OTTAWA — Indigenous communities are getting deluged with requests to consult on proposed projects affecting their lands, and have asked for funds to help cope with an even greater flood now that the federal government has opened its Major Projects Office.

Many First Nations are struggling to keep up with stacks of project proposals sent to local band offices for consultation on potential resource and infrastructure development, particularly in communities that sit on deposits of precious metals or critical minerals, said Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict.

Now that the federal and provincial governments are trying to speed up regulatory approvals for large-scale projects, Benedict expects the floodgates to open wider. Some communities fear they won’t have the resources to meaningfully respond when that happens, Benedict said, which could slow down Ottawa’s build-fast agenda.

Chiefs of Ontario, a body that advances the rights of the 133 First Nations in the province, has asked Ottawa to help by contributing $500,000 per year to each of them. The request was part of the organization’s submission to the House of Commons finance committee ahead of the November budget. 

“We know that an already stressed system, from a consultation perspective, is going to become much more strained in the very near future,” Benedict said in an interview.

The Métis Nation of Ontario has asked for a $1.173-million per year top-up to an agreement that for the next five years will fund a 14-person team responsible for responding to consultation requests from the government and private sector.

Both groups warn that, unless it provides more financial help, the federal government may fall short of its constitutional obligations to uphold treaty and Indigenous rights, as well as commitments Ottawa made to free, prior and informed Indigenous consent to development on their lands. Benedict said First Nations will do their best to consider and respond to the proposals. But he warned the bottleneck could delay or even scuttle opportunities for governments and Indigenous communities alike. 

Some band offices already find the burden overwhelming. Communities are asked to weigh in on projects ranging from highways to power stations to major resource developments, said Mark Podlasly, CEO of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition. “Nations are overrun with data that comes into them that they’re being asked to comment on, and it’s not a question of aptitude. It’s a question of physical limits,” said Podlasly, a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation in B.C. 

His non-profit organization helps to guide First Nations through decision-making on projects, but Indigenous governments are on their own with administrative hurdles. Some small offices have just a few staff to sort through dozens of boxes of applications with highly technical information. “You would have a hard time sending that stuff to a small city or small town in Canada and getting a response in a timely manner,” Podlasly said. “That’s what First Nations are faced with.” 

Those pressures predate the current push for so-called projects of national interest. “Consultation fatigue is a real thing with our communities,” Nicole Charbonneau, then a mineral development advisor for Wabun Tribal Council in Northeastern Ontario, told the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference in 2023. Even at that time, the council received a thousand emails a day about mining claim registrations in its territories, and many of the people who had to process them wore multiple hats, she said. “There’s often a lack of funding, people, time, skills, internet, equipment availability. A lot of our communities are dealing with Starlink internet.”

That’s on top of challenges that take precedence over development applications, from opiate crises to child welfare systems in desperate need of reform, said Benedict. Taking time away from more pressing priorities is “the ultimate cost to our communities,” he said.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney got a lesson this summer on consulting with communities in crisis when he tried to get Indigenous groups to buy into his plan for major projects just as wildfires were consuming large swaths of Western and Atlantic Canada. More than 100 fires threatened 95 First Nations, 73 of which were evacuated. The prime minister’s get-it-done-fast approach was met with indignation and disbelief from Indigenous leaders focused on keeping their communities safe. 

The fire situation was so severe, the Assembly of First Nations had to postpone its annual meeting of chiefs until September. National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak emerged from that meeting saying the chiefs had united around a call for better consultation. 

“There is no getting around First Nations rights holders,” she said at a press conference on Parliament Hill. “Until an appropriate process is established and founded in free, prior and informed consent from First Nations, the Crown’s legal obligations will not be met.”

Some private-sector proponents of projects would also like Indigenous governments to be better able to respond when they come calling. “Many First Nations face systemic barriers to accessing capital, having regulatory influence and securing technical expertise to advance their interests in major projects,” Woodfibre LNG, the company behind a proposed low-carbon LNG export facility near Squamish, B.C., said in its own submission to the finance committee. 

Woodfibre LNG, owned by Pacific Energy Corp. and Enbridge, signed an agreement with the Squamish Nation, which conducted its own legally binding environmental assessment on the project. In its submission, the company said ensuring First Nations have the capital and capacity to respond to proposals can turn them into economic partners in projects. 

If the government approves his group’s ask, Benedict expects bands to use the money to add local staff, hold information sessions for residents or get advice from independent lawyers, engineers and other experts. If it gives less than the amount requested, he hopes Ottawa will at least set up a fund that communities under the greatest pressure can access.

Without it, he said, some will have few options but to turn to the courts, or even blockades, to ensure projects affecting their lands don’t begin before they have properly considered them. That, Benedict noted, would result in uncertainty for investors.

“I can tell you that communities don’t want that,” he added, “but this sadly becomes the only ability that communities have to respond.” 

With files from Jesse Snyder in Calgary and Anita Balakrishnan in Toronto