Bill C-15 (Historical)

Northwest Territories Devolution Act

An Act to replace the Northwest Territories Act to implement certain provisions of the Northwest Territories Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement and to repeal or make amendments to the Territorial Lands Act, the Northwest Territories Waters Act, the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, other Acts and certain orders and regulations

Part 1 enacts the Northwest Territories Act and implements certain provisions of the Northwest Territories Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement. It also amends and repeals other Acts and certain orders and regulations.
Part 2 amends the Territorial Lands Act to modify the offence and penalty regime and create an administrative monetary penalty scheme. It also adds inspection powers.
Part 3 amends the Northwest Territories Waters Act to make changes to the jurisdiction and structure of the Inuvialuit Water Board, to add a regulation-making authority for cost recovery, to establish time limits with respect to the making of certain decisions, to modify the offence and penalty regime, to create an administrative monetary penalty scheme and to make other changes.
Part 4 amends the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act to consolidate the structure of the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, to establish time limits for environmental assessments and reviews and to expand ministerial policy direction to land use planning boards and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. This Part also amends the administration and enforcement provisions of Part 3 of that Act and establishes an administration and enforcement scheme in Part 5 of that Act, including the introduction of enforceable development certificates. Moreover, it adds an administrative monetary penalty scheme to the Act. Lastly, this Part provides for the establishment of regional studies and regulation-making authorities for, among other things, consultation with aboriginal peoples and for cost recovery and incorporates into that Act the water licensing scheme from the Northwest Territories Waters Act as part of the implementation of the Northwest Territories Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement.

Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, what is sad is that the term “reconciliation” has become a buzzword under the government. I take this to heart.

Many members know I have stood in the House, time and again, and have said that my wife and children are first nations. It is troubling for me when some members stand in the House, put their hands on their hearts and say that it is in the best interests of reconciliation, not just with respect to Bill C-88 but also Bills C-69, C-48, C-68 as well as the surf clam scam that took place earlier in this session.

The only part I will agree with in the hon. parliamentary secretary's intervention was when at she said there was enough blame to go around. Nobody should be pointing fingers, saying one group is better than another group. Reconciliation is about creating a path forward. It is not about pitting a first nation against a first nation or a first nation against a non-first nation. It is about how we walk together moving forward.

What I am about to say is not related to all members on both sides of the House. Some members truly understand this. However, time and again some Liberals will stand in the House and say that they support reconciliation or that this is all about reconciliation. Then a heavy-handed policy comes down or words are said, which we call “bozo eruptions”, and there is regret afterward.

I will go back to how we started the spring session. The first female indigenous Attorney General in our country spoke truth to power, and we saw what happened to her.

Bill C-88 is interesting, because it looks to reverse the incredible work our previous government did in putting together Bill C-15.

I will read a quote from our hon. colleague across the way when she voted for Bill C-15. She stated:

As Liberals, we want to see the Northwest Territories have the kind of independence it has sought. We want it to have the ability to make decisions regarding the environment, resource development, business management, growth, and opportunity, which arise within their own lands.

The parliamentary secretary has offered a lot of excuses today as to why she voted for it, such as she was tricked or voted for it for a specific reason. It is easy for members to stand after the fact and say, “I could have, would have, should have” or “This is the reason; my arm was twisted.” However, if we do not stand for something, we will fall for anything. That is what we have seen with the government taking up the eco-warrior agenda to pay back for the 2015 election. That is why we have Bills C-68, C-69, C-48 and C-88.

The parliamentary secretary wants to talk about how Bill C-88 would empower our first nations. Let me offer the House a few quotes.

Mr. Merven Gruben, the mayor of the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, stated:

Tuk has long been an oil and gas town. Since the first oil boom, or the whalers hunting whales in the late 1800 and early 1900s, we have grown up side by side with industry. We have not had any bad environmental effects from the oil and gas work in our region, and we have benefited from the jobs, training and business opportunities that have been available when the industry has worked in Tuk and throughout the north, the entire region.

