Bill C-88 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act to establish an administration and enforcement scheme in Part 5 of that Act that includes the issuance of development certificates. It also adds an administrative monetary penalty scheme and a cost recovery scheme, provides regulation-making powers for both schemes and for consultation with Aboriginal peoples and it allows the Minister to establish a committee to conduct regional studies. Finally, it repeals a number of provisions of the Northwest Territories Devolution Act that, among other things, restructure the regional panels of the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, but that were not brought into force.
Part 2 of the enactment amends the Canada Petroleum Resources Act to allow the Governor in Council to prohibit certain works or activities on frontier lands if the Governor in Council considers that it is in the national interest to do so.

[Grand Chief George Mackenzie]

Yes. In conclusion—please, if you don't mind—it is in the best interests of Tlicho citizens, Wek'èezhii and northern residents, and all Canadians, to support and preserve the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board while finally implementing the other long-awaited improvements to our co-management system, which have been developed through broad consultation for the benefit of present and future generations.

The Tlicho Government encourages the committee to prioritize the passage of Bill C-88 with the urgency that an important treaty commitment deserves.

We again thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today, and we hope these submissions assist you in fulfilling your important responsibilities.

We are happy to address any questions you may have.

[Chief Alfonz Nitsiza, Tlicho Government]

Thank you, Grand Chief, and thank you, Madam Chair.

The constitution and mandate of the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board is set out in the Tlicho agreement. The Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board has a dual regulatory mandate, which is the conservation of the environment and the development and use of resources. The Tlicho agreement required Canada to establish the land and water board through legislation. lt did this in 2005 through the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, after extensive consultation with the Tlicho Government.

In our view, there are three key characteristics of the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board that you need to know. lt implements treaty rights and represents co-management in action. It has built capacity, experience and the trust of Wek'èezhii residents. lt has been documented that it performs its function well and operates efficiently and effectively in the public interest.

The Northwest Territories Devolution Act was passed in 2014. The act would amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act to eliminate the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board and the treaty co-management system without meaningful consultation with the Tlicho Government or other indigenous governments.

The Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board and other boards in the Northwest Territories would be replaced with a single super-board. Instead of appointing 50% of the board members, as our Tlicho agreement requires, the Tlicho Government would appoint only one out of 11 members on this super-board. The Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act amendments could allow decisions about Wek'èezhii to potentially be made by a panel of the super-board that could lack Tlicho Government appointees entirely. This was unacceptable to us. Tlicho were promised something different in their treaty from what was designed in the Northwest Territories Devolution Act. The treaty promise was broken with no good reason, so we went to the courts for justice.

The Tlicho Government immediately sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories. That injunction was granted. It prevents the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act amendments from coming into force, and remains in effect to this day. You should also know that the underlying lawsuit also remains active, pending the results of this legislative process. The injunction will remain in effect until either a new law is passed or our lawsuit regarding the Northwest Territories Devolution Act runs its course.

There is an urgent need for action. The Tlicho Government hopes that Bill C-88 can be passed by the current Parliament without delay. Otherwise, both starting the legislative process again from scratch and proceeding with our lawsuit against Canada will likely take years. Proceeding with our lawsuit, which is still in its earliest stages, would be a particularly bad result for all stakeholders. ln addition to being long and expensive, failure 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.

The Tlicho Government supports the passage of Bill C-88 without reservation. It has been clear that the protection of the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board in accordance with the spirit and intent of the Tlicho agreement is of the utmost importance to the Tlicho people.

Bill C-88 serves at least three essential functions. It preserves the established and effective regional co-management boards, including the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board, in accordance with the Tlicho agreement. lt strengthens the co-management system by reintroducing other new provisions that did not come into force because of the injunction. These have broad support from industries and governments, including the Tlicho Government. lt delivers industry the certainty it desires, and will allow us to collaborate with proponents and our co-management and treaty partners to ensure responsible use and development of our shared resources.

[Grand Chief George Mackenzie, Tlicho Government]

Thank you, and good morning. I'll just get into my presentation.

On behalf of the Tlicho Government, thank you for inviting us here to Ottawa to address Bill C-88. It is very important for the Tlicho chiefs to all be here personally to emphasize how vital this bill is for our communities, our territories and our treaty relationships.

