Government has change of heart on claims bill

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It sat on a shelf in Ottawa for almost two years after a lot of money was spent to get it through both houses of Parliament. Then, with little fanfare, the news was circulated that Bill C-6, the Specific Claims Resolution Act (SCRA), would not become law.

The announcement was made on Sept. 28 during the National Land Claims Research Workshop in Winnipeg. Robert Eyaphaise, the federal official charged with implementing the new bill once it was enacted, broke the news to the First Nation land claim researchers.

The next day, chiefs across the country were informed of the development via a memo from Assembly of First Nation (AFN) associate legal counsel Candice Metallic.

Metallic told the chiefs the AFN had been aggressively lobbying Indian Minister Affairs Andy Scott to revamp the law to bring it into line with the requirements of First Nations. The department of Indian Affairs issued no national news release on the matter.

Former Minister of Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault introduced the SCRA three years ago claiming it would clear up the backlog of land claims by making the process "faster, fairer, and more transparent." The act would have placed a $7 million cap on settlements and replaced the Indian Claims Commission with a new "independent" claims resolution body.

"I cannot think of a single First Nation in Canada that supported Bill C-6," said Chief David General of Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, who praised the federal government's decision to shelve the act. "It penalized us when it was Ottawa's land claims process that wasted time, money and lost opportunities. If the SCRA had been put into force, things could have been much worse."

The chief explained the SCRA "would have taken the word 'negotiation' out of land claims negotiations, set up the federal government as both the accused and the judge, and allowed it to hand down decisions on land claims without requiring explanations. The SCRA would have led to more costly court cases-not less. It would not have made things either faster or fairer."

General said he wouldn't heave a sigh of relief, though, until SCRA has been formally repealed.

"Today's decision by Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott does not mean the SCRA is scrapped. It can still be enacted by the federal cabinet through an Order-in-Council," General said. "In the meantime, Six Nations has had 28 specific claims filed. Some of our claims have been waiting since the 1970s. We have only had one claim settled in the past 30 years. Like a lot of other First Nations, Six Nations just wants a fair deal so we can move ahead. Now that the SCRA has been shelved, perhaps it will be possible."

Scott will fill the two vacancies on the Indian Specific Claims Commission with Aboriginal people and "the minister committed to work with the AFN to explore ways to reduce the backlog of specific claims currently in the inventory. While INAC is vague on how this will be accomplished, it is clear that major improvements, including the infusion of significant fiscal resources, are required to realize any enhancement to the existing claims resolution process," Metallic wrote.

There are presently more than 650 specific claims filed by First Nations with the federal government. More than 300 are being examined by the Department of Justice, the government department where the decision to accept or reject a claim against the government is made. Some of these claims have been under consideration for years. Experts say there are as many as 1,000 claims yet to be filed.