Deh Cho won't sign royalty agreement; Offer just amounts to 'crumbs,' chief says

Shaun Polczer, May 16, 2007, Calgary Herald -- The Deh Cho First Nation is refusing to join an agreement in principle to share resource revenues and administrative powers in the Northwest Territories, the group's chief said Tuesday.

Herb Norwegian said the deal -- seen as a precondition for the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline -- offers native communities "crumbs" in exchange for their land and resources.

"It's incredibly weak, badly defined and far behind anything the Deh Cho would consider.

We are the only people in the North who think the current royalty regime is unacceptable and we say so publicly."

The deal between the Inuvialuit, Sahtu, Gwich'in and Metis was announced in Yellowknife on May 9. Because the N.W.T. is not a province, its natural resources are administered by the federal government.

Bob McLeod, secretary to the N.W.T. cabinet, said the document has been forwarded to the appropriate federal officials with the recommendation that it be adopted as the basis for a final agreement that could be sealed and delivered by this time next year.

McLeod said the basic framework has been in the works for more than two decades. "It's the first agreement of its kind that provides for aboriginal government," he said. "We've been working on this for a long time."

McLeod said the Deh Cho were invited to participate in the talks and were kept abreast of the negotiations with regular briefings, although Norwegian complained they were kept in the dark.

The Deh Cho sees the deal as an attempt to undermine its bargaining leverage in land claims negotiations with the feds. "It seems to me that this secret agreement is just another crude way of trying to pressure the Deh Cho to fall into line," Norwegian said. "They sold off their rights for these crumbs and now they want to take away our strength at the table."

The deal has been structured to allow the Deh Cho to sign on at a future date.

In March, lead partner Imperial Oil Ltd. more than doubled cost estimates for the project to $16.2 billion. On Tuesday it filed documents with the National Energy Board and the N.W.T.'s Joint Review Panel detailing the revised estimates.

"This is basically a more detailed project description," said Imperial spokesman Pius Rolheiser.

Rolheiser said Imperial and the other project proponents -- Shell Canada Ltd., ConocoPhillips Canada and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG) -- are watching the negotiations between the territorial government and the aboriginal communities with "keen interest" but it doesn't affect the proposed in-service date of the pipeline, which has been pushed back to 2014.

Likewise Bob Reid, speaking on behalf of the APG, said bringing the Deh Cho onside has become a lower priority in light of the revised timelines.

"We're basically not pursuing APG membership for the Deh Cho at this time because the project has been delayed," he said.