I'm here today with Chief Nitsiza of Whati, Chief Wedawin of Gamèti, and Chief Football of Wekweèti. The law guardians of the Tlicho, Bertha Rabesca Zoe and Paul Bachand of the Pape Salter Teillet law firm are being made available to respond to technical legal questions that might be posed.

We view this bill as affirming a direct treaty promise to the Tlicho people. We urge the community to move swiftly and decisively to ensure that Bill C-88 comes into force during the current session of Parliament.

Regarding the treaty right to co-management, it is necessary that the committee understand the significance of the Tlicho agreement and its relationship to Bill C-88. The Tlicho agreement was signed in 2003 and has been in force since 2005.

The Tlicho agreement is key to keynote documents in the modern history of the Tlicho people. It is a modern treaty that enjoys the protection of section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. It sets out our rights and jurisdiction on Tlicho land and throughout our traditional territories. The signing of our agreement more than 15 years ago was a landmark moment for Tlicho people, for the Northwest Territories and for all Canadians.

The Tlicho agreement confirms that the Tlicho Government has jurisdiction on over 30,000 square kilometres of Tlicho land. Tlicho citizens also exercise aboriginal rights, including harvesting rights, throughout all our larger traditional territories of Mowhi Gogha Dè Ni?i?tlèè. In the heart of Mowhi Gogha Dè Ni?i?tlèè is the environment and resource management area of Wek'èezhii, which covers about 160,000 square kilometres.

The co-management of natural resources in Wek'èezhii is an essential part of the Tlicho agreement. Co-management is essential to address the overlapping interests and jurisdiction of Tlicho Government, other indigenous government and public government.

Protecting the environment while promoting responsible development and use of resources is a concern to all the responsible governments in the north. Both sides of that equation are very important to us. Under the Tlicho agreement, the Tlicho Government is co-manager and joint decision-maker with respect to lands, waters and renewable and non-renewable resources within Wek'èezhii.

The Tlicho agreement provides for co-management in part through the establishment of regional land, water and renewable resource boards. The Tlicho Government, other IGOs and public government are all represented.

The Tlicho Government has the treaty right to appoint 50% of the members to all co-management boards within Wek'èezhii. This includes the Wek'èezhii Land and Water Board, which is the centrepiece of the management regime for land and water in Wek'èezhii.

We are here today on behalf of the Tlicho government, to ensure that this effective and representative co-management system is preserved and strengthened in accordance with our modern treaty.

I will now pass the microphone to Chief Nitsiza of Gamèti, who will continue our presentation.

Thank you for listening.

[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.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

We're recommencing our hearings into Bill C-88. I'd like to welcome our guests, both Premier McLeod—and I'd like to note there are three McLeods sitting at this table—and the Tlicho Government delegation, which includes Grand Chief George Mackenzie, Chief Alfonz Nitsiza, Paul Bachand and Bertha Rabesca Zoe.

We will start with Premier McLeod. It's a very important bill for your community. You have 10 minutes to present, and as you know, there will be a period of questions and answers after all the presenters.

Welcome.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Okay.

The only thing I want to ask you, Mr. Campbell, is whether you support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. What Bill C-88 is doing is giving those rights and protections to indigenous governments, to ensure that they have a say in the activity that happens in their land claim areas. Do you support that declaration? In doing so, do you support the amendments in Bill C-88?

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

Thank you.

I'm going to move on to you, Mr. Brooks, and try to get some more information on what you were saying.

Your main point, it seems, is that the existing licensees were not covered by this moratorium. They had an obligation to undertake work, which seems to have been eliminated after a year of consultation. I don't know if you want to speculate on what went on behind those closed doors, but would these companies feel some concern about future moratoria under Bill C-88, and then feel the ground rules have changed?

How do you think their positions have changed, and is that why the government did this? If they were still allowed to go ahead and do their work—do their exploration, if they had found significant resources—could they still develop them under the present situation? Why do you think it's unfair that they don't have to fulfill their obligations? Are there any future concerns that they might have?

[Neil McCrank]

Thank you for the comment on my report.

Until about a week ago, I had not heard of C-88. This was new to me. I have not kept up-to-date on what's going on in the north since I did this report some 11 or 12 years ago, beyond what I mentioned about having appeared before committees.

I don't know all of what's in C-88, but I know there is an attempt to roll back the land and water boards to where they were. Let's be clear what my recommendation was. My recommendation was, number one, to finish the land use plans, because in my view that is where the local community has the greatest effect on future development.

