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Winter 2019
 
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The Ontario government has officially ended the regional framework agreement between Queen’s Park and the First Nations closest to the Ring of Fire, pledging to move forward with a series of bilateral agreements that the province’s Indigenous Affairs minister says will remove delays to completing projects that communities themselves want to see.


At the top of that list, Greg Rickford said in an interview with CBC News, is a north-south corridor that, not only could lead to road access to the mineral-rich James Bay lowlands, but can also connect by road, as well as add to the provincial power grid and expand modern telecommunications to, “at least four, five Indigenous communities.”

“That has additional health and social and economic benefits that move beyond the more obvious opportunities of creating mines,” he said. “To the extent that Noront [Resources] or other mining companies could build mines on that corridor, then we have a great value proposition.”

Rickford said pursuing individual agreements with First Nations as they are ready to proceed with individual projects is a “pragmatic” approach, adding the regional framework agreement had “come off line,” and over $20 million has been spent without “shovels in the ground. Today’s about being inspired by Indigenous communities and their leaders to start moving the Ring of Fire, broadly speaking, to the sound of business.”

The future of the regional table’s existence was uncertain since the PCs formed government in 2018. Money tied to the agreement, signed between the previous Liberal government and Matawa, ran out at the end of October; as well, the appointment of Frank Iacobucci, the Province’s chief negotiator, wasn’t renewed, with the retired Supreme Court judge stepping aside this summer.

Rickford said many of the clauses in the individual agreements will be “inspired, to a certain extent, by some of the principles that had been done through the work under the regional framework,” and that communities themselves are driving the agreements.