Higher lumber prices are helping Atikokan Forest Products stabilize operations after a long period of hardship, but company officials are worried that a bigger hardship may still lie ahead.
The potential hardship, they contend, comes in the form of a piece of provincial legislation that has already passed second reading in the Ontario Legislature - a rarity because the legislation is a private member’s bill.
This legislation is called the First Nations Revenue Sharing Act and it will affect all northern companies that derive their livelihood from natural resources. Considering the fact the North’s economic base is primarily based on natural resource extraction and the reality that most First Nations reserves in Ontario are in the North, both forestry and mining companies are awaiting their opportunity to speak out on the proposed bill.
“Everybody is waiting to see what the government has in store with this,” says Hartley Multimaki, vice-president of Buchanan Forest Products.
The bill was introduced by New Democrat MPP Gilles Bisson. Bisson represents the riding of Timmins-James Bay, a constituency with a high Aboriginal population. The NDP has long advocated such revenue-sharing agreements.
The bill, as it reads now, would require companies that extract resources from “traditional lands” of Aboriginal communities to negotiate a revenue-sharing agreement with Aboriginal peoples or, if an agreement could not be reached within three years, an outside arbitrator would be appointed. The main goal, say the drafters, is to create a comprehensive agreement framework, as other provinces have done, to settle all disputes, rather than rely on individual agreements between Aboriginal communities and resource companies.
Although the bill’s proponents point to economic development on poverty-stricken reserves as a selling point for the bill, and contend it will reduce costly individual settlements and duplication, critics are concerned about the broad definition of “traditional lands” in the bill. Section 1 states that “traditional lands means lands that were traditionally travelled across or made use of by a First Nation, whether or not they fall within a reserve occupied by that First Nation.”
Some critics maintain that this definition is subject to historical interpretation and could potentially cover most of Northern Ontario.
Norm Miller, the MPP for Parry Sound-Muskoka, said in the Ontario Legislature that he is concerned that there is the potential for the definition to be challenged every time in the courts.
He says that if the definition would be limited to existing “designated lands,” he would support the bill.
Representatives from Bisson’s office, however, point to the fact that the bill as proposed does not spell out a specific revenue-sharing agreement at all. It only forces all the parties to the table to hammer one out.
“We left the bill deliberately broad and vague in order to get those involved talking,” says Kate Mulligan, executive assistant to Bisson.
Mulligan says she fully expects companies to contest the broadness of the definition of “traditional lands.”
Forestry companies, such as Atikokan Forest Products, are concerned about the lack of economic development faced by all northerners, including non-Aboriginals, and the challenges small- and medium-sized operations are already facing.
Atikokan Forest Products, says Multimaki, recently survived a period of layoffs and is still dealing with wood supply issues, as well as shelling out money to cover the softwood lumber duty slapped on lumber manufacturers by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The company would like to invest in new technology at its mills, but there are concerns over the investment climate, especially if this bill is passed, he says.
Meanwhile, mining and forestry companies hope that the province will take their concerns seriously. The Ontario Mining Association made a
presentation on the bill last month and other organizations are hoping to get their say. When the Ontario Legislature resumes in mid-October, they
say they will be ready.
The government held public meetings on the bill throughout the middle of September, which included hearings in Sioux Lookout, New Osnaburgh (Mishkeegogamang), Attawapiskat and Moose Factory.
A copy of the proposed bill can be viewed at www.ontla.on.ca/documents/Bills/38_Parliament/Session1/b097_e.htm.
