negotiations is ?ridiculous.?
She said unless Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Premier Christy Clark and the First Nations Summit re-commits to the treaty process to hasten negotiations and implement treaties, then the process, which she criticized as being a ?program,? should be shut down.
?If it continues to be a program instead of negotiations, then when I leave I?ll just be telling everybody, ?Look, folks, it?s not working, forget it; it?s a waste of time,? said Pierre.
The commission was created in 1992 to negotiate modern-day treaties and settle land claims, which critics say greatly affect industry?s decision to invest in B.C. and get projects off the ground.
Pierre believes treaties are the key to economic development for B.C.?s 201 aboriginal bands, releasing them from the shackles of an archaic Indian Act that makes investment and business development on reserve lands extremely difficult. But since the commission was set up, only two treaties have been implemented, the Tsawwassen First Nation and Maa-nulth First Nations.
Parliament is expected to ratify the Yale First Nation treaty some time this fall, and Pierre said there is potential for another 16 treaties to be implemented in the near term.
But 18 First Nations, including the Squamish and Musqueam, have stepped away from treaty negotiations altogether, preferring to develop business opportunities within the confines of the Indian Act and assert rights and title through the court system.
Squamish Chief Gibby Jacob told BIV his community has no plans to get rid of the Indian Act, preferring to chip away at it one day at a time to maximize control over reserve land.
?Right now the table is just way too slanted in favour of the other governments,? Jacob said in regard to treaty negotiations. ?Taking your chips out of the Indian Act has been a big part of what we?ve been up to over the last several years.?
Sts?ailes (formerly Chehalis Indian Band) chief Willie Charlie told BIV his community made a conscious decision to avoid treaty negotiations because it would mean ?giving up too much.?
He also said overlapping territorial disputes among bands have added another layer of complexity.
Pierre agreed that overlapping territorial claims is an ongoing problem.
Charlie believes it could be settled with a ?strength of claim? test, forcing First Nations to verify their claims.
B.C. Aboriginal Relations and Reconcilitation Minister Mary Polak said two succesful agreements in 20 years is not what the government set out to achieve, but there have been some positive results.
?It would be a misreading of the circumstances to think that the two that are being implemented are the only representation of work that?s gone on,? said Polak. ?There?s a whole lot of work that?s gone into the others.?
In fact, the commission has allocated $533 million in negotiation support funding since 1993, approximately 80% of that money in the form of loans.
Polak said the province remains committed to developing agreements with First Nations to create more certainty for economic development.
Meantime, federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan has appointed a special representative to look at ways to accelerate treaty negotiations.
A spokesman for the ministry said Ottawa remains committed to the process.
But questions remain as to how successful treaties are at creating jobs.
In June, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy published a report grading the success of the Nisga?a Treaty in northwest B.C., the first since the agreement was signed in 1998.
The report found that although the Nisga?a trust their government more than all others, many believe it has yet to deliver on economic development opportunities.
Study co-author Joseph Quesnel said it?s difficult to determine if those concerns are a failure of the local government or a symptom of the economic downturn in that part of the province.
Still, he said there is ample evidence that self-government improves the odds for First Nations.
But Thomas Isaac, a former chief treaty negotiator for B.C. and partner at McCarthy Tetrault, said forcing treaties on First Nations doesn?t necessarily create any more certainty for the province.
?You can?t impose your will on others and expect a reasonable outcome,? said Isaac.
?We can live without treaties. There?s a mythology that absent treaties British Columbia is uncertain. If there?s uncertainty in British Columbia I strongly believe the absence of treaties has very little to do with it.? ?