Never in 100-plus years has the economy of our region, and the whole north, looked so bleak for the oil and gas industry, and for economic development, generally. All the tree huggers and green people are happy, but come and take a look. Come and see what you're doing to our people. The government has turned our region into a social assistance state. We are Inuvialuit who are proud people and who like to work and look after ourselves, not depend on welfare.

I thank God we worked very closely with the Harper government and had the all-weather highway built into Tuk. It opened in November 2017, if some of you haven't heard, and now we are learning to work with tourism. We all know that's not the money and work that we were used to in the oil and gas days that we liked.

He further states:

Nobody's going to be going up and doing any exploration or work up there.

We were really looking forward to this. There was a $1.2-billion deal here that Imperial Oil and BP did not that far out of Tuk, and we were looking forward to them exploring that and possibly drilling, because we have the all-weather highway there. What better place to be located?

The Hon. Bob McLeod, the premier from the Northwest Territories, said that the moratorium was “result of eco-colonialism”.

I speak of the moratorium. The Liberals want to talk about all the work they are doing in standing up for the north and the indigenous peoples in the north. It was just before Christmas when Prime Minister travelled to Washington, D.C. to make the announcement with the then United State President, Barack Obama. There had been zero consultation with northerners, despite consistent rhetoric about consulting with Canada's indigenous peoples. Prior to decision making, the resolution was made unilaterally from the Prime Minister's Office.

The indigenous peoples and the people from the Northwest Territories had about an hour's notice with that. Wally Schumann, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Minister of Infrastructure for the Northwest Territories, stated:

I guess we can be very frank because we're in front of the committee. When it first came out, we never got very much notice on the whole issue of the moratorium and the potential that was in the Beaufort Sea. There were millions and millions, if not billions, of dollars in bid deposits and land leases up there. That took away any hope we had of developing the Beaufort Sea.

Merven Gruben said:

I agree the Liberals should be helping us. They shut down our offshore gasification and put a moratorium right across the whole freaking Arctic without even consulting us. They never said a word...

Our hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, in response and to pre-empt my speech, called us the government on the other side. We are the government in waiting. We will be government in October. She said that the guys across the way would criticize the Liberals for caring too much about the environment. That is incorrect. We criticize them because they put the priorities of the environmental groups like Tides, World Wildlife Fund and like Greenpeace ahead of the local stakeholder, the indigenous peoples who are saying that they are tired of being poster boys for these eco-groups.

If my colleagues do not believe me, I will read some quotes.

Calvin Helin, chair of Eagle Spirit Chiefs Council, said “What the chiefs are starting to see a lot now is that there is a lot of underhanded tactics and where certain people are paid in communities and they are used as spokespersons.” He also said, “Essentially (they are) puppets and props for environmental groups to kill resource development” and “It’s outrageous and people should be upset about that…the chiefs are....”

Also, Stephen Buffalo, president and CO of the Indian Resource Council said, “Since his government was elected in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly—

Third Reading

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

I have a speech, but I think I will start by trying to answer questions and concerns that have been brought up. If I do that, then members could vote unanimously for this bill.

The first thing members have been asking is why there are only five more hours to debate this bill. For a lot of bills, that would be a valid question, but at this particular time we have had Conservative after Conservative getting up and not talking about the bill. We heard a lot about Bill C-48, Bill S-6, a letter from premiers not related to this bill, Bill C-15 and a northern moratorium.

I have been here awhile, and last night I witnessed an amazing situation. One of the Conservative speakers, in a 10-minute slot to speak on this bill, spent nine and a half minutes talking before they got to the bill, and then answering three questions by not referring to anything in the bill.

If the public wonders why Parliament has decided to call time allocation on this bill, it is obviously because the Conservatives have nothing more to say. We have heard the same arguments over and over again, and they are not valid. I will go through them one by one right now.

