MICHIPICOTEN — Robinson Superior Treaty annuity talks failed because Ottawa and the Ontario government wouldn’t make a fair and reasonable offer, the chief of Michipicoten First Nation said Tuesday.
The Crown’s negotiators seemed to think $3.6 billion “was an honourable suggestion on their part,” Chief Pat Tangie told Newswatch.
“It was, as far as we’re concerned, absolutely not fair compensation.”
The 12 First Nations in the Robinson Superior Treaty region were in negotiations to compensate for well over a century of underpayments in annuities under the treaty.
Annuities paid to every member of First Nations under the 1850 treaty were supposed to increase as economic activity grew. Instead they have been frozen at $4 per year since 1874.
In July, the Supreme Court of Canada directed Ontario and the federal government to negotiate compensation for the historical underpayments by Jan. 26, but no agreement was reached and now the First Nations are turning to the courts for a settlement.
Tangie said a June court date has been set.
In an interview with Newswatch, Gull Bay First Nation Chief Wilfred King’s assessment of the negotiations was similar to Tangie’s.
King said federal and provincial negotiators “were just sitting there taking the information and telling us all along that they would get back to us, and we felt there was no real meaningful dialogue between the (First Nations’) negotiating team and the negotiators represented by Canada and Ontario.”
The provincial Indigenous affairs ministry emailed a two-sentence statement to Newswatch that began by saying Ontario and the federal government followed the Supreme Court’s “direction to the Crown” by negotiating with the Robinson-Superior Treaty nations.
“Those negotiations have concluded, and we can confirm that the Crown has exercised its discretion as required by the Supreme Court and has determined an amount of past compensation.”
The federal government released a written statement saying it negotiated “in good faith” with the First Nations.
“Unfortunately, the parties could not find the common ground to achieve this goal in the six-month timeline provided by the Supreme Court of Canada.”
The federal government further said it is “keeping the lines of communications open with our treaty partners as the Robinson Superior Treaty First Nations engage with their members on next steps.”
Tangie said it’s difficult to negotiate with a partner whose “ears are closed, even though they do say that their ears and their hearts are open.”
Negotiators on the other side didn’t seem to understand the harm arising from 175 years of “neglect and mistreatment,” said Tangie.
She questioned the effort put in by the Crown to reach a settlement.
“We only had 2.5 days of actual negotiations when the ministers came into the room, 2 days last week and half a day the week before,” she said. “So this was not a negotiation.”
The Supreme Court ruled last year that the Crown had breached its duty to adjust annuity payments to First Nations sharing their land in the Robinson Superior Treaty and Robinson Huron Treaty territories since 1874.
The court told the federal and provincial governments in July that they had six months to negotiate a settlement with the Robinson-Superior First Nations. The Robinson-Huron signatories had already reached a settlement with the Crown in June.
