06/10/2026
The Hill Times - BY LAURA RYCKEWAERT, June 10, 2026
"In the rush to “build Canada strong,” Indigenous leaders say they’re struggling with resource capacity to participate in consultations the federal government has a constitutional obligation to undertake—participation that’s being made harder by short timelines, and challenged by governments treating projects like done deals.
The Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples kicked off a study exploring the federal constitutional duty to consult and accommodate Indigenous Peoples on May 27.
PSG Senator Michèle Audette (De Salaberry, Que.), chair of the committee, told The Hill Times that the study—agreed to in early December—came about in part because of work underway to update the government’s 2011 consultation and accommodation guidelines on fulfilling the duty to consult.
“We saw that it’s an opportunity to add more also to the work that Canada is doing right now,” she said, adding committee members were also prompted by the frequency with which the Crown’s duty to consult was raised by witnesses—including Indigenous leaders and communities—during the last Parliament.
Along with the review of guidelines that began during the previous Parliament, the government is currently in the midst of consultations on its proposed Getting Major Projects Built in Canada discussion paper, which, among other things, recognized feedback “that the consultation processes for major projects need to be improved to avoid consultation fatigue.”
The paper proposes creating a “Crown Consultation Hub” within the Impact Assessment Agency that would “work with federal departments and agencies to ensure that each Indigenous group affected by a major project goes through one clear and coordinated consultation process for each [major] project.”
Published on May 8, the government originally set a deadline of June 7—a timeline of just 30 days—to solicit feedback. But on June 4, it announced an extension until July 22 to give “flexibility for stakeholders who have requested more time to contribute, helping to ensure all perspectives are heard and meaningfully considered,” per the press release, which notes the government intends to table legislation stemming from this paper in the fall sitting.
Aboriginal and treaty rights are enshrined in Sec. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act—passed in June 2021—requires the government to obtain free, prior, and informed consent from Indigenous Peoples before adopting or implementing laws or measures that may affect them.
Addressing the Senate committee on June 2, Lucien Wabanonik, chief of Lake Simon Anishnabe Nation Council, said a “major structural obstacle” for First Nations’ participation in meaningful consultation is the “chronic lack of financial and technical resources available … to analyze projects, obtain expert advice, participate in processes, and, when necessary, defend their rights in court.” Among other things, he also highlighted a “worrying fragmentation” in the current federal consultation framework.
“The effectiveness of a right cannot depend solely on the financial capacity of those who must assert it in court and before the state,” Wabanonik told Senators in French. “When Canada adopts laws, regulations, or policies that may have direct effects on First Nations, each new measure requires costly legal, technical, and community analysis.”
If the federal government “intends to act in the spirit of reconciliation,” it needs to provide “concrete means for communities” to “meaningfully” weigh in, he said.
That message was echoed by Métis National Council president Victoria Pruden and then-Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) chief executive officer Kilikvak Kabloona on June 2, and by Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro and Kebaowek First Nation councillor Justin Roy on June 3.
Pruden said among the “significant challenges” experienced by Métis governments are frequent, “late-stage engagement, barriers to accessing information, capacity limitations, and inconsistencies across jurisdictions.”
“These challenges directly affect whether consultation processes are experienced as credible, meaningful, and capable of influencing outcomes for Métis governments and communities,” she said.
Kabloona—whose departure from her NTI role was reported on June 4—told Senators that the 1993 Nunavut Agreement “sets a high standard for Inuit involvement” in regulatory processes, and fulfilling “these substantial consultation obligations” requires “adequate resources” to facilitate Inuit involvement. She noted that, currently, some federal funding is provided through the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s Northern Participant Funding Program (NPFP), but said more support is needed.
Over the next three fiscal years—2026-27 to 2028-29—some $11.7-million in grants and contribution funding will be available to Indigenous Peoples and northerners through the NPFP.
“A key challenge is that these processes are currently discretionary in the context of an increasing number of complex proposals for transportation, infrastructure, and resource development activities that require investments in the processes,” said Kabloona, who also noted the need for “early engagement and information sharing.”
