Environment Committee on Nov. 17th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I call the meeting to order. I apologize that we're running late. We have had some technical difficulties.

We are continuing our study of Bill C-311. We were to have a videoconference with Bill Erasmus, regional chief, Northwest Territories, from the Assembly of First Nations. Unfortunately he hasn't made it to Whitehorse yet.

We will also have a conference call with Joe Tulurialik, who is a member of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association. He was also supposed to appear by videoconference, but due to inclement weather he wasn't able to make his flight yesterday, so he's joining us by conference call.

We welcome you to the committee, Mr. Tulurialik, and ask that you make your opening presentation. Please keep it under 10 minutes. The committee will listen intently, and then we'll go to our line of questioning. Hopefully Mr. Erasmus will be able to join us later.

With that, Mr. Tulurialik, please give us your comments.

[Joe Tulurialik, Member, Kitikmeot Inuit Association]

Thank you.

We had a meeting over in Inuvik on climate change, and somehow I got selected. I'd like to speak as an Inuit member as well as an aboriginal representing the Arctic.

The Nunavut youth who spoke were worried about food security, including the effect of brucellosis on caribou meat and the impact of ice presence on hunts for beluga, ring seals, and caribou. The taste of meat is changing, which indicates a change in nutrition. It is expensive to fly food to the north, and there is a growing inability to access local food.

You have to travel further for school, and families have to balance school with work. One family relocated from Cape Dorset to Fort Ross.

Plants are disappearing due to climate changes in ITEX domes. New invertebrates can be found in waters, and plants are coming early in the season.

There are amounts of multi-year ice. Some locations are free from multi-year ice, which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Melting ice is limiting transportation, and unpredictable ice may break under travellers.

There is much more rain in Iqaluit, caribou migrations are different, and narwhales are becoming stranded.

Water has to be driven to houses and the sewage taken away, indicating a loss of access to these resources.

Nutritional parks have closed. The realities and challenges are different.

An arctic indigenous-based conference would be beneficial.

I'm speaking on behalf of Yukon now and the Northwest Territories. There are extreme changes in temperature. This has created an issue for food security as people need to travel further across land to get food--for example, in Old Crow, where there is no access.

New insects and birds are being introduced, like the spruce beetle at Haines Junction. There has been a problem with bears going into towns to escape forest fires, and there is increased siltation in fish spawning beds.

In Whitehorse the snow composition is wetter and heavier.

In Dawson, salmon populations are changing, with a decrease in their run and a change in appearance and taste, possibly indicating a change in their health.

Tourists need to be aware that climate change is happening.

Positive impacts have also resulted, such as an increase in the water table and the well-being of greenhouses. For hunters, bison populations are up, not the native chasing sheep. Additional research must be done that can be accessible to the general public and presented to the community. Study information must be available.

There needs to be an improvement in waste disposal, and action must take place in offices and houses.

Next is the Northwest Territories. There is a lot to be learned about change. Youth must be involved so they can inform friends and family.

Changes in populations have occurred, including a decrease in ducks and songbirds. Animals are migrating to untouched human communities.

There has been an increase in thunderstorms, and more insects have appeared.

Hunted meat is flakier and tastes different. Mammals are smaller, and deer and cougars are moving to the north, with muskox moving to the south.

Trees are changing earlier and are growing above the tree line.

Fish drying is no longer operational. There is a change in the ice breakup and freezing dynamics, which changes how communities prepare for both.

Climate change is leading to health implications, including increasing stomach cancer levels. A prelude to stomach cancer is being found in 70% to 80% of some communities. There have been changes in individual homes and at the community levels. We must raise awareness through youth networking, anti-idling campaigns, lobbying conferences, regulations, and policies.

These are the many things that we spoke about in the conference we had in Inuvik. The youth are trying to make a change and make our voice heard. Aboriginal people are being devastated and hit hard due to climate change.

We have many more.... We have storytelling that happens throughout the years, and within a 20-year span there have been changes. I myself personally have been touched by this. My family goes about 170 to 180 miles north of Talurjuaq to get our beluga. For the past 10 years it has been clear of ice. We were never able to make it through due to multi-year ice. Anyway, there are changes.

