Environment Committee on March 1st, 2018

[The Chair (Mrs. Deborah Schulte (King—Vaughan, Lib.)), Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm just going to bring the meeting to order if I could, please.

Welcome everyone. We have a very busy agenda. We're going to start with Bill C-374. Pursuant to the order of reference on Monday, February 16th, the committee commences consideration of Bill C-374, an act to amend the Historic Sites and Monuments Act.

Do I need to do a summary of the bill? Is that necessary for anybody? I can do it.

On the record,

This enactment amends the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to increase the number of members of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and to provide for first nations, Inuit, and Métis representation on the board. It also modifies the entitlements of board members.

Okay.

I'm going to begin by calling clause 1.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Point of order, Madam Chair.

This process, quite frankly, is severely flawed.

We were given the bill on Monday night and told to have amendments by Tuesday. Which clearly isn't enough time. The government members have all the resources of government staff. It's completely unfair to the rest of us to not have the same consideration.

It's actually quite absurd that we had to request the sponsor of the bill to appear before the committee. This is a standard practice. The proposal for the sponsor not to appear should never have been brought forward by the chair without consulting committee members.

Furthermore, a bill should not be brought forward without witnesses and passed at the same meeting.

We have a number of technical questions for the sponsors and officials that we need to address. Only once we receive those answers is it possible for us to draft our amendments. The fact that there's no Q&A in this particular, as I see in the agenda here. The sponsor is suppose to speak for 15 minutes. There's some staff there and then we go to clause-by-clause without questions. We have questions about this particular bill.

The idea that we should have to submit amendments to a bill before it has been discussed at committee and without members having the opportunity to have officials or at least the sponsor respond to our questions, is quite simply wrong.

We will be requesting that clause-by-clause be delayed to the next meeting to give us adequate time consider the responses to our questions and draft amendments based on that information. If we move this bill this particular way, this sets a very bad precedent for further bills.

That's my point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay.

Let me respond.

I appreciate your point of view. There are a lot of what I would interpret as inaccuracies in it. So I want to clarify them.

I never said we weren't going to have John speak to his bill. The witnesses have been heard. This private member's bill has come out of the discussion and the study we had on heritage. If you look at our report, this is a recommendation that came out of it. In essence, we've already studied this. We have made this recommendation to the government as a committee. John has taken that recommendation and brought it forward in a private member's bill.

We have had witnesses on this. We've responded to the recommendation from witnesses. In essence, it's been studied by the committee through the heritage study that we did.

I never ever suggested that John wouldn't come and present his bill. I'm not quite sure where that's come from. But I just want to make it really clear to everybody around the table.

While the Q and A may not be listed, he's here to answer questions. I think there have been some assumptions that are not what was ever intended by the chair. I want to make that clear. Absolutely we've given time for Q and A. Although it wasn't necessarily spelled out, that's the way we do things. We have the witnesses make their deposition, then we have Q and A.

I just want to make it clear, Q and A is there; John's here. There was never an intention not to have the sponsor of the bill come and explain the bill to us. We have studied this bill, not as a bill, but we have made this recommendation in committee through our previous study. We've had witnesses on it. That's where it's come from.

I hope that clarifies why we are where we are. Why it's gone this way.

Okay?

Is there any further discussion on that?

Okay.

I'm going to proceed with it. I think I've explained that this is why we are where we are, and why it's appropriate that it's been the way it is.

Okay.

I'm going to call clause 1, which opens the discussion of the bill.

John, the floor is yours.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have, just to clarify, 10 minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Yes, you have 10 minutes at the outside. Whatever you feel is necessary, and then we go right to questions.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

That's perfect. Thank you.

Madam Chair, honourable colleagues, and distinguished panellists, it's great to be here today to introduce Bill C-374.

There is a bit of background information that I'd like to give to this. I think that many on this committee can tell as well as I can—it arises very much from my personal background and my career prior to politics, in which I spent more than three decades working for Parks Canada. Over that very privileged career, I was able to travel, move around the country, and work in a number of very diverse national parks and national historic sites.

I had the great opportunity, which very few Canadians have, to live and work with indigenous communities in a variety of settings and it really helped inform my opinions about the need to do things differently with indigenous communities. When I was elected, I came across the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There's a section on commemorations and it really spoke quite personally to me about the need in the commemorations field to do things differently.