I am not sure why a party would want to stretch out a debate on a terrible injustice that it has caused, and it has done this a number of times. It is strange. Why would they want to put that in the light? Why would they not want to fix that injustice by supporting this bill? One of the members mentioned that he was not here at the time that it happened, so in good justice, he could support the bill.

People have asked what we have been doing for the last four years and why we did not debate this bill earlier. Some of the people in the House now have actually asked this question. This Liberal government has passed something like 85 bills. I think some members' constituents would like to ask them where they have been while these very important 85 bills were being discussed and debated.

One bill in particular was in the exact same situation as this one. It was Bill C-17. Again, the previous government had unlawfully, either technically or in spirit, abrogated a modern treaty, a constitutionally protected treaty, and tried to pass a law that got around it. That was certainly disrespectful.

Some may ask why Liberals did not get more things done, and a good example was what happened when Bill C-17, related to the treaty, was ready to pass. There was a grand chief, chiefs and aboriginal people here in the galleries. It cost thousands of dollars for them to get here from the Yukon. What did the Conservatives do at that time? They called a dilatory motion that the next speaker be allowed to speak, and then the bill could not be done. Some members ask why things are not done, yet they continue to do tricks like that.

This particular bill broke a constitutionally protected treaty, as I said earlier, a land claim. The members opposite have asked—and it is a good question for the ones who were not here before—why Liberals voted for that bill. This question has been brought up a number of times. The reason is that the part of the bill in which the law was broken in spirit or in technicality was snuck in in a much larger devolution bill.

The devolution bill transferred the remaining federal powers to the territorial government. That was a tremendous move, and that is why the party supported that initiative. Unfortunately, even though the people affected by this wanted this taken out and some parliamentarians tried to get it out, the Conservatives pushed ahead with the bill, and that is why the other parties voted for it.

Another concern the Conservatives have noted a number of times is that there are two parts to the bill. I think the member for Northwest Territories corrected them and said there are three parts. Nevertheless, they said there is part 1 and part 2, and there was no consultation regarding part 2. That is not true at all. When we consulted, we consulted with all the local governments involved regarding the entire bill, both part 1 and part 2. Shortly, I will read to members some of the things they said, because the opposition has suggested they did not support both parts of the bill.

The bill concerns the Sahtu, the Gwich’in and the Tlicho. When the Tlicho signed its constitutionally protected land claim and its self-government agreement, I was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Affairs. At that time, unfortunately, we had to fight against the Conservatives to get that agreement signed. At least the Conservatives can now make peace with that wrongdoing of the past and support the bill.

I will read some comments of support, because the Conservatives have said that indigenous groups did not support part 2 or the bill.

Grand Chief George Mackenzie, from the Tlicho Government, said, “We urge the community to move swiftly and decisively to ensure that Bill C-88 comes into force during the current session of Parliament.”

David Wright is legal counsel to the Gwich'in Tribal Council. I say to David, drin gwiinzih shalakat. He said the following at the INAN committee:

If Bill C-88 is not passed, not only will Canada not have fulfilled its commitment to Northwest Territories indigenous communities, but these communities will be forced back into time-consuming, expensive, acrimonious litigation, all adversely affecting that treaty relationship and the broader reconciliation project. Further, this would generate regulatory uncertainty that benefits no one....

I know the Conservatives have spoken against uncertainty in the past, so that is another reason for them to support the bill.

Premier McLeod and Grand Chief George Mackenzie, in a joint letter, said:

[W]e are hopeful that Bill C-88 will proceed expeditiously through the legislative process and receive Royal Assent [in this Parliament].... The negative implications of the status quo are significant.

Mervin Gruben was also quoted as supporting the bill, as well as Duane Smith from Inuvialuit. It was suggested he was not allowed to come to committee, but he was actually invited. He did provide a written submission, and it was nice to have that information added to the record.

