Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 7 - Evidence - Meeting of October 3, 2006
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 3, 2006
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 9:30 a.m. to examine and report on the nature and status of the Government of Canada's specific claims policy.
Senator Gerry St. Germain (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. I am chair of the committee at the present time. Today our committee continues its special study on specific claims. The committee intends to examine the federal specific claims process with a view to making recommendations to contribute to the timely and satisfactory resolution of First Nations' grievances in the matter.
Back in June, at the first meeting held on this special study, we had before us officials from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and Justice Canada to explain what the specific claims process is, its stages and the problems, in their opinion. Today we are launching a series of hearings where an array of interested individuals and organizations will get a chance to help us better understand the challenges of the specific claims process and hopefully make recommendations to fix the problems.
The witnesses today are both from academic fields. We have with us Professor Bryan Schwartz from the University of Manitoba, who teaches constitutional law on Charter of Rights and international law. He also serves as legal counsel to the Assembly of First Nations. We also have Professor Michael Coyle from the University of Western Ontario. He has been a director with the Indian Commission of Ontario and a fact-finder on the Caledonia situation for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. He specializes in mediations and negotiations.
Bryan Schwartz, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I came here because I believe there is a unique historical opportunity for this committee here and now to make recommendations that will solve a problem that has lingered for more than a century and to finally implement an idea that has been on the table for over 60 years.
It is more than 60 years since both the Conservatives and the Liberals, in the early 1960s, proposed that there be an independent claims commission which would have the ability to independently assess and adjudicate specific claims. It is a moral and practical necessity to have such a body because specific claims policy is a disaster.
This is a federal document showing the growth of inventory over the years: Inventory is growing up in a straight line while the number of claims settled is stagnant or in some cases decreasing. There is an accumulation of liability owed under lawful obligations to the Aboriginal people of Canada which remains unresolved.
For 60 years people have been proposing that there be an independent claims body, because in the absence of that there is no adequate pressure on the federal government to get serious and resolve claims. Why are claims not resolved? Because, frankly, it is cheaper to keep talking than it is to pay them. Each government is handed the problem from its predecessor. "We did not solve the specific claims problem. We have other budgetary priorities. Why should it be our problem?''
Yet, right now there is an extraordinary historical convergence that makes this problem solvable now. Here is the extraordinary convergence: In 1998, in a remarkable exercise of co-operation, a joint task force of federal officials and Assembly of First Nations officials proposed a specific claims resolution act. It went to the federal bureaucracy, which was troubled by a number of features, some legitimate, some I would take issue with. At the end of the day a bill was produced that contained some of the key features to set up a credible, independent claims commission, but the bill fell short. Bill C-6, as it was ultimately passed although it is still not in force, would have had the key elements of a commission and a binding dispute settlement, but it contained some flaws. There was not adequate independence in the way the commissioners were composed. There were too many hurdles put in the way of getting a claim through the system. It was like a labyrinth in which the minister had control over certain choke points and could delay matters indefinitely.
However, the parliamentary process almost worked. The opposition parties all converged on a set of amendments. If Bill C-6, with its difficulties and amendments, had been passed, the bill would have been a reasonable one and certainly one to which Aboriginal organizations across Canada could have given serious consideration.
The same parties that are in opposition now supported all those amendments. Liberal members of the House of Commons are no longer subject to the direction of the previous government which, for various reasons and distractions, did not seem to be able to fully come to terms with the need to improve the bill in order it make it acceptable.
After 60 years, it would be a bad idea to go back to ground zero and start from scratch. There is a bill out there. It reflects many of the good ideas of the joint task force of 1998. For better or worse, most of the clauses can be lived with. A small number of changes based on the amendments proposed by the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, and certain Aboriginal organizations like the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations could be the core of a package of amendments that would fix up the bill. The plan would be not to proclaim the current bill into force until a new bill is passed alongside of it. It would contain a fairly modest package of amendments that would deal with the key flaws in Bill C-6 and finally, after 60 years, and in some cases dealing with claims that go back 100 years, there would be, for the first time, a practical, workable, effective mechanism to resolve specific claims.
What are the advantages of doing so and why should a government engage in that? Let me try to deal with that very quickly.