I'd like to give a couple of examples.

In the last decade of my career, I was on the national historic sites program and I dealt fairly extensively with the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. I saw great examples of commemorations that had been done respectfully and that incorporated indigenous histories and then there were some examples that were maybe not as well done. One that comes to mind is a plaque that I'm sure is still sitting in the garage at the Fort Langley National Historic Site. It was for a commemoration at Stanley Park National Historic Site that was commemorated in the 1980s. We were never able to put that plaque up because the commemoration was very much a Eurocentric colonial construct in celebration of what parks mean. However, it didn't recognize that there were indigenous peoples from the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish nations who had lived in what is now Stanley Park, who were evicted from their properties, whose dwellings were burned down, and whose generational presence on that land was not recognized and not celebrated in commemoration. The plaque is still sitting there in a garage because it failed to really recognize the importance of indigenous history in that context. That's an example of the kind of issue that we're trying to get to with Bill C-374, to make sure that the commemorations that come forward are respectful of indigenous history.

There are also great examples that I've come across. One of them was an early commemoration of the history of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada out at Friendly Cove, located at the end of Nootka Sound on the west end of Vancouver Island. It's a couple of hours boat ride from Gold River. Friendly Cove is the birth place of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, who are a whaling nation. They were there from the beginning of time, yet there was a commemoration that was done in the early 1920s that recognized that point as the place of discovery of North America. It was the first time Europeans had been to that part of our west coast. Again, there was no recognition of indigenous people. It's kind of like that Columbus story of discovering the new world, where the new world had been inhabited since the beginning of time. In that case, dealing with the Mowachaht and Muchalaht Nations, we were able to come up with a new commemoration that is now celebrated as Yuquot. It's very much about the first point of contact between indigenous peoples and Europeans. I think that's a real celebration and that's the end point that this bill would try to get us to in a commemorations program.

I'll just take you back to the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action. Specifically, Bill C-374 is intended to implement call to action 79(i), and I'll just read that, to give you the context of what this is framed on. In the call to action, it says,

We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal organizations, and the arts community, to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration. This would include, but not be limited to—

and this is the section that is covered in Bill C-374,

(i) amending the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to include First Nations, Inuit and Métis representation on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and its Secretariat.

That's the starting piece for this.

The chair, in her opening comments, referred to the study that this committee did, “Preserving Canada's Heritage: The Foundation for Tomorrow”, a report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

We heard from witnesses, including Ry Moran from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission based at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Based on the excellent witnesses, the excellent testimony, and frankly the excellent report that this committee reached, recommendation 17 includes four points. The first one states:

The Committee recommends that, in support of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action 79 and 81, and in consultation with Indigenous groups:

The federal government introduce legislation amending the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to add First Nations, Inuit, and Métis representation on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and its Secretariat.

Again, Bill C-374 is the direct implementation of that.

I will turn to the bill that everybody should have and I'll walk you through it.

The original Historic Sites and Monuments Act was most recently updated in 1985. It is four pages in its entirety. There are a few sections here that I'm looking to amend.

The first one, and the most important, is that implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's recommendation 79.i. The first is simply changing the composition of the board from its 16 members. I had called originally for it to go to 19 members, because the 16 existing would have three indigenous representatives added to it.

As a bit of historical context, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, for a number of years, had 18 representatives. There were two members for Ontario and two for Quebec. That was amended by the previous government down to 16. Ontario and Quebec were given just one seat. Over historical levels, that is an increase of one member, but from where we're at right now in legislation, it's an increase of three. The specific wording was going to be to add the three indigenous representatives.

I had consultations with indigenous caucuses, indigenous organizations, and others, and there were some concerns with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's wording, for instance, if you have somebody representing, could it be a Caucasian representing those three indigenous groups? How do you get the right wording to make sure that it meets the intent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

The wording I put forward in the bill is what's there, and there are some amendments that I will get to when we get to clause-by-clause to clarify the wording. For now, the idea was simply to add those three indigenous members to the existing board.

