Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

We're going to start a third round now with Mr. Schellenberger.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you.

I must compliment all our witnesses this morning. It's been very enlightening to me, and I compliment all of you on your presentations.

Mr. Breukelman, your company is situated in southern Ontario, I think in Mississauga. It's great to see someone from southern Ontario creating jobs in the Arctic. I was quite intrigued by the new technology to find resources without affecting the fragile ecology in the area. It's been stated that we are in a catch-up situation. Would this not change that?

[David Breukelman]

Absolutely. Fourteen years ago when we founded the company, we had a vision that we knew wasn't technically possible at that time, but we tried to think ahead a decade as to what was the art of the possible and to have convergence bring the technology together. Really in terms of our ability to catch up on the resource discovery side and therefore on the economic and social growth side in the far north, we're talking about covering more terrain faster, with greater certainty, removing the economic cost of mistakes, removing the environmental cost of traditional exploration and exploitation approaches that end up with dry wells or dry drill holes. It's a fundamental shift that's come out of Canada.

Mississauga is where I grew up, so all of our companies were built in and around Mississauga. I wish I could say it was somewhere else. It was Cooksville, township of Toronto.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

What do you believe are the prospects for resource development in the Arctic, and which resources seem most likely to be discovered?

[David Breukelman]

From my perspective, obviously diamonds are a significant opportunity. They grow in kimberlite and they're easy to find with our technology. It's like turning on a Christmas tree and identifying where the lights are. But diamonds aren't the most important resource we find. Obviously, water where water is required is incredibly important, here and especially in countries abroad. Canada's flag will fly over desert areas in North America and abroad, where we can change the lives of maybe hundreds of millions of people. Oil and gas are obviously critically valuable resources for us to be able to find and exploit. We all understand the desire of many people to move away from fossil fuels, but nonetheless oil, gas, and shale gas are all things that we find. The mineral deposits that are so critical to the future of the world as well are really something that we identify, anything with a mass pull is.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Ms. French, I was pleased to hear that you think some of the reports prepared for the Arctic Council are too complicated and should also be available in text that can be comprehended by people other than lawyers. Do you think we have any hope for more common language in this area?

[Sara French]

I think we do. The Arctic Council is making strides towards improving its communications. At the process that convened in January, this was one thing on which everyone could agree. Northern communities are unaware, in large part, of what the council is doing, and their assessments aren't accessible to those who aren't scientists. That's a relatively easy thing to achieve, so I think it is possible. I think it requires a little more funding for communications.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

It's about communicating with those people on the ground, the residents in that area. You can stop a lot of conflict if people understand exactly what's going on.

[David Breukelman]

May I offer a thought, for what it's worth. I couldn't agree more about the complexity of a 600-page report. I used to trade in derivatives. An eight-second conversation would turn into a 322-page document. It astonished me every time.

In business, when we look at business opportunities, we get full business plans that are 200 to 300 pages, but we always have a two-page summary that summarizes the entire thing. If any group like this could say that everything has to have at most a two-page summary at the front, it forces focus, and that would be a great thing.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I had a 15-minute talk on CBC Radio the other morning about the Arctic Council and the inappropriate direction we may be taking with it. I think if you polled now in Iqaluit, you'd find there are a lot more people who understand what's going on with the Arctic Council. The issue is going to get bigger, and it's up to politicians in one respect to draw attention to it.

I've been in Parliament for seven years. There hasn't been one debate on the Arctic in the House of Commons, not one, zero. What we have here is a wilful denial on the part of the politicians that one of the most critical issues facing Canada and the world is what's happening to our Arctic.

Ms. Grant, you're familiar with the direction that ice melting is taking. You understand that most of the ice that's left is closer to Canada than to Russia. We've already felt the impacts on our weather system. U.S. scientists are saying that the jet stream is changing rapidly. What happens when the rest of the ice melts and we have open water up to the north pole from Canada? What's that going to do to our North American agricultural industries?

[Shelagh Grant]

That's probably an hour's lecture. There is one image that shows that the warming in the Arctic is actually creating violent and uncharacteristic weather elsewhere. There is a chart, which you will eventually get, that shows that the warming in February last year in the Arctic coincided with the cold spell they had in Europe and Russia. Scientists are beginning to connect hurricane Sandy with the warming of the Atlantic water which changed the direction it would normally take. Everything is interconnected. As I say, the issues are more complex.

