Environment Committee on Oct. 5th, 2017

[Genevieve Charrois]

A contribution program is still different from a grant program. At the outset, before an agreement is reached, the program will impose certain constraints. Even before signing a contribution agreement, the applicant is told what will be required of them for their project to be funded. Then an agreement is signed between the two entities. In the case of non-compliance with the agreement, which did happen once, no payment is made.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

So, in that case, you did not pay out the money prescribed by the agreement.

[Genevieve Charrois]

Exactly, but that was really an exception. In general, people wanted to get the money.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

I can understand that. Oh, oh!

I now turn to you, Ms. Prosper. We share your opinion when it comes to protecting aboriginal culture within its various components.

I am trying to understand something. You said that you wanted to protect living heritage. We heard from a witness, Mr. Moran, from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, who did not disagree with that proposal, but who added the importance of protecting cemeteries that have been subject to disgraceful behaviour in the past for our young aboriginals.

In a perfect world, we would protect everything and would have ensured that what was done in the past would be preserved to help us know our history and the history of our roots and our country. However, you will understand that we have to choose, since we are not living in a perfect world. We are striving for it, but funding is an important factor that unfortunately requires us to choose.

What is your position when it comes to the non-living heritage and the living heritage you are trying to protect?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

The challenge I have is that it has taken all the time to ask the question. We're out of time to get the answer, and I think the answer is a little bit longer than a yes or no.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

It's a great question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

It's a really great question.

I'm hoping that one of your colleagues will pick that up and we can get that answer shortly, or—

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Madam Chair, he can have my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. Let's hear the answer, then.

I appreciate my colleague giving us that flexibility.

Go ahead, please.

[Lisa Prosper]

Could you repeat the crux of the question at the very end there, on the comparison between landscape—

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

We understand what would be done in a perfect world. However, financial support requires us to make choices between protecting non-living heritage and living heritage. I'm just saying that to illustrate my point. Guide us toward the choices we must make.

[Lisa Prosper]

That is indeed a good question. I guess I would say that the broad objective should be to get to a place where the indigenous community sees themselves reflected back to them in what is recognized as Canadian heritage. How does that happen? The immediate steps are to work within existing frameworks. If the Historic Sites and Monuments Board is the vehicle by which movement can happen, and then therefore the recognition of important sites to commemorate, if you want, a sort of backlog of potential sites for commemoration, is a possibility, and some sort of recognition of the residential school system and various other elements that are out there. They're on people's radar. They know that these are areas that need to be discussed and recognized but have not yet figured out exactly how to do that.

So absolutely: it's investment in the existing framework and how that can adjust in the short term. I would still say that the broader and maybe longer-term goal is to start this shift and to at least not re-entrench a paradigm that will continue to have difficulties to address a different set of assumptions or a different set of parameters that define indigenous cultural heritage.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

I'll start with you, Ms. Prosper. A few years ago, a niece visited us from Germany. She was in grade 11. The number one thing she wanted to do was to meet a first nation from Canada, because they had been studying Canada's indigenous people in their classrooms in Germany. What do you think of the concept of providing funding for first nations tourism as a way to preserve and protect their cultural heritage?

[Lisa Prosper]

I think that's a very important aspect to this question. In fact, tourism is the one area of the big pie of heritage that I don't often think about. However, I think your question is quite pointed inasmuch as the advantage of that is, of course, authority of voice, which is a critical component in all heritage. It's the ability and the power to be able to tell your own stories. If investment in indigenous-led tourism promotes and enables that activity, then I think that's a positive thing.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

This is a question for either of you, perhaps. You've been involved with the funding of heritage in different ways over the years. What's the best way to protect Canada's heritage, moving forward?

My second question is a little more difficult, perhaps. We also have Canadian Heritage, and we sometimes hear that Parks Canada.... I'm a Parks Canada critic for NDP, but an advocate for Parks Canada as a whole. We sometimes hear that Heritage kind of takes second spot to Parks Canada because of the amount of work they have to do and the resources they have to protect across the country from a natural perspective.

What do you think? What's the best way to protect Canadian heritage, going forward? Is Parks Canada the right agency to do it, perhaps with more funding?

[Norman Shields, Manager, Heritage Designations, Parks Canada Agency]

I'll take the second question.

Parks Canada has reported to a number of ministers over its long history. As I think everybody at the table knows, since 1999 we had the Parks Canada Agency Act, and eventually transferred over into having a direct reporting relationship with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. I think it's well beyond my station to comment on the appropriateness of that, but I would simply observe that the way Parks Canada Agency is organized is that there are a number of directorates, and each has an equal place at the executive management table.

I think I should end with that comment.

[Genevieve Charrois]

I'm going to build on what my colleague just said, but more in terms of Canadian Heritage versus Parks Canada.

I was asked in a previous question if there are other types of funding available, and yes, Canadian Heritage provides funding. Typically Canadian Heritage is more concerned with what I would call the “intangible” piece of heritage. They will sometimes fund infrastructure, but it's going to be through the fact that the place is, for example, an exhibition place. It's about the exhibition place, not so much about the heritage place, per se, that they are interested in.

That's how I can define what the two different departments are doing. One is more on the intangible, and the other one is more with the tangible. Parks Canada is about built heritage and the designation of built heritage.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Within that, what do you think is the best way to protect heritage, moving forward? You've worked with a couple of programs, but the one you were speaking about ended in 2003, which was a long time ago. Moving forward, what would you like to see happen? We are looking for recommendations on how to make things better for heritage.

[Genevieve Charrois]

I don't have a definitive answer to that, but if you ask what the simplest way to do that is, contribution programs are always easy to put together—or easier. That's not to say that it is easy, but it is something that we know better. We know the mechanisms, and we know how to put things in a way that will work and be efficient. We have accountability tools that would come with that.

I'm not saying this is the only mechanism, or the only way to do that, but this is a way that we know, and we know it works.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. Jolly good.

Mr. Bossio.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Prosper, thank you very much for your testimony this morning. You certainly bring a different perspective.

I want to see if I can understand an existing analogy to express where you're coming from. A year ago we were in Haida Gwaii, and it was very much about place. It was very much about the structures, but encapsulated by the land and the sea, built into that place with the historical structures.

In my own community, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte are on their traditional hunting grounds, so it's not as much about place necessarily as it is about culture. As far as place goes, the only historic place that they really look to is Christ Church, a church that was built in the 1700s. It's kind of the focal point. But for them, it's more about the powwow, language, art, a new wellness centre, a lacrosse rink, weekend programs in the bush, a sweat lodge. These are the cultural heritage that they have built that is new and existing and that they now use as the expression of themselves and the importance of that expression.

Do I have that right, that this is kind of where you see, from a cultural heritage standpoint, that it doesn't necessarily have to be about place, but it can be expressed and help to make people whole through these expressions?

[Lisa Prosper]

I guess I would say that it's still the interrelationship of those two things. A lot of those activities are still place-based inasmuch as they are connected to the land, or inspired or derived from land. Land-based, place-based, I think drives a lot of cultural activity. Of course, every community is going to privilege or prioritize or find expressions that they invest in, one over the over.

A bit to answer the previous question in combination with yours, thinking about heritage as place-based is a good place to start. So I think it still does live within Parks Canada as maybe the lead agency. But, yes, it is very much about the contemporary expression and activation of cultural identity and its relationship to place.