The Chippewas of Kettle &…

The Chippewas of Kettle & Stony Point First Nation (“KSP”) have significant concerns with the proposed Zoning Order for the City of St. Thomas (“MZO”) and the related Volkswagen-PowerCo SE gigafactory (“Project”). This Zoning Order is clearly being made for the purposes of speeding up approval of this Project and is being done in the face of concerns from KSP. KSP does not consent to the Project or the issuance of an MZO for the City of St. Thomas at this time because the constitution of Canada is being violated – the constitutional duty to consult with and accommodate KSP has no where close to being met.
The proposed MZO and Project are within the ancestral homelands and traditional territory of the KSP. This is an area that has seen vast and significant amount of development over the last century. Untouched and protected land in southern and southwestern Ontario is almost non-existent. KSP is incredibly concerned with the cumulative effects of development on its traditional territory and its ability to practice rights in its homelands. Such cumulative effects across the territory have reached such a point that there is little ability left for KSP to exercise its rights to live on and with the lands – to steward the lands and use them to maintain their indigenous way of life.
This means that with each new development, like the Project, KSP’s concerns are high and accommodation measures toward obtaining KSP’s consent must also be significant. Such measures include KSP oversight in environmental and cultural protections, and major offsets and compensation and revenue sharing for the impacts that do occur.
KSP has embedded and deep connections with its home lands and have been using them to survive and thrive for many years. KSP asserts a right to continuing its way of life on its homeland territory. This right includes the right to steward the land to ensure such way of life may survive. KSP territory has been so significantly taken up, developed, industrialized and damaged already, without KSP consent, that cumulative effects have clearly surpassed the point where survival of KSP’s way of life can be assured should more development occur. Any further development in our territory thus requires our free, prior and informed consent. Any engagement and consultation with KSP should occur in accordance with this assertion and standard. It has not; almost no engagement has occurred and absolutely no accommodation offered or provided. Instead, Ontario keeps asking KSP, by rote, where KSP hunts or fishes on the lands to be re-zoned for the plant, as if these are the only rights and aspects of KSP way of life that count. That reduces KSP to a cardboard cut-out of what a people, including an indigenous people, is.
Members of KSP do continue to exercise hunting rights directly within the vicinity of and on the site where the proposed Project would be built. But that is not all that KSP is.
KSP requires that the Crown undertake a proper engagement process and that the Crown meet its constitutional obligations to KSP, which in this case requires the highest level of accommodation. Nothing substantive has occurred as it relates to the duty to consult and accommodate, and this must happen before the decision to issue the MZO is made. This proposed MZO and Project must not be approved without this occurring first. KSP stands ready to participate in this engagement and has provided a proposed term sheet for this purpose, but to date its efforts for this mutual respect have been rejected or ignored.