There are two subsections in Bill C-374 that are updating language. Proposed subsections 5(1) and 5(2) refer to “Chairman”, and this makes it gender neutral, to “Chair”.

With regard to the quorum—I believe it's in proposed subsection 5(4)—I think the original bill had it at eight. This is moving it to 10, recognizing that there will be an increased number of board members.

The final piece was a bit of an opportunity to update some of the language. Boards generally receive some sort of compensation for their work, and so the last part of Bill C-374 is updating the language to current Government of Canada terminology to make sure board appointees are compensated in the way that all board appointees are compensated. The travel and living expenses are repackaged.

Finally, the original bill allowed for clerical and stenographic assistance of $75 per year for the chairman and $35 for members of the board. This is very outdated language. I'm sure there are members of Parliament who don't even know what stenographic services are, and having a dollar amount embedded in the legislation is a bit odd. It's to try to give the Governor in Council a bit more flexibility in how they can compensate for those types of support functions for board appointees. That's the final piece. Again, it's just changing that piece of the legislation to update it.

That's my context. As I said, I have some amendments. Since introducing Bill C-374 into the House, I have had further discussions with the minister's team and legislative staff. There are some cleanups, and I would like to address those when we move to clause-by-clause today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You're right on the button with your 10 minutes.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That's very good.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bossio.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First off, I would like to congratulate my colleague on bringing forward this bill. I can't think of a more qualified individual. As you've described in your testimony, with the experience you have on this issue, the enormous contribution you made to our study on national historic sites—and that study informing this bill through its recommendations—I am pleased and happy that you were able to bring this forward.

In looking at that, can you please expand upon how this bill captures the recommendations we made around this particular issue in answer to the TRC recommendation 79?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thanks for your question. This is just one small step. The committee report that we did had a very robust section on moving forward the reconciliation agenda, and there are things that are going to need to be done with government leadership. There are actions under even the commemoration section, call to action 79, going beyond 79(i), which deals with commemoration of residential schools, missing children, and so on. This bill doesn't move into that full suite of things that need to be done. I feel this is very foundational, so it's about getting the indigenous representatives on the board and getting that indigenous lens in place for future discussions on commemorations, in whatever form they may take. I would not take credit, by any means, for the work that's still to come. I feel that this is a very small yet significant contribution to the implementation of the report that this committee developed and has been tabled in the House. I'm very pleased to be able to use my private member's bill slot to advance that discussion on reconciliation.

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

Great. That's all I have, Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Sopuck.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I have a couple of questions. You just talked about the remuneration. I contacted a colleague of mine who is on a board for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I asked him what his remuneration was, and it's $225 a day—and that's just for meeting time, nothing for preparation time—and reasonable travel expenses. What caught my eye in your bill is this notion of administrative costs. There's no such thing in terms of, again, my colleague's appointment, which is very similar to this appointment. He doesn't give an administrative cost. Where does that come from, and is there any limit on that?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

The basis for this particular clause, like I said, comes from the existing Historic Sites and Monuments Board. The wording right now that exists, there's a section in the act, on page 4. I don't have the numbering for French/English, but it's paragraphs 3(a) and (b). The existing wording is “clerical and stenographic assistance”, and the existing is, “there may be paid, for clerical and stenographic assistance: (a) the sum of $75 per year to the chairman of the board; and (b) the sum of $30 per year to the other members of the board appointed by the Governor in Council.”

I wasn't intending to enter into any sort of discussion in the bill or reopening, trying to set any new precedent. I was simply working within it. I believe that the history of it, in speaking to board members, is that many of the board members have been academics over the years. They're often historians and other leaders in the field. That's part of the criteria, the credentials that they bring. It was recognition that they may be doing their own research and other types of academic material in preparing for meetings and being able to debate the merits of nominations that come forward from the public. It was recognition by the government of the day to offset some of those out-of-pocket expenses.

To your question, in the existing bill that I've put, is there a limit? We're saying that it would be an annual allowance, to be fixed by the Governor in Council, in respect of administrative costs that are incurred in the course of performing their duties. It would be up to the Governor in Council to set whatever that limit is. The vision I'm putting forward is not to have it open-ended but to allow the Governor in Council to fix whatever that administrative cost support amount would be.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Well, one thing you can guarantee, knowing human nature—as we all do—every individual will bill the maximum amount. That's just natural.