Specific claims must be looked at with a fresh frame of mind, because the tendency of many people is to say that it is more program spending. We have to spend money on hospitals, roads, bridges and so on; there are many competing claims for resources, including spending on Aboriginal people. Specific claims are not like any other program spending. They are really part of a national debt. It is not discretionary spending. These are lawful obligations. It is compensation owed to a band because half of its property was taken away unlawfully or because it was never given treaty land that it was promised.
This is another reason we are at a time of extraordinary convergence. We are living through an era in which Liberal and Conservative governments have both committed to paying down the national debt. If you had taken 5 per cent of the discretionary paydowns of the national debt since the program began about ten years ago, just 5 per cent, and devoted it to that part of the national debt that is specific claims, the problem would be well on its way to resolution. The money does not disappear. This is a capital investment in the future of these communities. The fact is that in real dollars, program spending for Aboriginal people has gone steadily down since the beginning of the 1990s.
The only real capital accretion that these bands get to invest in their people, to invest in their human capital, to invest in their economies and to become self-sufficient, to no longer be a draw on resources but a contributor to the net fiscal welfare of Canada, is the resolution of specific claims. That is the reality across Canada. When bands get their claims settled they put the resources in trust funds and they contribute to community development and to self- sufficiency.
Public policy issues come and go. Views on them change. However, this, I believe, is a unique historic moment in which this community can play a pivotal role. There are many items on the radar screen now. Do not proclaim the existing bill. Have a negotiation between the AFN and the federal government based on the amendments that the opposition parties themselves and one or two Aboriginal groups proposed. In a very short period of time, I believe you would have an excellent opportunity to reach a lasting and honourable settlement.
Look at the leadership on both sides. We have national Chief Phil Fontaine, a former member of the commission, someone who thoroughly understands specific claims. There is the Honourable Jim Prentice, an experienced veteran of the specific claims process. They are intelligent, principled and practical leaders. What an extraordinary opportunity you have to make a lasting difference in Canadian history that could last a hundred years. Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Schwartz, for an excellent presentation. Mr. Coyle, you have the floor.
[Translation]
Michael Coyle, Assistant Professor, Law Faculty, University of Western Ontario: Honourable senators, it is an honour to be invited here today and to address such important questions for the country. I will continue my comments in English because my French is not as good, but I would be glad to answer your questions in English and in French.
[English]
This committee is considering seven distinct questions, which Professor Schwartz and I were given, regarding Canada's specific claims process. I have only 10 minutes with you, so I will be direct and pragmatic. Your questions focused first on the causes of delays in the current specific claims process and, second, around options that should be considered to address that problem of delays.
On the first point, I will spend a bit of time with you, since Professor Schwartz dealt so well with the option of a specific claims independent body tribunal. I want to spend some time on the first point to talk about the places where delays occur presently in the specific claims process.
I will suggest that the specific claims process — and I must be the 180th person to suggest this — generally takes too long to review claims and too long to resolve them once they are reviewed. Too many important claims are not being settled at all under the existing process. It is not just a question of delays. These are claims where Canada and a First Nation and Canada and a province disagree on the question of liability for the claim or the extent of compensation that is owing on a claim. In these cases, the existing process offers no adequate mechanisms for resolving the parties' disagreements.
I will present two main recommendations today. First, if claims are to be resolved quickly, there needs to be a dramatic increase in the resources devoted to settling them. This means more personnel for reviewing and negotiating claims and significantly more money earmarked for settlement compensation. I am sure this solution of more people and more money comes as no surprise to the members of the committee. However, that does not stop it from being the best solution, and one that I am convinced in the long run will save this country a considerable amount of money.
Second, if the process is to be capable of resolving contentious claims quickly, I agree with Professor Schwartz that we need to establish an independent body with the power to enforce timelines in negotiation and to resolve legal disputes that arise during those negotiations that the parties are unable to resolve through discussion.
This independent body, in my view, should build on the Specific Claims Resolution Act, despite its deficiencies, which this committee has considered before. The independent body should have two main components. One would oversee the negotiation process, agree to time frames and provide mediation where requested by one party. The second component would be available to break impasses over either the validity of a claim or the extent of the government's liability for a claim. In both cases, those services should be available where one party requests it.
