First Nations bill Ontario for resource “swindle”

The Ontario government is being presented with a $127-million bill for natural resources extracted from First Nations lands in northwestern Ontario and the Far North.

The Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), the political body for 49 Aboriginal communities, announced at a June 26 press reference in Toronto that they are invoicing Queen's Park for only a down payment of a larger $32-billion sum that they are owed.

NAN represents Aboriginal communities in the Treaty 9 and part of the Treaty 5 areas of Ontario that includes the Ring of Fire chromite exploration camp in the James Bay lowlands.

“Due to impending developments within the NAN territory, our chiefs are responding by doing more than monitoring the situation, they are taking action,” said Grand Chief Stan Beardy in a statement.

Last December, the chiefs commissioned Dr. Fred Lazar, an economist with York University's Schulich School of Business, to produce a report based on data from the Chiefs of Ontario Revenue Sharing Report, the Public Accounts of Ontario and other sources.

Lazar based his numbers on past, current and future revenue streams collected by the Ontario government.

“My understanding of Treaties 5 and 9 is that all revenues generated from the lands covered by these treaties were to be shared – there was no surrender involved,” said Lazar. “The NAN First Nations have never been given their share, nor has the province ever offered the compensation owing or has offered to sit down with the NAN First Nations Chiefs to negotiate a revenue sharing agreement, an agreement that is over a century overdue.”

Deputy Grand Chief Les Loutit said there was an agreement signed 100 years ago through the James Bay Treaty to share the land and its resources with the province.

“We are just here to drop off the invoice for the annuity on this amount and this represents only partial payment.”

Beardy added these debts with Ontario have to be settled before any development partnerships move forward.

“They have broken the Treaty promises. We owe it to our future generations that we don't have another historic swindle on our hands.”

When Cliffs Natural Resources announced in early May it was placing its Ring of Fire ferrochrome processor in Sudbury, Northern Development and Mines Rick Bartolucci said the same day that resource revenue sharing with Northern communities was in the conversation to develop the Far North, a statement he repeated June 19 at an Aboriginal mining conference in Thunder Bay.

Despite constant pledges by the Ontario government to open dialogue and consult with First Nation communities on mine and transportation development in the Far North, chiefs are threatening to bring mineral exploration in the Ring of Fire to a screeching halt.

Last week, six disgruntled chiefs, frustrated by the government's lack of consultation with their communities, announced they were preparing eviction notices to clear the exploration camp of all mining companies.