A Conservative member talked about not listening to indigenous people and indigenous voices. The member said that not listening to the people of the north is arrogance. I just read that the four governments involved, the Sahtu, the Gwich’in, the Tlicho and the GNWT, all support the bill. Conservatives are right; we should listen to those people. They should listen to those people as well, along with the rest of the parties supporting the bill, and support the bill.

Another thing the Conservatives have talked about a lot is support for resource development. I am sure all other parties agree with sustainable development. It is another reason the Conservatives should vote for the bill. I will read some comments about how the bill promotes and ensures this.

Chief Alfonz Nitsiza, from the Tlicho Government, said:

[F]ailure to resolve this matter co-operatively would damage our treaty relationship and undermine the process of reconciliation as directed by the courts. Long-term regulatory uncertainty for any reason will damage the economy of the Northwest Territories, including within the Tlicho community. This is all avoidable with the passage of Bill C-88.

David Wright, legal counsel to the Gwich'in Tribal Council, said, “Bill C-88 is a step toward certainty in the Mackenzie Valley, and that is a step that should be taken at this time”.

Finally, Premier McLeod said:

The proposed amendments to the MVRMA in Bill C-88 would increase certainty around responsible resource development in the Northwest Territories. That certainty is something our territory needs as we continue to work with the indigenous governments in the territory to attract responsible resource development.

Conservatives, to be true to the values they so eloquently put forward on resource development, can support those values by supporting this bill.

I support Bill C-88, an act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. Although the debate so far has focused on the content of the proposed act, I want to talk about what is not in Bill C-88 and why it would be a mistake to make major amendments at this stage.

Amending Bill C-88 at this stage of the process would defeat its overall purpose, which is to resolve a court challenge arising from the previous government's decision to merge the land and water boards without holding appropriate consultations.

The Northwest Territories Devolution Act, Bill C-15, was assented to in March 2014. The act transferred the administration and control of public lands and waters to the Government of the Northwest Territories and amended the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. The act includes provisions restructuring the Mackenzie Valley land and water boards.

The Tlicho government and Sahtu Secretariat Incorporated challenged the changes to the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act that would have dissolved their regional land and water boards. They argued that theses changes violated their land claims agreements and infringed on the honour of the Crown. They added that the consultations had been inadequate. On February 27, 2015, the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories granted an injunction that suspended the proposed board restructuring, along with the coming into force of other regulatory amendments.

I would like to point out that those regulatory amendments, which included the addition of a regulation-making authority for cost recovery, administrative monetary penalties, development certificates and other provisions related to regional studies, all passed through the parliamentary process in 2014. Those same provisions are being presented today. However, they were rewritten to ensure that they could apply under the existing four-board structure. They were not part of the court challenge. Bill C-88 responds to the court challenge by reversing the provisions to merge the boards and re-introducing some regulatory elements that are applicable under the existing four-board structure.

On September 23, 2016, the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations sent a letter to indigenous governments, organizations and stakeholders to launch the consultation process on Bill C-88.

Consultations were held with indigenous governments and organizations in the Mackenzie Valley, transboundary indigenous governments and organizations, resource co-management boards, organizations from the mining, oil and gas sectors, and the territorial government. To ensure that the indigenous governments and organizations were able to fully participate in the process, the Government of Canada provided funding to these groups and to the resource co-management boards that took part in the consultations.

Representatives from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, or CIRNAC, held a teleconference with stakeholders to consider next steps and to discuss the consultation plan. A legislative proposal to repeal the board restructuring provisions was drafted and submitted to the groups for review. During the review period, the groups had the opportunity to meet with CIRNAC representatives in Yellowknife to talk about the content of the proposal and to ask questions. This was also an opportunity for CIRNAC representatives to determine whether any part of the proposal was unclear or could be improved, based on the feedback they received.

I will not have time to finish, but I do not want to miss this particular point. The only other questions someone could ask that I have not already answered are whether the consultation that was done was serious and, although they were in agreement at the end, whether any changes were made. The answer is yes. I will give an example of two of the changes that were made.