[Mark Brooks, Senior Specialist, Artic Oil and Gas, World Wildlife Fund-Canada]

Thank you, Madam Vice-Chair.

Good morning. My name is Mark Brooks. I'm the Arctic oil and gas senior specialist with WWF-Canada. I wish to thank the committee for their invitation to speak about Bill C-88. We are submitting written comments in addition to this oral submission. I'll be speaking specifically about the proposed CPRA amendments.

First, I have a few words about my organization, the World Wildlife Fund. WWF is one of the largest independent conservation organizations in the world with projects in more than 100 countries. We have offices across Canada, including the Arctic, and we partner with local communities, indigenous peoples and other groups to help find solutions to the environmental challenges that matter most for Canadians.

Let me first say that WWF-Canada believes that community-supported economic development is vitally important throughout the Arctic. However, significant capacity, information and funding gaps currently exist in Canada's oil spill response framework across the Arctic, including in the Beaufort Sea region, which make potential offshore oil and gas activities particularly high risk at the present time.

I also want to emphasize the position of our organization on the need for modernizing laws governing offshore oil and gas activities in Canada, including the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, which has not been substantially updated in decades and tends to favour industrial development at the expense of other possible alternatives.

CPRA is over 30 years old. Its guiding policy focuses almost exclusively on expediting the development of petroleum resources at the expense of other alternatives. Contemporary priorities such as conservation, indigenous rights, climate change, marine safety and other issues are not mentioned in the CPRA's policy framework. Full modernization of the CPRA, along with the entire oil and gas regulatory regime is long overdue.

As for Bill C-88, it's proposing, as you well know, an amendment to the CPRA that would permit the government to prohibit any licence holder from commencing or continuing any work or activity authorized under the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act, if the Governor in Council considers that it is in the national interest to do so.

WWF-Canada has some concerns with this bill. It's timing and precise purpose has raised some questions for us, which we believe should also be of concern to members of this committee. First, let me back up and provide some context. Of course, this has come up already today, but the December 2016 Canada-U.S. joint leaders' statement included a moratorium on new offshore oil and gas licensing in Canada's Arctic. This was followed by a year of private, closed-door consultations between government and oil and gas licence holders to discuss their interests. Public interest groups and civil society organizations were not invited, nor were we permitted to participate in these meetings. The results of the negotiations were not made public.

Following the conclusion of these consultations, in October 2018, the Government of Canada announced it planned to “freeze the terms of the existing [exploration] licences in the Arctic offshore to preserve existing rights, remit the balance of any financial deposit related to licences to affected licence holders and suspend any oil and gas activities for the duration of the moratorium”.

Eleven exploration licences in the Beaufort region are set to expire over the next few years. The government could simply allow these licences to expire on their own, likely without any liability on the government's part, and collect hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, in forfeited financial deposits for work that was promised under the terms of the licence but not carried out. This is money that could be used for critical investments in the north.

Instead, the government is introducing a proposed amendment to the CPRA through Bill C-88 to prohibit oil and gas activities for reasons of national interest, which is not defined, and it's not clear to us why there is a need for this expanded power.

Concurrently, in last week's Canada Gazette, the government announced its intention to issue new exploration licences in the Beaufort Sea, effective July 10, 2019, to replace existing licences. From our perspective, the proposed amendment in Bill C-88 appears to be a way of ensuring, after one year of private negotiations with industry, that licence holders do not lose their rights or their licence deposits, despite having failed to do the work required by the terms of their exploration licences.

Extensions to exploration licence terms are expressly prohibited by the CPRA. If the government is using Bill C-88 as a way to preserve rights and extend licence terms, we believe this would be an abuse of the expanded prohibition powers. As noted, term extensions would also mean that licence holders do not lose their deposits, even though they were unable or unwilling to complete the work they had committed to doing. As companies will avoid substantial financial losses, one could argue that, in effect, this is a form of indirect subsidy to industry from a government that has committed itself to eliminating all inefficient oil and gas subsidies.

Licence holders may argue they are entitled to licence extensions and a refund of financial deposits because the 2016 oil and gas moratorium in the Arctic and the 2015 ministerial review of the CPRA created regulatory uncertainty. However, the review of the CPRA lasted only 10 months, and the moratorium did not apply to existing licences.

I want to emphasize this point, because I'm not sure it's been raised yet this morning: The moratorium did not apply to existing licences. The government's announcement at the time, in 2016, even stated, “Exploratory licences may accede to Significant Discovery within their existing permit timelines.”

