OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to announce plans to speed land claims as native groups prepare for a potentially tense day of action June 29.
Sources say Harper will propose Tuesday a bill to streamline the settlement process -- a discredited system that now takes an average of 13 years.
But real results could be months away if they come at all.
The legislation, to be co-written with the national Assembly of First Nations, won't be introduced in the Commons until the fall. It would have to clear a fractious and unstable Parliament. And it's not certain whether new money to accelerate a notoriously sluggish compensation system would be tied to the bill's passage.
Harper is also expected to support giving more power to the Indian Claims Commission which investigates treaty violations but can't make binding rulings.
Native leaders will be watching to what extent the bill may cap settlement amounts or impose deadlines for filing claims.
Critics have long called for a truly independent land claims process with more money and staff to settle cases. Ottawa has until now acted as defendant, judge and jury in disputes that have over-stretched bureaucratic and native resources.
Native frustration has flared over the last year, prompting fiery barricades and sometimes ugly conflict.
Demonstrations, including rail blockades, are planned June 29 by leaders who have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward federal promises of action.
The federal government has itself estimated that it owes First Nations billions of dollars for breached or unfulfilled treaties.
"Deferring payment of this liability, while land development continues and interest compounds, can only increase the ultimate financial cost of settlements,'' Michael Coyle, a law professor at University of Western Ontario, testified last fall before a Senate committee studying the process.
Harper should support an independent body that can enforce timelines in often protracted negotiations, Coyle said Monday in an interview. That arm's-length arbiter must also be able to legally rule on impasses arising over the validity of a claim or how much is owed.
"I'm pleased they're going to be working with the Assembly of First Nations,'' Coyle added.
"It will have a much better chance of succeeding if First Nations have had a real role to play in developing the process.''
Basic funding for settlements is set at about $159 million this fiscal year.
An exhaustive Senate committee report earlier this year urged the Conservatives to commit at least $250 million annually. The alternative, it warned, is the eruption of more nasty clashes like the one that pitted native against non-native in Caledonia, Ont., last year over a housing development.
Frustration is once again building in the southwestern Ontario community as complex talks drag on.
Farther east, a rail blockade in April by a splinter group of Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte paralyzed passenger and freight traffic between Toronto and Montreal. The protest near Deseronto, Ont., wreaked commuter havoc for just over a day until it was peacefully ended.
Demonstrators blamed the snail's pace of compensation talks and the use of a quarry on disputed land. They have promised more economic disruption.
There are more than 800 unsolved claims in a growing "inventory'' of cases across much of Canada, say federal officials. Of those, just 120 have made it to the active negotiation stage.
The number of bottle-necked claims is actually much larger, says NDP aboriginal affairs critic Jean Crowder.
"If they don't have any resources to (start assessing them), they're not counting them in the backlog.''
Crowder sees the timing of Tuesday's announcement as a tepid bid to defuse the potential for angry confrontation on June 29.
"I think the government has such a poor track record on Indian and northern affairs that it has to put forward something that looks like a win.''
Liberal native affairs critic Anita Neville says the Conservatives have achieved one thing: "They've united aboriginal leadership across the country -- against this government.
"It's been a very sad 16 months for aboriginal people,'' she said of the gutting of the $5-billion Kelowna Accord to lift native living standards.