Again, to try to get Inuit to understand, you have to use very plain language because they perceive from observation, and in some cases we forget about that observation.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

The observation by many of my constituents of a funnel cloud at Inuvik this summer was a pretty clear indicator. I don't think anybody in Inuvik now doubts that the weather systems are changing. If you talk to people in Cambridge Bay they know. The grass in their yards grew so high they couldn't believe it. They had thunderstorms throughout the summer. They know and they understand. We don't have any question about understanding climate change.

What we need to do is identify to Canadians that these are going to be impacts that are going to be felt all over this country very quickly, and they're already starting to be felt. Certainly wilful denial is not going to work much longer.

[Shelagh Grant]

I agree totally. The day of the oil and gas lobbyists, the naysayers, is over, I hope. We have to treat adaptation to what we've got, basically.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Ms. French, are you familiar with the conference statement that came out of the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region in Iceland?

[Sara French]

Yes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You recognize that many of the goals you have there are outlined by the rest of the countries. Canada presented a briefing note at the time wherein most of those issues that were accepted by the other countries were being rejected by Canada.

How is that going to work?

[Sara French]

I think that the challenge of the Arctic Council is to find those areas of convergence and collaboration. I think that one area that everyone agrees on, every process that I've seen coming out on thinking forward for both the Canadian and American chairs, is the effective implementation of the Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic, the first binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council.

That agreement touches on many of the issues we've talked about today in terms of the infrastructure gaps that exist and the need to collaborate. The provisions of the agreement itself are not revolutionary in terms of cooperation, but it's how this thing is going to be implemented. That's one of those areas. There are many processes that are coming out on what should be prioritized and, across the board, that's seen in all of them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have.

We'll move back to Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Grant, you have written extensively about both the history of states in the Arctic and the precursors to current attention. You've also said that the situation in the Arctic has the ability to change very quickly. What practice do you see that could push the Arctic relations in either a distinctly negative or positive direction?

[Shelagh Grant]

That's a great question.

I'll try to answer succinctly. Resource opportunities and turning those resource opportunities into sustainable development for the people who are living there is going to be the basic challenge. It is something that we need to think of in the future as creating very stable Arctic communities. The Inuit, of course, will play a good part in that, and in the sub-Arctic, it will be the Athabaskan and Gwich'in peoples.

It is confusing when we have north and Arctic, because I often think of Arctic as Inuit homeland in Arctic Canada, but it blurs on the borders. We've always been a tolerant people, accepting that.

Yes, education is going to be a precursor to bringing them into the 21st century. They're coming, and I believe the Inuit have a very innate ability—I don't like to use the word “intelligence”--but because they have been brought up to observe for learning, they are much more conscientious of what's going on around them. We have to provide role models as well, in that sense.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

On one hand, Canadians are really getting excited about the economic opportunities in the north. The melting of the ice pack is making it more and more valuable out there. On the other hand, we have heard much testimony to say that it's not something to get really excited about and that the melting costs far outweigh the economic benefits.

How would you respond to this? How might Canada best manage or balance our commitments on the environmental front with our economic priorities?

Mr. Breukelman, could you please answer this question?

[David Breukelman]

Sure.

First of all, it's a great question. I think governments and people can only address what they're capable of addressing. I believe from a macro perspective it is very important to be concerned about and to try to figure out on a global scale how to address climate change overall.

From a Canadian perspective, the classic saying is that you play with the hand that's dealt to you. Given the opportunities that exist and the choice between addressing them and exploiting them or not addressing them and not exploiting them, in a careful, structured and managed way, one would always err on the creation of value and growth for the country. It's important, though, on a very personal level, from my family's perspective, to do so in an environmentally careful way, given the opportunity to do that.

No one thought about it 50 years ago. No one had the opportunity to address exploration in an environmentally friendly way, and why would one, back then? It wasn't part of the mindset. However, the world has changed, appropriately, so today, if we can take advantage of the same exploration or better discovery processes and do so in an environmentally friendly way, then do it, but do it in the best interests of our constituency, which is this country and the local people we are benefiting as well.

Does that help?

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Chair, have I more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have 30 seconds.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

That's fine.