The meeting started with the opening prayer and blessing of the food from Chief Brenda. For dinner was a salad bar, mashed potatoes, ham, roast, gravy, pickles and for dessert we had ice cream and cake. With an overview of the agenda from Lorrinda James, we had opening comments from Mike Leech. He spoke about how long he has been working with this project and why he’s in favour of this agreement. Tom Molloy also had opening comments. He had spoke about how in his second visit he mentioned that he was looking forward to his thurd visit for this meeting, which was this evening.
Getting started with the presentation, Lorrinda spoke about how to get the word out and that members who do come to the meetings should tell other St’at’imc members to come out. After that, Jacob Beaton discussed the history of the agreement and on how St'at'imc have been impacted.
With the second part of the presentation, Raymond Phillips was able to explain the different agreement packages.
Some of the questions from the floor were:
Q: Who can be a trustee?
A: Each community selects one trustee that is not an elected official (Chief, or Councillor). They also don't have to be a member of that community, but should be someone the community trusts. How the community goes through this decision-making process is up to each community to decide (election, appointment, etc).
Q: Has anyone received information from our elders for this agreement?
A: Yes, a lot of work was done over the years to research and catalogue all the impacts and history from every community and present them to BC Hydro as part of the negotiations.
A: The province of BC is a party to the agreement, part of their role is to guarantee the payments in case BC Hydro can't make them for any reason. If there were delays on payments, interest would be added as well.
Q: Are these agreements set in place?
Absolutely not. The Chiefs have only signed the 'Ratification Agreement.' What this means is that they've come to an agreement after much negotiation with the other parties, and have now put it in the hands of members. If members vote 'Yes' that will give the leadership the authority they need to sign the Agreements. Without the authorization from community members, this Agreement will not happen.