The first was that because of the consultations with the people involved, a court jurisdiction related to a judicial review of administrative monetary penalties, AMPs, was modified in order to ensure consistency with the exclusive jurisdiction of the Northwest Territories Supreme Court under section 32 of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act.

A second change was that consultation obligations related to the AMPs were added to the bill to ensure consistency with the comprehensive land claim agreements.

The only other thing I think someone might ask is related to the position of national interest and whether this is the only case of that. The answer is no; it is a clause, an idea, that comes up in different legislation. I will give members some examples from the north: the Mackenzie Valley Resource Act, Statutes of Canada 1998, chapter 25, section 130, and the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act, Statutes of Canada 2013, chapter 14, section 2.

Section 94 of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act provides for the federal minister to refer a proposed project to the Minister of Environment for the purpose of a joint review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act if it is in the national interest to do so.

The Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act also provides for the responsible minister to reject a board decision or to reject or vary recommended terms or conditions if it is in the national interest to do so.

A few close references can also be found in section 51 of the Yukon Act, Statutes of Canada 2002, chapter 7, and in section 57 of the Northwest Territories Act, Statutes of Canada 2014, chapter 2, section 2.

To boil it all down, basically an act was passed that abrogated the land claim and went against a constitutionally protected law of Canada, which we cannot change by just doing another law. Of course, the court found that out and would not let it go ahead. All this bill would do is to put into law what the court had ordered.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are indeed talking about Bill C-15, which this bill seeks to replace. I was in Parliament when Bill C-15 was passed under the Conservative government. It sought to replace the regional councils in the Northwest Territories with one large pan-territorial council.

The problem is that those regional councils were created as a result of land claim and self-government agreements with indigenous governments. The regional councils were created through nation-to-nation agreements. The Conservatives unilaterally overruled those decisions without consulting the indigenous peoples involved.

I would like to know why the member wants to go backward. Why he does not want to have this conversation and work on this nation-to-nation relationship that was undermined and ignored by the Conservatives?

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I should note that I was not here when Bill C-15 first came forward under the previous government. However, of course, the Liberals voted for Bill C-15 in the last Parliament. Here they are now, saying it is no good, yet at the time, they voted for it. It is really interesting.

So what is the national best interest regarding the oil and gas in this country? Today, we saw the Prime Minister ridicule six premiers of this country, including the Premier of the Northwest Territories. They have major concerns over Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, and the Prime Minister took shots at all six of them today in the House.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am aware that Bill C-15 was a Conservative bill that really shattered the confidence of the indigenous people in the Northwest Territories.

It was a bill that never should have come forward. It is a bill that we are trying to correct today. There is an opportunity for my honoured colleague from across the way, who I travel with most weekends to return home, to support this bill. He has the opportunity to stand up now and support Bill C-88. I would appreciate it if he would do so. I think he knows the bill. He knows how important it is to the Northwest Territories. I think he is quite supportive of indigenous governments and resource development.

This would provide reassurance. I would ask the member to stand up and support this bill. Let us clear up some of the wrongdoings from the past.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have travelled with the member to his territory a couple of times, and I know how important it is to him that the residents of his riding have access to employment opportunities. I know that is important to him and to the people of the Northwest Territories.

In his remarks and in general in the debate on this, there has been heavy criticism of Bill C-15 from the previous Parliament. Neither of us was in the previous Parliament. Is the member aware that his party voted for Bill C-15, the bill that the Liberals are now describing as this terrible, poor bill that needed to be undone by the government?

Bill C-88—Time Allocation Motion

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Madam Speaker, in the previous government, Bill C-15 was created in 2014 with complete disregard for the land claims agreements. The Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act was created through the negotiations of land claims, and it certainly destroyed the trust factor with indigenous people in the Northwest Territories.

