DEB GUERETTE
Herald-Tribune staff
Negotiators from the government of Alberta are expected to lay some cards on the Lubicon land and entitlement negotiation table this week.
Head provincial negotiator, Calgary lawyer John McCarthy, is scheduled to join Lubicon and federal government negotiation parties in Little Buffalo Tuesday and Wednesday.
It will be the second tripartite meeting since the latest round of negotiations on the 60-year-old claim began 18 months ago with Ottawa legal professor Brad Morse heading the federal team.
McCarthy traveled to the Lubicon community, about 300 kilometres northeast of Grande Prairie, for the first three-party meeting July 27, when the federal team led a day-long briefing on the current status of negotiations. Lubicon negotiators said before the meeting they expected McCarthy to present the province's position on the band's standing request for a 95 square mile reserve.
McCarthy told the chief and council he had yet to receive instructions from new minister of international and intergovernmental affairs Shirley McClellan and associate minister of aboriginal affairs Pearl Calahasen.
Lubicon chief Bernard Ominayak invited McCarthy to return to the negotiating table once he secured an official mandate from the province.
Intergovernmental affairs spokesman David May says three months is "not an unduly long time" to consult with the ministers. McCarthy has now met with them, he said, but details of the provincial position won't be discussed publicly while negotiations are under way.
"As and when things develop, there will be announcements," May said. "Alberta's primary responsibility is to provide provincial Crown land to assist the federal government in its primary responsibility" of settling First Nations claims, he said.
The province's last significant involvement in the Lubicon settlement process was in 1988 when then premier Don Getty met personally with Ominayak and the two men worked out and signed the Grimshaw Accord - an agreement that promised the northern First Nation its 95 square mile reserve.
McCarthy told chief and council at the July meeting that former minister of aboriginal affairs Mike Cardinal withdrew the Grimshaw Accord agreement in 1995 because "circumstances had changed."
Lubicon advisor Fred Lennarson says "the Lubicon position hasn't changed," and the band is still looking for a 95 square mile reserve.