Implementing these recommendations will involve more than mere tinkering with the current process, which is now 25 years old and which I believe is not adequate to the task. Indeed, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs reaches the same conclusion on its website. In the backgrounder to the Specific Claims Resolution Act, INAC concludes that "the status quo is not sustainable.'' I will not belabour this point, which I think will become clearer as we review together the results of the existing process.
There are compelling financial reasons for resolving claims quickly. As I will note, the government has estimated its current liability for specific claims in the billions of dollars. Deferring payment of this liability while land development continues and interest compounds can only increase the ultimate financial costs of settlement. Delaying settlements causes continuing economic and legal uncertainty with their attendant costs. Finally, failing to address claims in a timely way leads, as newspaper headlines continually remind us, to frustration and anger at the community level and to a compounding risk of confrontations and the extraordinary costs, both financial and human, of police intervention.
As Professor Schwartz noted — and I will not repeat what he said — there are also moral and legal imperatives involved. In this country, citizens expect the government to meet its legal obligations. The government is not and cannot be seen to be above the law or to consider its application of the law continuously postponable.
There has been much talk recently, particularly in Ontario, about land claims and the need to maintain law and order. In Canada, we have a tradition of applying the law to create order. Applying our own laws without delay to the settlement of land claims seems an obvious way for us to create order, an order of which all Canadians can be proud.
I want to speak briefly about the track record of the specific claims process, since you asked me to address it. Ms. Stewart rightly pointed out, before the committee in June, that the specific claims process has achieved considerable success, settling some 275 claims at a total compensation of some $2 billion over the past 36 years. Still, the system is clearly far from perfect or this committee would not be assembled here today.
First Nations have submitted 1,325 claims under the existing process, and the majority of those claims remain unresolved 24 years after the current policy was put in place. In 1991, at the time that the Auditor General reviewed the process, some 342 claims were under review or in negotiation. Today, there are 1,700 claims in those categories. If one includes in the category of resolved claims, and this is debatable, I think, claims that the department has rejected or has closed the file on rather than reaching a settlement agreement, then today some 64 per cent of filed claims remain outstanding. On the ground, the pace of settlement is not keeping up to the number of claims that have been filed. In fact, the backlog of outstanding claims has steadily increased over the past 15 years.
It is impossible to say how many claims will be settled in the next 25 years, but applying conservative assumptions, if no significant changes are made, it is possible to obtain a general picture. Even if no new claims are filed in the future, with the existing claims, 70 per cent of filed claims are found to have a legal foundation. That leaves some 440 claims of those currently under review that will likely be found to be of a solid legal liability, of a solid legal foundation. Add to those the 89 claims currently in active negotiations and we have 529 claims that need to be settled.
In recent years, we have been settling about ten claims a year. I know that many members of this committee are young, and we would all like to see claims settled within our lifetime, but at that current rate, we have more than 50 years before the existing claims would be settled. Time is moving quickly.
I want to mention some points regarding the main sources of delays in the process. First, there is the review process. My brief contains the numbers. I was able to analyze the claims in Ontario. I did not have time to review every claim in the country.
The average claim that is currently still under Department of Justice review is 8.5 years old. In those cases, the department has not yet signed off on its opinion. The First Nation is still waiting to hear if negotiations can begin.
The current claim in Ontario that is in active negotiation is more than 15 years old without reaching settlement. I suggest to you in my written brief that there is a clear need for more personnel to review the files, both historically and legally, within the federal government.
The second main area of delays in the negotiation process involves two problems. First, there is an artificial limit on the total amount of money that is spent on settling claims each year. It is $100 million. In the most recent figures that I could find, which are five years old, Canada estimated its contingent liability for specific claims at $2.6 billion. We can see that even in a perfect world, it would take at least 26 years to address that liability. I suggest in my paper that that number is probably rather low.
The second main course of delay, and the main problem in the negotiation process, is that there are no adequate mechanisms for resolving disagreements. That means that contentious claims, which many of them are in this imperfect world, have nowhere to go if the parties, after trying to impose their will on each other, fail to reach an agreement. For that reason, many claims, for example the 26 claims filed by Six Nations between 1982 and 1995, are simply not settled in the process.
