A Recommendation Document to Improve Indigenous Consultation within the EIARP

Press Release

November 18 2025

One of the objectives of our consultation team is to work towards improving governmental practices related to Indigenous consultations. It is with this goal in mind that we are sharing today with the Ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs (MELCCFP) an important recommendation document.

Indeed, the Act to amend various provisions relating to the environment will soon bring significant changes to the environmental impact assessment and review procedure (EIARP). In this context, we believed it’s essential to prepare a recommendation document for the MELCCFP specifically addressing Indigenous consultation within the framework of this procedure.

A Collaborative Process Grounded in First Nations Expertise

To accomplish this, we met with several individuals working for First Nations to gather their concerns regarding Indigenous consultation related to the environmental impact assessment and review procedure. Their participation was essential to the quality of this work.

We would like to thank them and express our profound gratitude. Their reflections, experience, and proposals helped inform this document and identify creative mechanisms to encourage the MELCCFP to adopt more adequate consultation practices and improve its relations with First Nations.

The document’s objectives are to:

• identify existing issues related to Indigenous consultation within the current EIARP
• formulate recommendations for the MELCCFP, with a view to fostering better practices

In total, we have formulated 21 concrete recommendations to ensure respect for First Nations rights and recognize their inherent jurisdiction and authority in decision-making related to development on their territories.

Clear Expectations for Concrete Results

This document, combined with the MELCCFP’s ongoing reflection workshops and the Indigenous consultation planned for winter 2026, will serve as a basis for dialogue in the hope of building new consultation practices within the EIARP, which is expected to be implemented by the end of 2026. The stakes are high: this is about fundamentally transforming the way consultations are conducted.

Our team has specific expectations regarding these discussions and hopes they will produce concrete and tangible results to improve Indigenous consultation. These conditions are essential to respect First Nations’ aboriginal and treaty rights as well as the rights enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a declaration that the National Assembly of Quebec expressed its support for in 2019.

This work requires collective efforts and cannot be achieved without genuine collaboration from all stakeholders.

We are thus calling for a new era of Indigenous consultation, so that consultation moves away from being a “simple box to check” and is replaced by the recognition of First Nations as rights holders, and the creation of strong relationships.

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