Dehcho Grand Chief wants Ottawa to speed up land talks

Dehcho Grand Chief Herb Norwegian is calling on the federal government to speed up the Dehcho Process by increasing the frequency and duration of negotiations.

Negotiations with Canada are suspended until a new federal government is sworn in and establishes a mandate following this month’s election.

The Dehcho First Nations, or DFN, says federal negotiators have indicated that once talks resume, they will continue their previous schedule of meeting for three days every six weeks.

“Canada’s policy is slowing talks down to a snail’s pace,” Grand Chief Norwegian was quoted as saying in a press release. “The new government should get serious about finishing an AIP” – agreement in principle – “within a year.”

The Dehcho Process is the name given to negotiations over land, resources and governance between DFN and the territorial and federal governments.

The agreement in principle is a type of framework to work from during negotiations.

The negotiations first began in the late 1990s and are said to be nearing completion.

To help the process along, Norwegian says that once negotiations resume, those involved should meet twice a month for a week.

He says this was the schedule adopted during negotiations for the Tłı̨chǫ Land Claims and Self-Government Agreement, which was signed in 2003.

“If Canada wants to get to the resources, then they need to deal with the outstanding claims, such as the Dehcho,” said Norwegian. “The sooner that there’s clarity on who owns the land, then I think business can unfold.”

Norwegian says work can still be done during the election hiatus.

“We’ll go to communities, prepare our communities for an eventual big discussion on moving forward after the election,” said Norwegian.

“Once the new government is sworn in, then we’re hoping that we would probably be making an offer to Canada on what it is that we have, where we’re at – and so that’s going to be exciting.”

Norwegian said the DFN may also seek a bilateral meeting with the GNWT during this period.

Since devolution came into effect in 2014, he said, negotiating the Dehcho Process has become more “cumbersome.” He refers to devolution as the GNWT’s own land claim agreement with the federal government.

“We objected to that, because a lot of the the authority that was transferred to the territorial government was rightfully something that should have been transferred to us,” said Norwegian.

The impression Norwegian has from Premier RJ Simpson – from Simpson’s visit to a Dehcho Assembly and in communications since – is that the premier would like to transfer authority to regional governments, “so that regional governments would be able to flourish, and they’d be able to take on that responsibility and be able to act as a full government.”

However, Norwegian says he doesn’t hear that sentiment in the DFN’s conversations with the GNWT. This, he says, has been especially prevalent in discussions around land use planning, where he says the GNWT has been “withering it away.”

What should happen, Norwegian says, is that the draft plan should instead go through public consultation to receive feedback.

“But here you’ve got the bureaucrats and they’re tinkering, tampering and just trying to wash away these little sand castles here that we built,” said Norwegian.

“It’s becoming that kind of a thing where the premier says one thing, but then the bureaucrats – they take a cloak and dagger kind of approach to our land use plan, slowly trying to water it down.”

Norwegian said he anticipates being at the negotiating table with the federal and territorial governments again by mid-summer.

He has previously said that for the purposes of negotiating, it won’t matter if a Liberal or Conservative government is elected later this month, though it may delay things further if a new party comes to power.