I disagree with Ms. Stewart that litigation is an adequate backstop or alternative method for resolving the claims, and I describe why in my report. Essentially, the courts are not equipped to deal with this number of claims or to fashion flexible remedies. High costs and adversarial relationships will result from extensive use of the courts. It is not a practical alternative. As a result, I agree with Professor Schwartz that to settle claims effectively and to create the appearance of fairness between the parties, there needs to be a neutral, independent body that the parties can turn to when they reach a serious disagreement in their negotiations.
In closing, as Professor Schwartz has noted, the problems in the specific claims process and the land claims process have been outstanding for decades. The recommendations that I and Professor Schwartz are speaking about have been raised for decades. I agree with Professor Schwartz that this is a wonderful opportunity — a convergence — for Canadians to move forward to try to settle land claims within a reasonable time. If significant improvements are not made to the process now, when will they be made?
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Coyle. We will now go to questions.
Senator Campbell: Do you think we will ever reach a sense of reality when it comes to these issues? From my point of view, this whole system has been flawed from day one, from the very start. You have a process where people are disenfranchised; you have a process where an Indian agent can decide whether land will be sold or not sold, kept within the bounds of a treaty. Treaties are broken continually. Do you think that there is a real sense on the part of government to come to grips with these issues?
Mr. Schwartz: Each new government facing this rising mountain of debt becomes more and more daunted by the prospect of getting on top of it. As Professor Coyle says, you have a huge backlog in the inventory, and each year more claims are coming into the system, so the pile of liability gets bigger. Each government says, "Well, we are strained for program spending as it is. How are we possibly going to get the resources to get on top of this?''
However, we can stand back a step and ask, "Is it actually realistic that this problem, which has been allowed to linger and grow for such a long time, can finally be addressed in a reasonable manner?'' All the rational indications are that yes, it can. First, you set a realistic target that within five to seven years the mountain of claims stops growing. New claims are coming in, but the existing claims are being resolved fast enough so that the pile of liability is not getting bigger.
We must first get into a steady state so that there is not a constant rise. That can be done in about five to seven years. It would require about a $30-million investment in Department of Justice people to deal with the claims. I think the current budget is only about $5 million. It would require an investment of maybe $800 million to $1 billion a year to pay out the claims. That is a lot of money.
On the other hand, it is money that is lawfully owed to First Nations. It is money that, if it were in their possession, would contribute to their human growth, their investment in human capital, education and welfare, the building of stronger communities of people who are contributing to and buying in the local economies, talented people participating in the professions and occupations. It would eliminate the uncertainty that blocks economic development, to which my colleague Professor Coyle referred.
The most important thing about it is we are paying down national debt on a discretionary basis at a rate of over $10 billion a year. Take a fraction of that, devote it to a part of the national debt that is especially exigent and morally compelling, a part of the national debt for which the bond holders did not freely agree to buy savings bond but whose money was unlawfully and forcefully taken away and who remain deprived. Use a small fraction of the discretionary debt paydown that has been taking place over 10 to 15 years. Most Canadians have no quarrel with the idea of paying down the debt. It is part of honest government and fiscal responsibility. Apply that same philosophy to an especially exigent part of the national debt, and you have the makings of a workable solution.
The institutional framework has to be the one that Professor Coyle and I are talking about. The court access option is decreasingly available. The courts have been applying limitation periods with a vengeance. The only real avenue now is the specific claims route. The conflict of interest route and the lack of resourcing means no specific progress is being made there. There is an institutional solution. The fiscal parameters are realistic and can be justified by moving out of the program spending box and recognizing it is part of paying down the national debt.
Senator Campbell: Should this be about debt or about justice? That is the real crux of the matter. I get quite ashamed of being Canadian when I take a look at what is going on here. I am even more ashamed when we start limiting rights of people to get justice, and our courts have done that. At what point do we say there is $13 billion this year and the whole thing is going on to debt, when we could take, as you say, just a piece of that and start on paying claims?
