In a Canadian precedent, a First Nations has created its own bureaucracy to collect royalties, approve plans and set environmental standards for any development on its traditional lands -- a swath of prime Southern Ontario real estate.Premier Dalton "You can't get there from here" McSlippery was quick to try duck any responsibility... even though land registration is a provincial matter...
The four-month-old Haudenosaunee Development Institute set up by the Six Nations in Ontario has sent letters to municipalities and is also approaching developers privately to hammer out deals, with the implied alternative being the kind of economic disruption that has blocked highways, rail lines and housing developments in the province.
I think everybody understands there is a fundamental issues of difference here between First Nations community and the federal government, but I think we also need to understand there is a way to resolve these things, there is a table there."No surprise here.
Fortunately... not everybody is willing to fold like a cheap suit...
Mike Quattrociocchi, president of Mayberry Homes, said he was invited to a meeting with the HDI after work on an eight-unit townhouse complex in Brantford was halted by protesters.*
He said he was told that for a 4% cut of his $1.2-million project, a $7,000 application fee and an agreement that he could lease the land back from the Six Nations for 999 years, his work site was "less likely" to be the target of protest.
"What I said to them, was, ‘If you guys were Italian, it would be called the Mafia,'" said Mr. Quattrociocchi, a former city councillor. "It's nothing more than extortion, pure and simple. It's ‘You pay up or we're going to stop you.'"