I want to ask the member if she would talk a little about how Bill C-88 would re-establish trust with indigenous people in the Northwest Territories, protect their constitutionally protected land claims and self-government agreements and restore legal certainty.

[Bertha Rabesca Zoe]

Masi for your question.

As I said, just prior to the federal election there was a court of appeal process happening where the federal government had appealed the injunction. After the election, we lobbied and worked to try to get the injunction stayed until we dealt with amendments. We were not opposed to the technical amendments to the act in Bill C-15 at that time. My colleague Paul and I were very involved for the Tlicho Government, along with other indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories, in working on the amendments that were being proposed.

All through that whole time, the government didn't indicate to us that they were going to also include in Bill C-15 at that time the single board structure. They didn't tell us that it would be an omnibus bill as well. You go into those black periods during legislative drafting and introduction. Only after that did we find out there was going to be the super-board. We always opposed that.

That's why it took so long. We were trying to get the court of appeal injunction stayed and then finally getting the mandate from the ministers to have their officials talk to us about working on the amendments to the MVRMA that you see today. That work took a little while. We were very involved in the current amendments to the MVRMA with another legal colleague and one of our technical people within the Tlicho Government. That's what you see before you today.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'd like to thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to have you here, face to face in front of us.

I want to pick up on this whole discussion of the Bill C-15 and Bill C-88 continuum. I hear the message loud and clear that you all want Bill C-88 passed without delay, yet there has been delay. That's why we're getting a bit anxious.

Going back to Bill C-15, as you were just saying, we had a bill there that was largely about devolution. There were a lot of good things and everybody was in favour of that, yet there was almost this kind of poison pill part of it with the elimination of the regional boards. That's why the NDP didn't support Bill C-15. We felt that devolution needed to be done properly. Of course, it went to the courts because of the Tlicho, so here we are today with Bill C-88, which is a response to that court injunction.

Now they've added this other part, so again we have a bill that has two disparate parts. One part everybody seems to love, but I'm having a hard time finding anybody who supports the second part of this bill, whether it's because of the lack of consultation with indigenous people.... Industry doesn't seem to be too happy, and now we hear that environmentalists aren't that happy either. I am afraid that this is what has caused this delay.

Grand Chief and Premier, perhaps you could both respond to this question. This government came into power in 2015. The consultations around this bill went for a couple of years, or a year and a half, and were finished by the spring of 2017. We had a draft bill created in 2017, yet it was another 16 months before we saw it in the House. Do you have any insights as to why this process dragged on for so long that now we're faced with literally weeks left to make sure this happens?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Around the super-board, what's interesting to me is the fact that when Bill C-15 went through, the Liberals supported it through the process. The current Prime Minister voted for it. Obviously, they felt at that point that the benefits of Bill C-15 outweighed some of the negatives. I wasn't there, but if you had brought that forward at that time that you were concerned about the super-board thing....

What do you have to say about the fact that the Liberals supported it at that point?

[Bertha Rabesca Zoe, Legal Counsel, Tlicho Government]

Thank you for the question.

With regard to the trust question, we were involved in the regulatory amendment discussions from the get-go: me plus my other legal colleagues, and one who isn't here with us today, Arthur Pape. He was very instrumental in the negotiations of the section in the land claims agreement that deals with the regulatory systems.

When Minister Strahl first announced the regulatory reform, it was done to the Chamber of Mines in Yellowknife. The indigenous governments were not invited...that this would be happening. Since that announcement, McCrank was appointed to look at the regulatory system and make recommendations. We were in those supposedly consultation meetings at that time, but we never agreed to have a single board structure. Right from the get-go, our relationship with the government has not been very conciliatory. They said that the agreement allowed for them to do that and we didn't agree on the interpretation of those sections.

Our relationship with the government in terms of the injunction was very costly, as is any court case. The injunction cost the Tlicho Government money and time to do this. When the injunction was granted, the federal government chose to go to the court of appeal. We were in that court of appeal process when the election happened and the Trudeau government came to power. That litigation is stayed right now, but as Chief Alfonz pointed out, there are only two avenues. If it doesn't pass, then we have to consider what the next steps would be.