As an example, Imperial Oil holds two of the largest exploration licences in the Beaufort Sea, both of which are due to expire in the next year and a half. Despite holding these licences since September 2010, Imperial has done no exploration work to our knowledge. Chevron, another licence holder in the Beaufort, put its plans on hold in 2014, citing a drop in oil prices. These and other licence holders appear to have been speculating when they bid on these licences years ago. Now that the time limit on their interests is expiring, they seem to want the government to extend their terms and preserve their rights, which the government appears willing to do. This is not acceptable in our view.

In addition to being unjustified, this attempt to preserve rights and extend licence terms is a threat to the sensitive Arctic marine environment. An oil spill from shipping or a well blowout would devastate the surrounding marine environment, potentially destroying habitat for polar bears, seals, walrus and seabirds, as well as beluga, narwhal and bowhead whales. In addition, research indicates that seismic testing can seriously harm marine wildlife, which many Inuit depend upon for their livelihoods. However, in the Canadian Arctic only limited emergency response equipment currently exists on a scale required to adequately deal with a major oil spill or well blowout. Many coastal communities have access to only the most basic oil spill response equipment from the Canadian Coast Guard.

We believe there's no justification for the government to extend licence terms and refund financial deposits to licence holders, and we're deeply concerned by the government's stated intention to reissue identical exploration licences with extended terms before Canada is sufficiently prepared for the risks of offshore oil and gas activities. Until oil recovery and cleanup technologies in icy waters have improved and Canada is better prepared for these activities, drilling in the Canadian Arctic should not proceed.

Immediate steps, including substantial investments and more research to fill many data gaps, must be taken to provide adequate response capacity and infrastructure support if offshore oil and gas activities are ever to take place in the Canadian Arctic.

Thank you again for your invitation today. I welcome any questions you might have.

[Joseph Campbell, Vice-President, Northwest Territories, Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines]

Good morning, honourable members.

My name is Joe Campbell. I am an executive board member of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines and vice-president for the Northwest Territories. I am here to present the chamber's comments on Bill C-88.

I am also an executive chairman of TerraX Minerals, a publicly traded junior exploration company currently exploring for gold around the city of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. I am also president of a geological consulting company providing services to the mining industry around the world. As part of that consulting business, I have acted as expert adviser to the Kivalliq Inuit Association in Nunavut for environmental review of mine developments. My varied work experience is relevant to my appearance here on Bill C-88.

I wish I could say that the layering of personal workload is exceptional. However, it is commonplace in the mining industry, in which business risk is high and making ends meet is a constant challenge. These challenges are greatest in the Northwest Territories—the central target of Bill C-88. Severe climate is certainly a factor, but a far greater issue that we face is the lack of infrastructure, which escalates development costs and timelines and renders the dream of being a leader in producing the critical metals of the green economy exactly that—a dream.

There is no level playing field for the north. We are beset by higher costs and tougher regulations from all levels of government—local, indigenous, territorial and federal. Against these odds, the mineral industry persists and provides thousands of jobs, fuelling the northern economy with billions in business expenditures and taxes and helping to contribute to regional infrastructure. Mining remains the only viable private industry that staves off the total welfare state in the Northwest Territories.

The mining industry has made great strides with indigenous communities, creating thousands of person-years of employment, supporting a wave of new aboriginal businesses and producing a flow of millions in taxes and royalties, not only to public governments but to indigenous governments also. Mining has significantly catalyzed the creation of a middle class in the indigenous communities of the north.

This economy was bought with a very small footprint for our current Northwest Territories mines of about 0.005% of the Northwest Territories, yet mining is the only industry that is regulated to provide a comprehensive project description detailing all environmental and social impacts, plans for mitigating those impacts that include impact benefit agreements, and closure plans to return the area to nature. We post the costs of those closure plans up front before digging a hole. I would bet that residential housing developments would grind to a halt under a similar strain.

Mining is not a threat in this highly regulated world and our mines operate to very high standards. We can coexist with the environment. This is the vision of Canada's north and should furnish the guiding principles for this legislation.

Despite this record and the honourable people who created it, the mining industry is demonized by NGOs and often by our own governments. Each new piece of legislation escalates the effort to constrain or prevent resource development, sometimes explicitly within the legislation but more often as an insidious increase in regulatory inefficiency that ups the costs and timelines of the process, making mine investment more uncertain.

