Indigenous Consultation about Environmental Concerns in Canada

Indigenous Consultation about Environmental Concerns
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Indigenous Consultation about Environmental Concerns
Climate change and other environmental concerns are issues of great concern for any government around the world. However, measures taken to protect the environment have to be considered to ensure that they do not cause harm to some of the vulnerable stakeholders. Consequently, policymakers liaise with researchers to consult the stakeholders before making crucial decisions. However, some of these consultations are only done for formality purposes and in such cases, the implementers often ignore the proposals provided by the affected stakeholders. An excellent example of such cases is Canada’s indigenous population consultations about environmental concerns. These consultations are insufficient as the final decisions from the consultative processes rarely incorporate the ideas of these indigenous populations.
Consultation is a process that entails gathering information from different sources for purposes of final decision-making. However, like Moore, Porten, and Castleden (2017) note, consultation does not always translate to consent. The hydraulic fracturing and water governance on the Indigenous lands in Canada reveal the rampant disregard of the views of the indigenous populations as companies expand their territories and explore natural resources on the Indigenous lands. For example, the shale gas development has shown how the Crown continues to face challenges in honoring, respecting, and upholding Nation-to-Nation relationships with the Indigenous populations. The government has often purported to uphold the Indigenous population’s rights by consulting them on various issues affecting them, including making important decisions on whether to undertake certain processes on their lands. However, in the end, the government allows companies to venture into the territories of these people and extract any resources they want. These contradictory actions show that the consultation that the government purports to do can only be interpreted as informing the indigenous people about its decisions and not consulting them.
The consultation does not have any meaningful implication mainly because the government does not give the Aboriginals any recognition as equal members of the Canadian society. Different nations treat their people differently depending on their social status. Elite communities tend to receive preferential treatment, in which their views on any issues are sought and considered. Such groups play an essential role in making important decisions in the nations. On the contrary, there are other groups, known as the disadvantaged groups, which do not receive similar treatment. As the Economist Newspaper (2017) posits, Canada’s indigenous people are still overlooked because of the lack of sustained efforts towards achieving the desired goal of promoting them. These people still suffer from poor infrastructure and obtaining some of the essential services is quite difficult as the members have to travel long distances before getting the services. All these experiences are not alien to the government. Instead, since the go...