We need our voice heard.

If you have any more questions on this, don't hesitate to ask me.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Tulurialik.

Our first round of seven minutes will begin with Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Tulurialik. Can you hear me?

[Joe Tulurialik]

Yes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you very much for coming in by telephone; it is very dedicated of you.

Sir, I want to ask you a few questions. I'm asking the same first question to every witness who appears here on Bill C-311. Does your community, the people, or the association have in their possession a plan for climate change for Canada provided to you by the Government of Canada? Do you have a plan for climate change today? Have you seen one? If you do, could you share it with us?

[Joe Tulurialik]

I don't have it right now. We're still waiting for e-mails from all over the place. I'm just going with what I have right now.

But we do have things in place. We're gathering together at conferences and whatnot. It's very limited right now because it's short notice. It's actually hard to try to keep in contact because we don't have a lot of this funding in place.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Let me just interrupt you, sir, for a second. I'm not asking whether you have a plan. I'm asking whether you have seen a plan from the Conservative government in terms of a climate change plan for Canada. Do you have one? Have you been given a copy of a plan? Have they asked you to comment on their plan? Do you have anything in your possession that they have produced? Have you seen a plan anywhere from the government?

[Joe Tulurialik]

No.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Okay. Can I ask you then if you have been engaged by the government? Has your community been meaningfully consulted with respect to the creation of a plan, given the important issues you have raised in your testimony?

[Joe Tulurialik]

No.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Okay. If you were to provide feedback to a government that was actually creating a plan for the country, what would you want to see included in that plan, from your perspective? I want you to think a little bit about what they now call adaptation support. How much adaptation support would you need from the federal government if there were a plan? If you had seen one, would you be asking for adaptation support so that people living in the Arctic can adapt? What other elements would you like to see addressed?

[Joe Tulurialik]

We have a very big concern in this area. Specifically on climate change, we would like to hear from the government and people from the south. We would like to be consulted on issues that say, for example, the polar bear population has gone down. We hear that from the south, but in our case, up here in the Arctic, that's not true. We have seen increases instead.

We would like the government and the people from the south to consult the aboriginal people on culture, our cultural knowledge and storytelling, and put that on paper, and include the aboriginal, the northern, the arctic people, the Inuit, in this area. We feel very strongly that we have been left out for a long time. Now it's time for the aboriginal and arctic voices to be heard.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

So then you're calling, sir, for the government, when they talk to you one day about a plan, to try to make sure that traditional ecological knowledge be included in that plan. Is that right?

[Joe Tulurialik]

Affirmative.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Okay.

Hang on a second.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Excuse me. We have Bill Erasmus. We're going to be able to bring him in by conference call, but we will have to suspend. To be fair to you, Mr. McGuinty, I'll suspend the meeting and give you four minutes with the other witness after we hear Bill's opening comments.

Mr. Tulurialik, could you just stay on the line? We are going to officially suspend the meeting and bring in Mr. Erasmus by conference call. His flight as well was cancelled due to weather, so he's at home, I guess.

If by chance you get lost in the transition as we try to bring Bill into the conference call, our technical support will phone you back and put you on the line. Okay, Joe?

[Joe Tulurialik]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

The meeting is now suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay. We'll call the meeting back to order.

Joining us now is Bill Erasmus, who is regional chief of the Northwest Territories for the Assembly of First Nations.

Mr. Erasmus, if you could bring us your opening comments, we would appreciate that, and if you could keep them to under 10 minutes, that would be great.

[Chief Bill Erasmus, Regional Chief, Northwest Territories, Assembly of First Nations]

You can maybe give me a one-minute signal.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity.

My name is Chief Bill Erasmus. I'm actually the national chief for the Dene Nation, which comprises 30 communities in the Northwest Territories, one community in Alberta, and one in northern Manitoba.

The Dene are a large linguistic family that is actually in Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and northern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. We're also in the lower 49, where they call us Apache, Navajo, Hupa, and other tribes. The linguistic family, in the books, is Athabaskan.