In terms of trust, whatever little trust we had with the Harper government, it eroded pretty quickly after that. We were always on the record for Bill C-15, when it was going through Parliament, in opposing the single board structure. The Tlicho were very supportive of keeping the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board in place, and we didn't agree with it becoming just an administrative role. That was going against the spirit and intent of the Tlicho agreement.

[Bob McLeod, Premier of the Northwest Territories]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I should note that if we had got you to move to the Northwest Territories we would have had a real McLeod government.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the standing committee today as you review Bill C-88, an act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. As you review this bill, I would like to share with you some recent Northwest Territories history that is specific to the Northwest Territories offshore and the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act.

The Northwest Territories is home to 44,000 residents, who live in 33 communities spread out over more than 1.3-million square kilometres. We are a unique jurisdiction in which indigenous and non-indigenous people live, work and govern together in the same communities, and where half of our population identifies as being first nations, Inuit or Métis. The result of this combination of indigenous and non-indigenous people living and working together is a public government where actions and decisions are informed by and include northern indigenous views and priorities from the outset.

A large part of our territory's modern history can be linked to resource development dating back to the 1920s, with the discovery of oil in the Sahtu region. Today our economy is still heavily reliant on resource development, with mining, oil and gas accounting for more than 25% of our gross domestic product.

Since 1984, the governments of Canada and the Northwest Territories have been party to six settled indigenous claims. Most of these agreements are land claims that formally recognize the rights of indigenous governments to manage and benefit from the ownership of land and resources in their region. The rights of the Dene and Métis of the Mackenzie Valley are reflected in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, which was enacted in 1998 and provides an integrated, co-managed land and water management regime throughout the Mackenzie Valley.

The MVRMA has been a world-recognized model for public-indigenous co-operation in the management of lands, waters and other resources in the Northwest Territories for more than 20 years. The co-management model emerged from the three constitutionally protected land claim agreements of the Mackenzie Valley. We've provided an “MVRMA at a Glance” handout, and also a map of the territory. The MVRMA applies to all Northwest Territories areas outside the northernmost region, the Inuvialuit settlement region, which takes a different approach to resource and land management.

The MVRMA ensures both that there is transparency during project reviews and that economics, the environment and culture are considered during project assessment. The MVRMA also provides for the review of government-led infrastructure projects and holds both our governments to the same high standard of accountability that industry is held to.

The Government of Northwest Territories wants to ensure we have a progressive regulatory system that works for the people of the Northwest Territories and governments and will also attract industry investment. Bill C-88 seeks to advance numerous modern amendments to the MVRMA that were first passed in 2015, in Bill C-15.

They include the authority to direct regional studies that can examine the effects of a development at a regional scale, the authority to develop administrative monetary penalty regulations that can be used to promote compliance, and the establishment of development certificates, which are becoming common tools across Canada to ensure measures from environmental assessments and impact reviews are carried out.

This was the intention when the Government of Northwest Territories and the Government of Canada signed a devolution agreement in 2013. However, those Bill C-15 amendments never came into force due to a court injunction brought about because of a section of Bill C-15 that would have consolidated the four regional land and water boards into one larger board.

Bill C-88 seeks to advance the amendments from Bill C-15 again, while preserving each of the regional land and water boards. We don't see Bill C-88 as a partisan bill. It ensures that land claim agreements are fully implemented by maintaining the regional boards, and it also has modern amendments with multi-party support. As you can see, the MVRMA is also quite unlike other project assessment laws that are currently being considered.

The MVRMA is well established and has allowed indigenous and public governments to work together for the past 20 years to manage the development of land and resources. The proposed amendments to the MVRMA in Bill C-88 would increase certainty around responsible resource development in the Northwest Territories. That certainty is something our territory needs as we continue to work with the indigenous governments in the territory to attract responsible resource development.