We are not even going near treaties that have not been made in my province. That is a whole other issue that we are looking at here. Is it about debt, or is it about justice? Who answers that? Does the government answer it? Do the people of Canada answer it? I do not know.
Mr. Coyle: My answer would be that it is about both. Thucydides said: "Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.'' I have found, working as a mediator in claims, particularly in Ontario over the last 16 years, that ordinary Canadians, the neighbours of First Nations with claims, do appreciate the issue of justice that is involved, once they understand the historical and legal basis of the claim.
The reason that Professor Schwartz and I have spoken somewhat about the debt question, or the cost issue, is because, in my experience, too often Canadians and government consider this problem insolvable: "We will never work it out. We will never address the grievances. No amount of money could do it.'' On the contrary, if government and Canadians look at the costs of not settling claims, Caledonia and elsewhere, and look at the benefits that can be achieved by settling them, then the cost argument should also be persuasive. In other words, both are very good reasons for addressing claims quickly.
Senator Peterson: The problem certainly is overwhelming, when you keep hearing about the rising numbers of the claims and their not being solved.
It seems to me that the big picture is overwhelming. Moving forward, could a template be devised to split up or compartmentalize the different claims into degrees of difficulty and then could you put a team on them with the understanding that the same team stay until the claim is resolved?
Given the number of years a claim is in process, people must come and go. When you start over, you lose the history and everyone has to be re-advised of the whole situation.
We need to have some successes here that would demonstrate the benefits of settling claims; otherwise, if we keep looking at the whole, we will be forever talking about how difficult the problem is.
Mr. Schwartz: I want to return briefly to my colleague's points about debt versus justice. When we designed, with federal officials, the joint task force report of 1998, the intent was that, as with any other valid claim, you would be able to process all the claims at a reasonable speed. The response from central agencies in government was that we needed a fiscal framework. For the Assembly of First Nations to agree to discuss an ordered paydown of this obligation, an ordered movement toward complete justice, was a compromise. It shows, after more than a hundred years of waiting and 60 years of frustration in trying to get this system set up, how reasonable the leadership of the Assembly of First Nations has been. The AFN has discussed earnestly and worked creatively with the federal government for some sort of measured fiscal framework.
The objective, first and foremost, is to get a practical resolution. The ideal resolution would be that the debt that is owed and is overdue would be paid now. What has been put on the table by the Assembly of First Nations in negotiations has been a process that should not overwhelm governments. They should consider that $30 million a year is a way to ramp up justice, and with a budget of say $500 million to maybe a billion a year to pay down, we can actually get on top of this problem.
If you have that larger system, ideas like the honourable senator has just suggested are excellent ideas. You have to have the comprehensive system or nothing will get done because there just are not the resources. Pilot projects have been conducted in which federal officials have been sent out to a First Nations where there are, for example, seven claims. The official says, "Let us look at the whole package so that I, the federal interlocutor, get a thorough understanding of the whole history and I do not disappear and some guy has to be re-educated again.'' Those processes, experiments and pilot projects have been very successful. An independent claims commission could study the successes and make recommendations as to how they can be built upon.
Certainly much improved administration and learning the lessons of experience will help. You do not learn many lessons from experience if you are solving claims at the rate of ten a year. If this serious engagement with resolving these claims gets underway and we are start to resolve 50 or 100 claims a year, very quickly certain categories of claims will be well understood. Department of Justice officials will become familiar with previous approaches and be able to compare certain claims. The same will be true on the First Nations side. It is possible to group claims when there is a manageable umbrella. Much improved administration is possible. There have been successful experiments, but we need a comprehensive system in which to locate those experiments and make sure the maximum learning is derived from them.
The Chairman: You both talk about an independent body, especially you, Mr. Coyle. I have been in government and have been around for years. I think the government's fear about an independent body is lack of control over the fiscal envelope. I guess the simple answer is that logically you have to budget for these things — just allocate a budget.
How would you see doing that? The government is responsible, fiscally, to the taxpayer. In establishing an independent body that would resolve these issues, there would have to be some form of control over the levers of budgeting.