Again, it's a pleasure. My comments might not be directly related to the proposed bill, but I think it's relevant to make comments that will have the committee put together their thoughts on how to proceed.

As for my background, I was trained as a political scientist and as an anthropologist. I try to apply that work, along with my upbringing as an indigenous person from this part of the world, to my everyday thinking. I'm still a young man, in my view, but I've seen many changes over the years. I've been a chief since 1987 and have held office continuously since then. I've seen many political leaders come and go, and I've been very cognizant of Canada's position when it comes to issues related to our lands and our environment. In fact, until the end of last week, I held the national portfolio for environment for the Assembly of First Nations. So I was very aware of the issues related to climate change, global warming, and the concerns people have around those issues.

For our people in the north, it's a reality. It's real. Today, for example, it's maybe minus 10 degrees, at the most, in Yellowknife. It's very cloudy. It snowed a bit last night. It's the middle of November. When I was a child, it would be at least minus 30 degrees at this time of year. The ice would be frozen, and that would generally be normal. We didn't get a lot of snow.

We already have snow in Yellowknife, enough snow a year that would keep us for the winter. In other words, we're getting record amounts of snow. In some ways it's good, because in the spring the earth cleanses itself. The problem, and many of you can relate to this, is that the city's snow removal budget is well cut into already. And there are all the other related problems we have in municipalities.

Once you move out of our communities or our reserves or where we reside, it becomes very difficult for our people to maintain their way of living. For example, I know of at least one person who's gone through the ice already. He was lucky to get out. He didn't freeze. His friends got to him. He is one of the trappers, one of the local people who knows a lot about the land. The problem is it's very difficult to judge the ice, the snow. People are having a lot of difficulty.

In terms of the animals, you've probably heard about the caribou. We're having great difficulty because there's a huge decline in caribou right across the north, from Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, into Nunavut, into northern Quebec, and so on. Caribou are a very interesting animal. There are different species. The ones closer to you we call woodland caribou. They feed off different food. They're a bigger animal. Some are almost as big as a moose or an elk. But the more northern caribou, which we're just as familiar with, are the barren land caribou. They're smaller and they're very vulnerable. There are also what you call mountain caribou.

These animals are having a very tough time. I'll talk just about this year, for example. We had rain here a week ago, which is very uncharacteristic for this area. We would never see rain after mid-September at the very latest. But now we're getting rain in November. I believe a year ago, or the year before, it rained at the end of December and in January, which is the coldest time of the year. It should be minus 45 or minus 50. If it rains, you'll get a layer of ice after it cools and the animals cannot get underneath the ice to get the food they need to sustain themselves. If this is maintained throughout the winter, in the spring when they have their young they are malnourished. They have their young and they don't survive. They just drop them. So there are fewer calves. That has happened. There's scientific evidence for that.

But the caribou are having difficulty not only because of the climate. Other things are happening. Major developments in the north may be causing problems. For example, Canada's food guide states that we ought to eat caribou and wild game and so on, but if you can't get access to them, it doesn't help us. For example, if there's a diamond mine in the way of getting to these caribou, then there are problems. And if development is happening where the caribou are going to have their little ones, then the caribou are not in the right frame of mind to have their little ones. It's like the problem we had a number of years ago when there was a proposal to have low-level flying up here. It was proven that the low-level flights affect the animals, especially their eardrums.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Bill, you have about one minute.

[Chief Bill Erasmus]

Thank you.

The point I'm making is that we have to be very cognizant of what is happening. You can't make decisions in Ottawa without speaking to people like me, and especially to people who are on the land every day. They have to have the opportunity to include their knowledge, especially the opportunity to voice their opinions where we are still landowners. We have never given up our jurisdiction over our area up here. And Canada acts as if the land belongs to it. That's a big problem.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Erasmus.

Mr. McGuinty, if you can take four minutes or less, it would be great.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Chief, for joining us under such difficult circumstances. I really appreciate that.

Chief, can I ask you the same question I asked Joe Tulurialik? That is, from the Conservative government today, have you been provided with a plan, a full climate change plan for Canada, and if you have, do you have a copy of it close by or can you share it with us?