I would also like to touch briefly on Bill C-88's proposed changes to the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, or CPRA. The CPRA is the law that outlines how petroleum exploration and development rights are issued in the Arctic Ocean, which is still under federal jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, Canada unilaterally imposed a moratorium on new offshore oil and gas licences in 2016 without consulting either the indigenous or public territorial governments.

Although disappointed with the way the moratorium was imposed, we also recognize that Canada has a need to provide a legal basis upon which to implement this moratorium.

As a government, our current focus is moving forward towards co-management of the Northwest Territories' Arctic offshore waters and resources. We are working with Canada and other partners on the five-year review of the moratorium. We also want to ensure that the review is evidence-based and evaluates the different regions of the Arctic individually, as the Beaufort in particular has benefited from many years of study.

We fully expect this CPRA provision to be a short-term measure and expect Canada to fulfill its commitment to developing an offshore co-management regime comparable to the Atlantic accord's. We need this accord to ensure that northerners will be decision-makers on oil and gas exploration and development in our offshore, including when decisions are made about whether, when, where and how it happens.

The Government of the Northwest Territories supports swift passage of Bill C-88. The implications of not proceeding with the bill within the lifetime of this government and retaining the status quo are significant. Amendments to the MVRMA have been on the books for five years, and we don't want any more uncertainty associated with our regulatory regime. Resource developers are contemplating investing in developing the Northwest Territories' rich natural resources, and everyone benefits from regulatory certainty.

The Government of the Northwest Territories and indigenous governments are working together to build our territorial economy. The passage of Bill C-88 and the preservation of the regional land and water boards, as committed to in land claim and self-government agreements, is an important part of this.

Thank you very much.

[Neil McCrank]

Thank you for that question and for framing it the way you did. You are absolutely correct. The notion of the land use plans had to be primarily the first job done by the government. Once that was complete, then something had to be done with the regional boards. That was my view. Whether they were eliminated completely or left with an administrative function in each area, those were the two options.

I was not consulted with respect to Bill C-15, if there was some dysfunction related to my recommendation as the bill proceeded. However, there's no question that in everything I said and everything I recommended, I indicated I thought it would be a very difficult row to hoe and that if we didn't start the restructuring, including making sure the land use plans were completed early, we'd be doing that 10 years later.

Here we are, 10 years from when I made that report, and we're still not there. These are long-term projects, but it was clear in my mind what the role would be for the super-board, if you want to call it that, as a very professional regulatory body that deals with the kinds of issues I talked about. If the government wanted to leave the administrative function in the local treaty areas, that was an option that was open to it.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll let Mr. McCrank finish up on that. I just wanted to frame it, in that it seems to me, in reading your report, that you had a couple of options regarding the restructuring piece.

Option one was where you would eliminate the regional boards, but it included a fundamental restructuring that would require the agreement of all parties. I think there was actually a line in your report that said this is maybe desirable but would be very difficult to achieve. Then you had option two, which was just to amend the act but keep the regional boards. You've mentioned that they might have somewhat different tasks or mandates from what they have now.

However, in C-15, the previous government took your option two but eliminated the boards, and I think that's why we are here today. I'm just wondering if you could comment on that.

You said that your first recommendation, obviously, was to finish the land use plans. Do you think C-15 was premature in that it didn't wait for all that hard work to be done before proceeding with this restructuring?

Perhaps you could also finish your comments on why we are here today. You said the local groups were largely in favour of what you were proposing, yet as soon as C-15 came out they were in court. Obviously there was some disconnect there. I'd just like your comments on that situation.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

The repeal of the unconstitutional provisions on the board restructuring is the main aspect of Bill C-88.

However, the bill makes other changes to the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. These changes reflect some of the provisions of the previous government's Bill C-15, which couldn't enter into force because of the injunction.

Do you think it's likely that these provisions will make the boards operate more efficiently and effectively?