Meegwetch.
[Witness speaks in Cree]
I'm so glad you brought up the other elements of free, prior, and informed consent, because everybody gets stuck on consent, yet when we present a project in the community or Brian and I are involved in some assessment, it's the “free, prior, and informed” part that is really important.
When I listen to my grand chief speaking and I look at the agreements he negotiated, it's not for nothing that the agreements begin with the word “relationship”. That's what the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement is. When you read UNDRIP, you can't read article 19 in isolation; you have to read it with 18. It's a relationship. When people harp on the issue of consent and on free, prior, and informed consent, and there's fear that comes out of it, you automatically see that the person is looking at it like a transaction. If you look at it like a transaction, you'll lose, and that's always been the source of butting our heads on the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement.
However, once we get it back into a relationship and we get to own the decision that comes out of the process, instead of focusing on the “no” that would come from the community you instead get to see the incredible value of a “yes” that comes from the community. There's not a single project in Cree territory that has gone through an environmental impact assessment that wasn't made better by the land users and the advisers and the decision-makers from the community. We've approved way more projects than we've held back. When we approve all of those projects, we improve them as well. This is where it's a bit sad when we don't recognize the relationship part.
There are guiding principles. Every once in a while we get stuck on a project, and Brian is the voice of wisdom who usually sends us back to, “Hey, let's read the treaty. What does the treaty say about the principles we're supposed to use when we make these decisions together?” We're two representatives named by the Cree Nation Government, and we have two representatives named by Quebec, and this is our decision we send to the minister.
After talking about first nations' rights, protecting the land, protecting the environment, and protecting wildlife, people are surprised that part of our mandate—per subsection 22.2.4, article f) on the involvement of the Cree people in the application of this regime—is to protect “the rights and interests of non-Native people, whatever they may be”. You have Cree representatives defending the rights of non-native people in our territory, “The right to develop by persons acting lawfully in the Territory”. You have Cree representatives defending the right of people to act lawfully and then minimizing negative impacts and trying to augment social impacts. As the grand chief said, when you focus on the relationship and get to be a part of the decision, we'll defend the decision. We'll use our institutions to defend the decision. However, when we focus on consent, you're reducing us to a simple transaction, we're put in isolation, and you're not going to get the full value of our participation.
