Evidence of meeting #31 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nunavut.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Co-Chair, Land Claims Agreements Coalition, and President, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
Duane, I'll let you answer first and I'll answer later.
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation
Thank you, Cathy.
Very quickly, it hasn't been abandoned. Planning is still in process. What you're suggesting is large-scale, regional, cumulative management approaches.
Under our land claims, these activities have to be done in concert with us anyway, and I think you're fully aware that any development activities have to take into consideration their potential impact on the ecosystem. Environmental assessments have to be done in that regard. I'm not suggesting that MPAs have to come before development; I'm saying that under our land claim process at the very least that has to be taken into consideration to begin with and weighed prior to any development activity proceeding.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
We've run out of time on that questioning. Cathy, I'm sorry but it's very strict. I'm running by standing orders so I can't do that without agreement. We'll get back to the rest of that one, I think.
Mr. Shields.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses today.
I have a quick question for our short-grass expert here. John Palliser in 1840 wrote a report and said nobody should ever live out there because it was a desert. Obviously a lot of people are out there.
When you look at the barriers in the sense that we have ranchers out there who have learned to be conservationists.... I know you've highlighted some things, but what are the barriers for that going on?
Fellow, Liber Ero Fellowship Program, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
To maintain into the future?
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Yes, you've sent some solutions here, but what are the barriers?
Fellow, Liber Ero Fellowship Program, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
There are definitely some barriers. These rural areas are depopulating. These ranchers are facing— sometimes it's pretty tough to get a good price for your beef and that sort of thing.
When you think about farming communities...my parents still farm out there. We're usually pretty dry. It was extremely wet this year. We got one bushel an acre of lentils. We usually get about 20 or 30 and that sort of thing. Our wheat was graded so low my dad didn't even know that the grade existed. It was called commercial salvage, so basically you can't sell it.
The climate out there is extremely variable. It's the sort of thing that we've learned to adapt to over time. Looking to the future, climate change does pose a risk here and these sorts of extremes are what's expected. In an already variable climate, you're expecting the risks from both excessive moisture and drought to increase, and then you're overlaying that with the general economic uncertainties and just population uncertainties associated with the area.
Conservative
Fellow, Liber Ero Fellowship Program, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
I would say so. Some of the grasslands were out there before we broke it for agriculture. They've potentially gone through some of these changes before in the past and they can provide capacity to help go through them in the future.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you.
My next question is for Professor Bull. Being an old guy, we talk about what you said about indigenous behaviours with the landscape. With forests, one of the things that I remember was, having grown up beside the foothills and forests, that trees grew, and we didn't have fires, but if we did, we kept the fires from growing. They'd say, well the indigenous peoples know how to take care of that because they'd periodically burn them down to get certain things that they wanted to use in their cultures.
It alluded to the fact that the natural process of burning the undergrowth, the carbon storage, and it took care of the insects and disease. Is that what you're referring to, going back to how it was once done?
Gary Bull
What I'm suggesting is that fire management by aboriginal peoples, historically of course, was when they were nomadic. We heard from, I think, Cathy earlier in the conversation, that a nomadic people would—in the thousands of years of history of this—set fires after they used a certain area to help in restoring the ecosystem.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that there's no fires, but we are clearly in a different time. We have communities that are very fearful of fires, so we are doing fireproofing of communities and so on.
However, fire management will become, in my view, far more sophisticated and we will have far fewer uncontrolled fires, which are hotter and emit a lot more emissions. I think what I'm suggesting is the tool will be used differently and it can be consistent with aboriginal aspirations, but it won't be used in the same way as it was prior to the immigrant population entering Canada.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You also mentioned Sweden and the farming mechanism, sort of an agricultural process for forests. I have seen some examples of that in Oregon, in areas that weren't forested where it is really tree farming by the thousands and thousands of acres. Are you looking for us to be more in that type of a process, as in Sweden and what I've seen in some places in the States?
Gary Bull
I think that it would be appropriate in a limited amount. We do have private companies operating like this, for example, on Vancouver Island right now. I would say that we are going to have to be judicious and smart. We will, in some cases if the land is right, become tree farmers and be more focused if we want to participate in a forest sector, yes.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You mentioned methane. What sources of methane gas do we have?
Gary Bull
Animals, of course. In countries like New Zealand, the biggest source of methane is from livestock. Of course, there have been experiments in Alberta where they try to reduce methane gas from livestock production by changing feed, for example.
Conservative
Gary Bull
Reservoirs and dams, that's another good point. I think this is the conversation going on in Labrador at the moment about Muskrat Falls, to remove the biological material. It's not just methane, of course. In that case, I think, the conversation is about mercury.
Yes, there are things we can do—
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
That's a large number, in the reservoirs and dams, I understand.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Thank you very much.
Mr. Bossio, go ahead.
Do you want to flip this over?
October 25th, 2016 / 5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Yes. I want to go back and give Ms. Towtongie an opportunity to answer the question of which comes first, in their opinion. Should we be changing the federal law that enables exploration rights to be granted, prior to having gone through the exercise of a full-scale conservation initiative?
Co-Chair, Land Claims Agreements Coalition, and President, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
The people I represent are hunters and trappers. On Baffin Island we put a moratorium on caribou, because we saw the herds declining. We rely heavily on the animal population, not only for our food but for our clothing. Therefore, when Canada wants to put out exploration permits, they have a duty to consult.
When permits are handed out without our input, you get cases like Clyde River, where seismic becomes an issue. In that area, you have the bullhead calving grounds. There are a lot of other situations—sea mammals, such as narwhals, which southern Canada does not have—that we have to pay attention to.
We have the best management system in the world for animals, but we get concerned when we see other first nations or other aboriginal groups overhunting. We have to maintain a balance with the environment, the ecosystem.
In the Paris talks agreement, Canada gave $22 billion over 10 years for climate change to non-industrialized countries. The Arctic should be considered a non-industrialized country. Climate change is affecting us today.
When our sea oceans and our shorelines are eroding, we are flooding islands around the equator—seven times. One of the places is Tulum, and I met with the president of Tulum.
Canada, in and of itself, has to pay attention to Nunavut, to our homeland. Exploration permits cannot be focused on the profit bottom line. They have to be thought of in a creative, innovative way so that the wealth of the ocean is distributed properly. That's based on capitalism. How do we do it? How does Canada do it?
Canada is known as an extracting country for mine permits. If we had opened the uranium mine that we said no to, it would have given $10 billion to the gross national product of this country, but we need time. How much time? Give us at least five to 10 years, so we can look at the industry. We want development to happen, but it has to be balanced with the sustainability of our environment.
When I come down here to the cities, the earth is not breathing. You have a lot of concrete, cement. You get floods and snows. That will increase, unless we see a sustainable management process in our country. I think that's realistic, and that's my expectation of this committee.
Thank you.
