Thank you. Tansi.

My name is Sheldon Sunshine. I'm chief of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, in what is now northwestern Alberta. I'll limit my comments to part 2 of Bill C-5, the building Canada act.

Our ancestors entered into the treaty with the imperial Crown in 1899, before Alberta existed. The Crown guaranteed our ability to continue our way of life if we agreed to allow you into our territories and share our lands. Our ancestors would never have imagined these new levels of government, the impacts on our people and how Canada has implemented its side of this relationship.

The rate at which this legislation has gone through Parliament is unprecedented. The House has no studies, has not heard from experts and has not weighed evidence, and now we're in a fast-track committee. Crown obligations to first nations can't be fast-tracked. This is why, as drafted, this legislation will only cause delay, regulatory uncertainty and litigation.

The first issue with this bill is the absence of consultation. Canada is legally bound by the principle of free, prior and informed consent, FPIC. FPIC is more than an FYI, but we didn't receive even an FYI with this legislation. We received notice from a corporate entity while the Prime Minister met with premiers and industry executives. Now we learn, through the newspaper, that there is a plan for an advisory committee to manufacture consent and to again exclude the rights-holding first nations.

You then talk about economic reconciliation. If the government had wanted to work with first nations, they would have handled this legislation rollout better. We are afterthoughts. We still have not been informed of which projects are on the wish list. We suspect that for us it's more oil and gas pipelines, data centres, and coal and nuclear projects. All have devastating impacts on our rights.

The second issue with this legislation is that it will cause the federal Crown to breach its obligation to us in three important ways.

First, the federal government will unlawfully delegate power to exempt projects from federal laws, including the Indian Act. This usurps the House of Commons and the Senate, and breaches the federal Crown's obligation to us.

Second, this bill will create a situation where federal requirements are deemed to be met regardless of impacts. This is unconstitutional. The mention of consultation in this bill does not fix that. The consultation provisions give a minister discretion to decide if we must be consulted, and only if they decide we will be adversely affected. The bill does not mention the corresponding duty to accommodate. FPIC is MIA.

Third, the federal Crown is breaching its obligation by abandoning us to defend against Alberta's impotent regulators. Our land has already been heavily impacted by provincial green-lit development and the consequent climate change, to the point where we were almost wiped out by catastrophic fire in 2023, when we lost 39 buildings. We still have members who have yet to return home.

Our territory is more than 90% taken up by conventional oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, urban expansion and Crown landfills, all rammed through with little, if any, consultation from the province. In Alberta we're forced to deal with industry proponents when the province has an obligation to consult with us. The entire consultation regime is unconstitutional. It's unworkable. We receive hundreds of requests to consult on new projects every year. Alberta gives us $110,000 for this work. This is deliberately inadequate to respond. We can't keep up.

Following this empty consultation, authorizations are already fast-tracked through Alberta regulators. We have a saying that Alberta has not seen a permit it doesn't like. The Alberta Energy Regulator is fully funded by the same industry it regulates. Industry in turn monitors itself. For this reason, it is called a captured regulator. For example, CST Coal spilled over 1.1 million litres of toxic tailings into the Smoky River upstream from us and received a $22,000 fine. Further north, Imperial Oil spilled 5.3 million litres of tailings into the Athabaska River basin and received a $50,000 fine.

These grossly inadequate sanctions are just one form of inherent racism that we face. The breach of federal duties cannot be rectified through loan guarantees for us to buy into projects that will ultimately destroy our land and people. Is this your view of economic reconciliation, meaning that we must abide by Canada's economic project as willing investors instead of participating as treaty partners? This is the same troubling language that the Alberta premier uses. We expected more from this government.

To be clear, we reject this legislation in its entirety and the process that has been concocted to get us here. Simple amendments cannot solve the deep treaty and rights violations contained in this bill.

Thank you very much.