Tuccaro said recent federal and provincial legislation in Alberta to expedite project approval processes—federally, through Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act—“puts pressure on meaningful consultations.”
Among his recommendations, he called for “mandatory capacity funding for First Nations from the Crown and the proponents commensurate with the cost of the project.”
Tuccaro said funding provided to weigh in on Bill C-5 “worked out to about $60,000 or $70,000”—an insufficient amount, “especially in the case of a remote community” with fly-in only access.
“That’s the reason why people can’t fully immerse themselves in these projects. That’s the reason why many are getting left behind,” he said.
Roy likewise stressed that “consultation works best when it starts early—before positions harden and decisions are effectively made,” when “Indigenous nations are adequately resourced to participate meaningfully,” and when “governments are transparent, flexible, and willing to adapt timelines and processes to Indigenous realities.”
Tight timelines exacerbate inadequate and inconsistent funding, said Roy.
“Because of the time limits that we have, too, you almost need to outsource a lot to try and meet deadlines as best you can, whereas if we had more time and provided the capacity to build what is needed internally, we would be less reliant on consultants and lawyers at hundreds of dollars an hour in order to do proper consultation,” he said, noting some $15,000 was made available to his community for engagement on the major projects discussion paper.
Roy said he worries about the capacity to provide feedback by deadline, but “even more” so about the federal government’s ability to “properly” consider that input before a bill gets tabled.
“These are very important discussion papers that are looking to be quickly tabled into legislation in a matter of weeks,” he said.
Mark Cliffe-Phillips, executive director of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, agreed that “capacity funding” is the “biggest issue” heard by his board “throughout our processes.”
University of Saskatchewan professor Dwight Newman told Senators that, between the “federal and provincial levels, various estimates suggest that the duty to consult is triggered hundreds of thousands of times per year in Canada.”
Along with the original, 30-day timeline for consultations on the government’s major projects discussion paper, committee members have highlighted the lack of advance consultation on Bill C-5, which was tabled on June 6, 2025, and received royal assent just 20 days later.
As laid out in a First Nations Leadership Council communiqué last June, the government reached out to “First Nations and certain First Nation organizations” to consult on the development of Bill C-5 on May 23, 2025, “giving only seven days to respond” and with only a “high-level summary” of the bill’s proposed contents included.
After it was passed, Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) organized a summit with First Nations leaders focused on the new legislation, followed by similar summits with Métis and Inuit leaders.
Audette said she was personally motivated to study the duty to consult as a result of a number of bills, including last Parliament’s Bill C-13, An Act for the Substantive Equality of Canada’s Official Languages; this Parliament’s Bill S-2, which seeks to respond to a B.C. Supreme Court ruling and address s*x discrimination in registration entitlements under the Indian Act; as well as Bill C-5.
“On one hand, we hear from the government, ‘we must uphold the duty to consult,’ but for the same government, those other bills such as C-5, why [didn’t it] happen?” said Audette.
Bill S-2 as originally tabled did not address a long-criticized second-generation cut-off rule. The Senate adopted amendments to address that cut-off, but Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty (Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou, Que.) has argued the need for further consultations and for S-2 to be passed as “originally introduced.” It is currently at committee stage in the House.
Indigenous witnesses have also stressed the need for consultations to not simply be a checked box and compliance exercise.
Appearing on June 2, Garrison Settee, grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), said in his organization’s experience, Canada and Manitoba “largely skip over the justification step of a duty-to-consult process,” and governments and developers are seen to “assume, incorrectly, that any infringement of acknowledged and constitutionally protected rights are ‘pre-justified’ and that consultations are really about mitigation and accommodation measures.”
“MKO describes this constitutionally flawed approach to the Crown’s duty to consult consistent with the honour of the Crown as ‘let’s make a deal.’ That is the kind of process that we are dealing with,” Settee told the committee.
Settee stressed that the rights of Indigenous Peoples to “hunt, fish, trap, and gather for food for support and subsistence, and for social and ceremonial purposes,” are “twice-constitutionally obligated” rights through the 1930 and 1982 Constitution acts.
Wabanonik said free, prior, and informed consent, and social acceptability are “not simply administrative exercises,"
