Hi Keegan, I´d like to follow up on your post and some of what Ed´s posted yesterday:

Biggest obstacle that I foresee is from the natives. Not so much from Webequie who should be the only ones consulted imho, but from the more distant ones who want a piece of the pie and feeling left out will do what they can to get their way.
Problem with the natives should be forefront dealt with by the province, but as I see it not much results are to be seen. We are told of progress but not much of substantial progress was demonstrated. Just more threats from native communities who are more distantly located from the Ring.

I agree completely, that the FN is the biggest problem for NOT and RoF as a whole right now, but I disagree that the Government should try to devide the FN even if it was possible. The communities left out of the loop, would be eternally dissatisfied, and would probably travel hundreds of kilometres to blocade whatever was there to blocade to disrupt development.

As Jonsey writes in his post, the Province is bound by treaties, so there is no getting around "one for all, all for one". But as the RoF will probably be developed in stages (first Eagles Nest via E/W road - years later chromite mines that require rail), the Government would be wise to focus on NOT for now, as the E/W road with power and broad band would connect 4 FN communities to the world, as far as I know. It would be hard for those FNs to keep on being unhappy, when progress was at their doorstep, and they would then have a part in getting the rest of the FNs to agree to the gradual progress - or am I to naive to think that?

Anyway, right now something has to be done to break the negative spiral, and to me the right thing to do was for Gravelle to visit all of the FN communities, and tell them face to face, that he had to keep his campaign promise. Considering the flack Gravelle took from the industry and just about anybody else for establishing the DevCo as an empty shell, it should not be to hard for him to convince the FNs that nothing real has happened yet, and that everyone else is just as dissatisfied as the FNs, but for the opposite reason. And while he is up there, he could remind them that nothing happens if they insist on strangling the industry, hence progress is a two way street.

Just a few of my thoughts on this immensely complex issue that is dealing with people who are not used to make business decisions.

Regards DRA