Last Updated: Monday, January 22, 2007 | 10:32 AM CT
CBC News
The Dehcho land-use plan protects too much land from development and won’t be approved as it stands, federal negotiator Tim Christian says.
The plan was developed over four years by the Dehcho land-use plan committee and approved by the Dehcho First Nations at its assembly in June.
Christian says the federal government wants to dismantle the committee and move discussions about revising the plan to the land claims table.
The government’s concerns are not technical and do not require the skills of planning committee members to resolve, said Christian, who maintains the current plan contains a confusing regulatory regime.
"It doesn’t make sense for us to just hand back to the committee issues which we have already raised with the committee," he said in an interview Friday.
"They have seen fit not to address these concerns in the past, and therefore the plan, as it’s currently drafted, will not be approved."
Committee’s work far from finished
Land-use plan committee executive director Heidi Wiebe says the job of the group will not be completed until the plan has been approved by the federal and territorial governments and properly implemented.
"We’ve built up a lot of capacity, both in terms of understanding of the land and the culture and the resources and the values in the region, but also the priorities of the different planning partners that have been involved," Wiebe said.
"While a lot of that information is documented, for somebody else to walk in and pick that up would take a long time."
The plan has cost an estimated $4 million to date, she said.
Its fate, along with the committee’s, will be discussed at the next round of Dehcho land claim negotiations in February.
The Dehcho First Nations, which represent 11 communities in the southwest region of the Northwest Territories, is the only aboriginal group without a land claim agreement along the route of the proposed 1,200-kilometre Mackenzie Valley pipeline.