Have you given that any thought at all? I have talked to the minister about this and have talked to other colleagues present at this meeting and there is a recognition that the younger generation of Aboriginal peoples will not be as tolerant as the past generation. I think that is indicative as to how things are evolving in the country.
Mr. Schwartz talked about re-enacting Bill C-6 with some amendments, which would be an independent body that would deal with the claims. I want to give practical recommendations. As Mr. Schwartz says, we have Phil Fontaine and Jim Prentice, who are both honourable people, trying to improve the plight of our Aboriginal people, but we have to give them recommendations. If we can give them recommendation that make sense, we have a chance of moving forward in this program.
Senator Gill and I have talked at length about these issues, and I know that we want to come up with practical recommendations that make this thing work.
Mr. Coyle: There are two possible approaches that can be taken. One, favoured by many of the First Nations representatives I have spoken to, is to create a body that has the same kind of respect as the courts, a respect from all parties. Canada does that all the time — we create tribunals to deal with our international obligations, pay equity obligations, et cetera — and in those cases, the bodies are simply making orders under existing law.
A deputy minister once advised us, after Oka, that it would be easier for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs if the awards of such a body were treated like a court order and came out of consolidated revenue, as other liabilities that are awarded against Canada do at the moment.
Many First Nations people would say that option is correct, because there is a matter of justice involved. If the obligation is understanding, it should not be up to us to debate how much of it we want to pay right now.
Another option, the one that has been discussed by the AFN and the federal government, is to create a global budget for settlement awards that could be awarded in any given year, say $300 million, $400 million; that would have to be negotiated. That would allow the tribunal to make awards based on legal obligation, but it would give the government the comfort of knowing that it will not be surprised at the end of the year that an award for $3 billion was made by a tribunal that year. The maximum amount of awards that it could make would be known in advance.
What will not work, in my experience, is that, in order to save money, an independent body will not deal with claims that are of a particular financial importance. That is one of the reasons that we have the problems at Six Nations today: their claims were perceived as too large for what was at the time a $15-million budget in Ontario. Rather than placing artificial limits saying, "We will not deal with the most significant claims in order to save money,'' you could have a different approach.
I think that First Nations would be open to this because they, too, wish to be practical. They know that settlements may have to be paid over years, in order to be affordable. For them, two things are important: First, the sense that they be treated justly so that they are not being treated according to a double standard and their legal rights are being vindicated. That is critical to First Nations when they settle a claim. Second, that there is some reasonable settlement. You can always debate what the amount is, but some reasonable range of settlement is important. Giving the independent body a budget envelope that Canada can afford but that is sufficiently generous to allow us to get through the numbers of claims that Professor Schwartz and I, or anyone looking at the numbers, can see would be a solution that could give confidence to the minister in creating such a body.
The Chairman: Thank you, professor.
[Translation]
Senator Gill: First, I would like to congratulate you. I wish that more Canadians would share your views and your perspective on Specific Land Claims. Comprehensive Claims are also important, but this is not what we are discussing here.
As Professor Schwartz was saying, this is not a matter of discretionary spending, when we consider the government's budget.
I have been involved in this area since 1956 — it has been 50 years and I will not live for another 50 years. You are right when you say that problems are increasing and that the number of claims submitted is greater than the number of claims settled.
I also sat on the Indian Specific Claims Commission with Jim Prentice and another lady, who has unfortunately passed away, and the situation was at an impasse. As a commissioner, I would say that this was a "patch-up solution.'' Trying to settle all claims was an impossible mission.
There would probably be hope if we got to work and got some money. But all kinds of reasons prevent the government from investing, no matter who is in power. We hope that in the end, things will be forgotten or that there will be more assimilation. For all kinds of reasons, people hope that this problem will fade out or disappear altogether. But it is impossible — it is getting worse.
As Senator Campbell was saying, it is a matter of justice. We are witnessing a growing injustice. Indian communities, groups and nations are not less frustrated — quite the contrary. They are getting increasingly frustrated. This is not going to stop.
I often think that the country should not be built on lies and a lack of transparency. This is precisely what is happening right now. We are doing some wishful thinking, hoping that problems will go away and that the situation might be solved somewhere along the road.
