Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Whitehorse (Sep 30/02) - As devolution talks begin here at home, negotiators and lobby groups will certainly be pointing to the Yukon, where an agreement on a transfer of powers will come into force April 1.

Talks there took five years, but NWT negotiators say the Yukon agreement paved the way for some aspects of devolution in the NWT, where an agreement should be signed within three years.

"There's probably a lot to learn from the Yukon experience," said GNWT negotiator Hal Gerein.

Devolution is basically the transfer of federal responsibilities currently carried out by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

In other words, it's taking away one of the key governmental features of a territory, giving places like the NWT power much like the provinces.

In the Yukon, the feds gave up control over lands, forests, waters, minerals and forest firefighting.

The agreement will look quite different in the NWT, although some issues will be similar. Here, transferred powers will likely include:

- Regulatory authority over surface and sub-surface resources.

- Water, land and environmental management.

- The right to sell or lease Crown land.

Devolution means control of home turf, but it also means money.

In the Yukon, the federal government handed over the royalties it was still collecting on minerals and forestry.

Territorial negotiators in the NWT will push for royalties on minerals, oil and gas -- this territory already receives royalties on forestry.

"There are a lot of things that are quite dissimilar," said federal negotiator David Peterson. "We're going to have to look for different approaches than the Yukon agreement."

The agreement doesn't come without strings, however.

In the Yukon, the first $3 million in royalties is free, but anything more is subtracted from federal transfer payments.

It's highly likely a similar agreement will be signed in the NWT.

Since taking over powers from DIAND basically means deflating that department's presence in the territory, human resources questions are a sticky part of negotiations.

In the Yukon, 254 DIAND employees were guaranteed job offers with the territorial government in positions similar to their federal posts.

Controversy over transfer

The Government of Canada will forward money to the Yukon government to cover the cost of paying its new employees.

The transfer has been controversial in the Yukon, as the union for DIAND employees has blasted the deal for chopping some of those employees' benefits.

Another sticky question is that of contaminated sites. Territories want control of resources, but don't want to get stuck with the bill for cleaning up messes like Giant Mine's arsenic stash.

In the Yukon, negotiators solved the problem by doing a comprehensive inventory of contaminated sites.

Those that have been reclaimed or which carry no environmental liability were transferred to the Yukon government. The federal government kept control of -- and responsibility for -- the messy ones.

Negotiators in the NWT are already talking about a similar deal, and will start inventorying territorial sites in the near future.

One more difficult question involves aboriginal groups.

In the Yukon, some First Nations pushed to have all land claims agreements in place before devolution talks finished. That hasn't happened, but a clause in the Yukon agreement allows the federal government to hand over Crown land to aboriginal groups no questions asked, even after the devolution agreement goes through.

In the NWT, aboriginal groups will be pushing hard for a share of resource royalties, something that the GNWT will also be lobbying for.

Will devolution mean immediate changes in the rules governing the territory?

Likely not, since devolution talk often includes the phrase "mirror legislation" -- basically replacing the "Government of Canada" in federal legislation with "Government of the Northwest Territories."

As Ross Leef, devolution implementation co-ordinator in the Yukon puts it, "What we're hoping for is that over time we'll be able to have made in Yukon legislation and policies which recognize the reality of the Yukon.

"Today Canada may set a policy in Ottawa which is good across Canada but doesn't specifically address the needs of the people in Yukon."