New app to help address high volumes of First Nation consultation requests

By Colin Graf

LEAMINGTON— Members of the Caldwell First Nation (CFN) in southwestern Ontario think they have the solution for dealing with upwards of 25 requests arriving each week for consultation by developers from across their traditional territory.

The solution, a specially-developed web app, will help identify requests that are high-priority and allow the community to judge developments based on their own concerns, such as protecting sacred sites, harvesting practices, and waterways, according to Nikki Van Oirschot, Caldwell’s Director of Operations.

While trying to sort through the consultation requests and present them to her Council, Van Oirschot found serious problems in keeping up. Developers often gave her “arbitrary deadlines” to meet and analyzing the requests often needed expertise that she herself might not have for each matter. While she was also “doing all the things to look after our own community that need doing,” Van Oirschot felt that she couldn’t “pay good proper attention” to all of the consultation requests.

The new app, consultwithcaldwell.ca, arose from a conversation between Van Oirschot and Dr. Ashley Sisco of the consulting firm Sisco and Associates. Together with Adam Sisco, web developer and programmer, they created the web tool that places development requests in different “triage” levels of attention needed from Caldwell’s Council based on protocols developed by community members. The app “streamlines the process”, and also generates reports for Council, says Sisco.

The Duty to Consult and Accommodate is a legal and statutory obligation that must be fulfilled by the Crown, and provincial and territorial governments as well as private groups before taking actions that could impact Indigenous or Treaty rights.

First Nations face many hurdles on the road to achieving meaningful consultation with developers, Sisco says, such as the “overwhelming number” of consultation requests that come in. While governments and companies are becoming more aware of the duty to consult in recent years, in their 15 years of working with communities across Canada, Sisco has found that the increase in consultation requests has led to “consultation fatigue”. These requests can overburden First Nations which tend to be understaffed and also often require specific areas of technical knowledge, Sisco notes. The new online tool “tries to embed some of that technical expertise,” she adds.

“We want to keep receiving them (consultation requests),” says Van Oirschot. “[But] a bridge improvement in Woodstock may not need the same level of attention as a transmission line right in the heart of the Leamington or Kingsville area.”

Consultation requests also often impose protocols that have been set up by the federal, provincial, or territorial governments, and not by the communities themselves, she explains.

Governments regularly delegate consultation to the developers, who have often already made up their minds their projects are going ahead before consulting, although “technically” consultation should come before final decisions by the proponents. According to Sisco, that’s “rarely the case,” putting community members in a situation “where they are at a major disadvantage.”

Sisco explains that the purpose of creating the online tool is to “flip the script”, allowing First Nations to “enforce community protocols” and say to developers, “No, this is how we consult, these are the steps you need to follow.”

Van Oirschot says developers may consider an environmental problem to be simply the effect of excavation on plants growing at the time, but Caldwell will be thinking about the “big picture” including effects for the next seven generations on migratory birds and waterways.

Companies may be following the government’s direction, “checking the right check-boxes and moving on to the next stage of their process, but our checklist will look vastly different from theirs,” she explains.

In another example, while governments may emphasize protection for species at risk from development, Caldwell may also look at species they rely on for traditional harvesting, Sisco adds.

Sisco says she isn’t aware of any similar online tools of this nature to help First Nations deal with consultation fatigue. She says that the tool is “absolutely adaptable,” and notes she has spoken with other communities about adapting it for their use.

“We hope it will help First Nations in asserting their rights to meaningful consultation and accommodation across Canada,” she says.

“We are extremely pleased with the online tool and are confident that it will increase our ability to track progress, keep abreast of the hundreds of requests received each year, and ensures our consultation protocol is being followed by proponents,” said Caldwell Councillor Stan Scott in a news release.

Councillor James Peters, whose area of focus includes lands, also expressed himself in the news release.

“It is imperative that we are keenly aware of all consultation requests in our traditional territory and beyond. Even the slightest of anticipated environmental impacts can have long-lasting adverse effects on traditional food sources, water, land, and plant, animal, and human life.”