In other words, we never learned to live together — this is the real problem. We have never learned to live with the First Nations of Canada. We never managed to provide Canadians, including First Nations, with institutions that allow them to live together.
It is about time that we start living with the truth. And what is the truth? There is a debt. Why is this debt not assessed to its real value? With the means we have nowadays, we could estimate the debt, figure out approximately what it is worth.
Second, we must establish a partnership, a real one, so that members of First Nations can become first class citizens. A genuine partnership and formulas that would allow us to share somehow the resources of the country.
Who could live like the First Nations currently do? We take natural resources right under their noses, we transform them and we then live off these natural resources and they do not get their fair share. Who could live in such a situation for any length of time?
I apologize for taking so long. I want to ask you if you think we can go on like this or if we should take the bull by the horns and admit what the situation is really like. We are talking about billions — the country, the taxpayers are not able to pay up, and so we must wipe off part of the debt. Let us be upfront and transparent. We simply cannot pay. As for the rest, let us say that we will do it.
I would really like us to try this exercise, so that our relationships can start being based on truth and justice. Can you see that happening?
The Chairman: Professor Coyle, could you please answer this question?
Mr. Coyle: Today, we talked much about debts and obligations, all negative expressions. I am glad to hear that there is another way to look at the problem — by facing it, we can hope to create a new starting point, a new relationship between peoples, based on a historical and respectful rapport between First Nations and early settlers in Canada, a new relationship in which all partners treat each other with respect and abide by the same laws. I think it is important to see the opportunity presented today, as mentioned by Professor Schwartz.
I agree with Camus to say that if there is no hope, why even talk about it? We are interested in the matter because we hope for a better future, in which we can solve the problem and prove that it is not impossible to do so.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you, Professor Coyle. Do you have something to add, Professor Schwartz? We are nearing the end of our allocated time.
Mr. Schwartz: I want to emphasize that these agonizing problems have been around for a long time. What is unique now is that all the pieces are in place to solve them now. There is the idea of honest accounting. We have a federal government now that has just passed the federal accountability bill. The rising toll of national debt should be regularly showed on the national account. That is doable. Bill C-6 contains a fiscal framework. It must be worked on, but it does give the federal government the margin of comfort that it was looking for so that it is not writing a cheque that will have an immediate liability in a single year. That has been discussed and negotiated.
Concerning the issues of delay, the original joint task force report and the amendments proposed by the opposition parties suggested timelines at each step in the process so that the process does not linger forever.
On the independence of appointments, we know what the answer is: The appointments are done on the joint recommendation of the AFN and the minister. That is what the joint task force represented; that is what the amendments recommended. There is another way to do it. You could have an appointments committee to make the appointments, and the committee would be composed of First Nations people appointed by the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government. The mechanical detail is there and ready. We know how these processes are supposed to work.
We have Bill C-6 and the joint task force. There were problems in the fact that Bill C-6 put all the burden of disclosure on the First Nations and did not create the duty on the part of the minister to give reasons for rejecting claims and did not give discovery obligations, but we know very specifically what has got to be done to fix up the bill.
There are no specific conceptual problems with respect to getting a resolution now, and by "now,'' I mean Bill C-6 is there, the amendments are on the table, you get the Assembly of First Nations and the federal government with that minister and that national chief. It is not a long drawn out process, I expect, to pull the pieces together, get a resolution and achieve a historic accomplishment such as has never been seen before in First Nations and Aboriginal relations.
I am not making these points rhetorically. My sense of urgency here is that I have almost never seen in my public life a problem of such long standing where all the elements converge in such a remarkable way that is conducive to finally solving such a difficult problem. This committee can pay a crucial role in recommending that parties go to the table along those lines and solve the problem.
The Chairman: Professor Schwartz, I believe you are closely attached to the AFN. I would urge you, sir, if you would be so kind as to consider speaking to them about this, if you have not already, and make certain that we are all working towards the same goal and try to expedite this process. Professor Coyle, I would ask that you do the same, if you have any influence as well, because we will definitely be talking to the minister.
I want to thank both of you on behalf of the committee. Time is our greatest enemy in all these deliberations, but we thank you for your time and your expertise that you have shared with us here this morning.
The committee continued in camera.