Let's be clear. This bill's main purpose is to regulate our industry, yet that industry is criticized as self-serving if we provide comment—comment to make changes on issues that affect us directly. Let me state clearly that we are not opposed to the spirit of Bill C-88. To attract investment in the north, we see it as necessary to have clear and firmly established rules of law to guide our development.

Do we want more certainty, clarity and timeliness of process than is provided by Bill C-88? Of course we do, but I am not here to argue for a single board or for shortcuts to process timelines. I will argue that legislated uncertainty and raising the cost of the process is counterproductive to regulating development. Arguably, it is included in Bill C-88 as prevention of development.

As regards certainty of process, please use this as an opportunity to change the legislation to enact sections 3.18 and 3.19 of the devolution act as promised in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. By addressing the need to fully devolve the MVRMA to the territorial government, we will allow northerners to make their own decisions. This will coordinate the process and rid us of the lack of accountability and ambivalence that now infests it

As regards cost, please do not enact cost recovery on Bill C-88. Embedded within the bill—including but not limited to proposed sections 79.4, 90.31, 109.3 and 142.01—are broad provisions for cost recovery. This industry is expected to shoulder these costs, but we are given no control over them. The federal government empowers the boards, and they control the activity and the clock. Then, after pulling all the levers, they turn around and put out their hands for the recovery of the costs of the process they are entirely responsible for.

If you believe these costs are unsubstantial, please review sections 124 through 128 of the MVRMA and the corresponding amendments within Bill C-88. After several years of baseline studies and consultation, all mine developments go to an environmental review with a minimum timeline of approximately 18 months for determination. ln practice, a determination is rarely reached in that timeline. As an example, the Governor in Council can extend the timeline to infinity based on subsection 128(2.3) of the MVRMA.

ln addition, the review board can freeze a review timeline to request more information from the developer, with no restriction on how many times it can do this. Requests to the board for delay can be submitted by any interested party. No other industry, except oil, lives daily with the spectre of never-ending regulatory processes, and now you expect us to pay for it.

ln Bill C-88, the only written control on what is an applicable cost is for “prescribed” services. There is not a person on the planet who would sign a contract under these terms, yet the industry is expected to swallow it whole while shouldering all the other extra monetary challenges that northern development entails.

The industry cannot bear the burden of cost recovery, particularly when we have no ability to control the process or budget for it. Until the mine is built, we have no source of income. More correctly, our investment backers will not bear the cost. No investment equals no development, which equals no cost recovery at all.

ln closing, our industry provides the products that you all use daily. The green economy will rest on the backs of the rare earth metals mined by our industry. The mining industry is and will remain the backbone of northern Canada's economy, providing meaningful employment, particularly in indigenous communities.

Building a strong mining future benefits those northern communities. Don't enact legislation that diminishes that growth.

Thank you for listening. I would be pleased to answer any of your questions later.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

I call this meeting back to order.

I would like to thank our three witnesses as we go into panel three of four panels today on Bill C-88, which of course is a piece of legislation before us. As we have someone on video and we always worry about the video, we'll start with Mr. McCrank.

Mr. McCrank, there are 10 minutes for your presentation. Then after all the witnesses have done their presentations, we'll go to questions and answers.

Go ahead.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

That concludes this round. I would like to thank those who came in person, those by phone, and those by video conference for your contributions to our deliberations on Bill C-88.

The meeting is suspended.

[Merven Gruben]

When I first started getting involved and I got invited to speak about Bill C-88, I did a lot of research on it and I followed a lot of comments. I just didn't want this to be seen again as another case of Ottawa throwing in this moratorium and showing us what to do—do as I say, you know. That's what I didn't like. I thought we were going to be...but there was no negotiation. You just do this. Ottawa says if you do this, you do that. That's what I thought we were going to be doing here.

Then, in further consultation with our good friend Premier Bob and other colleagues, it seems like everybody is agreeing with it. The more I read into it.... I will agree to it as long as we have some of these other conditions that are being negotiated.

[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?

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank all our witnesses for their testimony.

My questions will be in French, naturally.

My first question is for Mayor Gruben.

The main element of Bill C-88 repeals the provisions of Bill C-15 that deal with restructuring the boards and aims to resolve the problem that the Tlicho government and Sahtu Secretariat Inc. brought before the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Do you think the existing four-board structure is efficient and effective?