Friends of the Lubicon
PO Box 444 Stn D,
Etobicoke ON M9A 4X4
Tel: (416) 763-7500
Email: fol (at) tao (dot) ca
www.lubicon.ca
June 1, 2006
Attached please find an informative article on the state of the Lubicon struggle from the on-line journal www.straightgoods.ca.
www.straightgoods.ca
Dateline: Monday, May 29, 2006
by Kate Harries
It's time for Canada to resume negotiations with the Lubicons, says the United Nations committee that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Canada, a signatory, is in violation of its obligations under the treaty, the UN watchdog committee said in a report released May 22. It's the third time that Canada's response to the desperate plight of the Lubicon Lake Indian Nation has been held up to international legal scrutiny and been found deficient.
Using language that's considered emphatic in UN circles, the watchdog committee said it "strongly recommends" that Canada resume negotiations on Lubicon land claims and ensure there's effective consultation before licenses are granted for resource extraction that could jeopardize the Lubicons' survival as an indigenous people.
Lubicon negotiator Kevin Thomas noted that during the month the UN was looking at the issue, Alberta started an auction for leases on another 50,000 hectares of Lubicon land for oil sands exploitation.
The week before the decision was released, Alberta sold leases on another 1408 hectares of Lubicon land for regular oil and gas development "without even notifying the Lubicons, let alone getting their consent," Thomas said, adding that the federal government has not responded to letters from Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak proposing to restart negotiations.
Nevertheless, Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice was defiant in his response to the UN committee.
"Let's be clear about this. The Canadian government and the Alberta government have been at the table on the Lubicon negotiation for many years," he told the Canadian Press news agency.
"We have continued to put fair and reasonable positions on the table. In fact, the position that the government of Canada has put on the table was described in a previous United Nations report as a fair and reasonable position."
Prentice describe the Lubicon demands as just too high and noted that Alberta and Canada had settled nine other treaty land entitlement cases in the Treaty 8 area during the time the Lubicon negotiations have been going on.
All those remarks are untrue, Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak said. Unlike Prentice's comments, the chief's response was not widely reported.
In a May release Ominayak said:
- No UN report has described any position Canada has put on the table as fair and reasonable. In 1990, the UN human rights committee found that "historical inequities... and certain more recent developments threaten the way of life and culture of the Lubicon Lake Band" and noted that this violates Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, guaranteeing the rights of ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.
- The committee took at face value Canadian assurances of a negotiated settlement that would respect Lubicon rights (the Canadian representatives did not tell the committee an offer was being presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis) and concluded that Canada's proposed remedy appeared appropriate. A committee member was quoted in the Canadian media as saying this means the committee "is telling both sides to continue negotiating in good faith."
- Proof positive that the UN does not accept Canada's offer as fair or adequate came in two subsequent UN rulings — the one just released and another last October — urging Canada to return to the negotiating table.
- Unlike the nine other cases Prentice referred to, the Lubicon dispute is not a treaty land entitlement case. The Lubicons were missed out of Treaty 8 negotiations in Alberta in 1939. Under Canadian law Canada must negotiate a treaty with the aboriginal owners of a geographical area before assuming jurisdiction. Canada has never done that, and "the Lubicon people... retain unextinguished aboriginal title to our entire traditional territory."
Nevertheless, resource companies are pouring into the territory with no reference to the Lubicons. Ominayak's release sets the value of gas and oil extracted from Lubicon lands at $13 billion. The tiny nation has been left devastated.
Amnesty International was one of a number of Canadian NGOs that made submissions to the United Nations committee on economic, social and cultural rights, which along with the human rights committee is one of seven bodies that monitor implementation of core human rights treaties.
"Only a generation ago, the Lubicon lived almost entirely off the land," the Amnesty report states. "In the early 1970s, the provincial government initiated a massive program of oil extraction throughout the region.
"In 1986, a special envoy appointed by the federal government (E Davie Fulton) to look into the Lubicon situation, concluded that the 'weight of evidence' supported the testimony of Lubicon hunters and trappers that the activities of the oil companies had led to a 'disastrous' decline in the local subsistence economy."
The number of Lubicon families on welfare soared from one in 10 in 1979 to nine in 10 by 1983. The lack of running water and sanitary facilities in the community, needed to replace traditional systems of water and sanitary management, is leading to disease, as well as an astonishing increase in the number of abnormal births, and tuberculosis, affecting about a third of the Lubicons, the Amnesty report states.
In 2003, negotiations broke down. The Lubicons say that's because federal negotiators refused to discuss key items including financial compensation and self-government and said that they had "no mandate" to negotiate these long-standing settlement items.
In October, 2005 the UN human rights committee renewed its call for Canada to find a solution that respects the rights of the band.
In November, 2005, Indian Affairs suggested it would negotiate self-government in the future if the Lubicons first signed releases of their aboriginal rights and title, "effectively putting the Lubicons in the position of ceding the very rights that are to be the subject of negotiations prior to those negotiations taking place," Lubicon negotiator Thomas said.
Since then, Thomas add, over 54,000 hectares of new oil and gas leases and licenses and over 60,000 hectares of new oil sands leases have been put up for auction.
The economic, social and cultural rights committee had a chance to hear both sides during several days of hearings in early May.
Band councillor Alphonse Ominayak travelled to Switzerland to tell the committee that the Canadian government has been telling "falsehoods" to the public. "They say we're refusing to settle and asking too much, then they come over here and tell a different story as if they're trying to settle it, which is not the case at all," Ominayak said in an interview from Geneva.
A Canadian delegation of bureaucrats from 11 federal and provincial ministries, headed by Foreign Affairs legal adviser Alan Kessel, appeared to answer the committee's questions on a range of social issues. With regard to the Lubicons, the Canadians told the committee the federal government had made an offer that was rejected and at this point the government was not negotiating the claim.
The controversy coincided with the run-up to the May 9 election of the new UN Human Rights Council. Canada's candidacy was broadsided by a letter sent to all General Assembly members by the International Committee for the Indians of the Americas (INCOMINDIOS).
"INCOMINDIOS Switzerland is highly concerned about the fact that since 1990 Canada does not respect the aboriginal land rights of the Lubicon people and is thus violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," said the letter, signed by board member Heinz Lippuner.
"Some even consider the activities of multinational oil and lumber companies on Lubicon land as ethnocide — supported by the Province of Alberta and not prevented by the federal government of Canada."
INCOMINDIOS is a respected Swiss human rights organization that supports indigenous peoples in both the Americas.
The letter did not affect Canada's election to the Human Rights Council, but the issue caused tension at a May 3 reception for NGO representatives hosted by the Canadian Mission. Deirdre Kent, the mission's human rights counsellor, was questioned by Lubicon advisor Fred Lennarson on Canada's human rights record. Kent reportedly pointed to Norway as an example of the fact that no country is not guilty of human rights violations.
In a May 26 letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, another European human rights group refers to the "dismissive" attitude of Canadian representatives in both Geneva and Ottawa to the findings of two UN committees that Canada is in violation of key international human rights covenants.
"There is a way to settle Lubicon land rights and end this sorry chapter in Canadian history," writes Dionys Zink, a member of the board of the Munich-based Aktionsgruppe Indianer & Menschenrechte (AGIM). "We are aware that prominent Canadian Conservative statesman and jurist E Davie Fulton conducted a formal inquiry into the Lubicon situation and found Lubicon settlement proposals both workable and acceptable."
AGIM urges Harper to send negotiators back to the table to negotiate in good faith.
Kate Harries is a journalist specializing in environmental and First Nations issues.
fol-request at masses.tao.ca