Again, I go back to other members of other boards that I'm aware of, and one person in particular whom I called directly. There are no such things as administrative costs, so I think this is somewhat out of line.

People are appointed to these boards. They're prestigious appointments. They have a lot of influence on this significant designation of “historic site”, which means so much to many communities. To me, it is indeed an honour to serve on one of these boards. A per diem is fine. Reasonable travel expenses are fine. Do you know what? They should be doing this research and thinking on their own, on their own time, and just be thankful that they're on this particular board.

In terms of meetings, on the first page, proposed subsection 5(2) reads: The Board shall meet at least once in every calendar year at the call of the Chair, but the time and place of each meeting is subject to the approval of the Minister.

I find that very strange. Either this board is independent or it isn't. The act sets how many times the board meets, at least once a year. It could say it meets four times a year, but I question why each meeting is subject to the approval of the minister. That implies, to me, that the minister's going to have a say in the designation of a historic site, and so politics will clearly enter in; politics and partisanship will clearly enter into the designation of these sites. Why isn't the board completely independent?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

You raise a couple of interesting points, and I thank you for doing that. I will point out that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board is not actually responsible for commemorations. The mandate of the board is to make recommendations to the minister. The approval of any commemoration currently exists exclusively with the Minister of the Environment. A former environment minister is sitting next to you, and I know he's been involved in actually signing off lists that have come forward from the Historic Sites and Monuments Board. The current act has exactly that wording. The only change that's being made is to make “chairman” gender-neutral to the term “chair”.

What I understood when I was involved with Parks and the reason for this kind of piece was that the minister would simply have a say from this one on setting, as it says, the time and location. There may be times that the minister wanted to meet with the board or wouldn't be available to. There could also be the optics of how if the committee wanted to meet somewhere in a remote location, that would incur lost of costs. The minister could say, “You know what? This is maybe not fiscally prudent and we would prefer that you meet in a more central location to reduce the costs of operation of the board”. I think it's a good safeguard politically to have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Stetski.

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

It's a pleasure to be here today to grill Mr. Aldag on Bill C-374 which I very much support. We'll be speaking to that support later on this afternoon. Just quickly in terms of the process we heard from many witnesses when we were doing our report on heritage so I really don't see the value of recalling witnesses to tell us the same thing that the support what was proposed here in Bill C-374. I'm fine with the process that we have in place.

I do have a question for you. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission included four calls to action on commemoration in their report and action number 79 of course had three parts. Part 1 was to change the representation on the board as you have proposed with Bill C-374 which I think is a good first step. I'm curious why you stopped short of responding to the other sections in call to action 79 which included integrating indigenous history, heritage values, memory practices, developing a plan for commemorating residential school sites, and the contributions of aboriginal people to Canada's history. Why not move all of the commemoration calls to action rather than just this one section because they're all important?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you for that excellent question. The reason really was just trying to look at a manageable scope for the private member's bill. Given time constraints and the constraints that come with private member bills and how ambitious we can be I wanted to have something that was stringent on success and when you get into the other elements of the commemoration section it involves a much longer timeline with meaningful consultations with indigenous groups across the country. It means there may be expenses that would go beyond what I would be able to support in those consultations. I feel that the follow-up in the commemorations program beyond this kind of baseline, or foundational piece that needs to be done is best led by government and through the Parks Canada Agency. I just wanted to be mindful of what I could achieve in my capacity of leading this as private member.

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

It was very clear during the testimony that everyone on the committee recognized the importance of all of the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation. Thank you for putting this section forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thanks. I really just wanted to give a chance to the different parties to question you. I wasn't thinking of doing a whole full 50-minute round, because I think a lot of other questions are going to come up as we move into the actual changes, the amendments. So if everybody is okay, we'll move right to the amendments and then we can have a chance for any further discussion as we move through those. Do I have agreement that that's reasonable?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We're going to suspend for a second to get you back in your seat, John, so you can address that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to the table. We have Parks representatives here, departmental representatives to answer any questions as we move through the clause-by-clause. Do you just want to introduce yourself so everybody knows, Norman, that would be great. Thank you.