Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You recognize that sometimes it takes a long time to get a question out, right? You've been observing your colleagues.

Madam Péclet, for five minutes, please.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today. This has been a very interesting discussion.

My first question is for Ms. French.

In your opening remarks, you referred to a lack of resources, especially for aboriginal people in the north. I think this is a problem, because, among other reasons, these people are not necessarily well represented by the government within the Arctic Council.

How will aboriginal people's interests be represented if important decisions are made? One also has to keep in mind the problem of education and resources in this area. How will these people be able to make themselves heard and be represented?

[Sara French]

I think first of all it's important to remember that the Arctic Council is the first organization to have a permanent place in its design for the representatives of indigenous groups. There are six there.

The challenge is that when we're talking about meetings that are taking place all over the Arctic with several different working groups, especially as the Arctic Council becomes more and more active, it's difficult for those organizations to take advantage of that structure. They need more resources and capacity to be the representatives of that voice at those meetings. Members of the Arctic Council from this country were the ones who really pushed for the roles of the permanent participants when the council was created in 1996. It's something I think we need to return to.

Just as a point of clarification, they do have a formal role in this organization. It's just that there's a lack of resources to fully take advantage of it.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

That leads precisely into the second point I wanted to raise. We have heard from many stakeholders. They spoke to us about the important role that the Arctic Council plays. And yet we have hardly spoken about funding. Ms. Grant alluded to it. But she only briefly spoke about it.

All the stakeholders we have heard from have spoken about the importance of the Arctic Council, but they did not speak about funding. For example, Ms. French just indicated that a lack of resources is preventing organizations representing aboriginal people to be heard, and that includes travel to the Arctic.

I would like Ms. Grant and Ms. French to expand on that.

The organization is underfunded. It is therefore vulnerable to any political battles between governments. If it were a little more independent, in other words if it were funded independently, then that might improve cooperation.

[Shelagh Grant]

I think the Arctic Council itself is dependent on its member countries to fund the council work. There was a breakthrough at the last ministerial meeting in that they actually have formed a permanent secretariat. They've just announced the director who is from Iceland. Hopefully, having some permanent stability within the council itself can work towards getting funding. I agree totally with Sara on getting the indigenous people funded. We have other government sources that help us. There's so much expectation from other countries, like Sweden, that Canada's going to perform miracles.

I was at a United States Coast Guard Academy conference last spring. Lloyd Axworthy was there. I was hearing about how much Canada was going to be able to do, possibly together with the U.S., and how much was going to be done. I'm looking at the usual thing Canada has suffered from since the day it became a huge country in 1867, and that is funding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have. We're going to move to Mr. Dechert to finish off the official rounds, and then we can see if we have time left for additional questioning.

Mr. Dechert, go ahead for five minutes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Breukelman, as a resident of Mississauga, I want to congratulate you and Gedex on building this very impressive company with state-of-the-art technology. I think it is a great example to prove the idea that all Canadians can benefit from resource development. There's a bizarre view among some people that somehow when you develop the oil sands or other mineral resources in northern Canada it detracts from job opportunities and development of technologies in southern Canada. I think Gedex is proving that's just not true. Congratulations on the development of this technology. It obviously has great application all over Canada and around the world.

This is something that ties all of you together.

Ms. Grant, you talked about the need for safe navigation in the Arctic.

Mr. Breukelman, you told us that your technology can tell us where there are not economically viable resource deposits. Those are areas that can then be protected for national parks and for tourism.

I think, Ms. Grant, you talked about the growing number of cruise ships in the region. I wonder, among the three of you, if you could tell us what the economic prospects are, both the challenges and the benefits of tourism in the Arctic, how the people of the region can benefit from that, and what needs to be done to make that viable.

Ms. French, you talked about the need for aeronautical and maritime search and rescue. Perhaps you could address what is needed, what the cost of that is in your view, and what opportunities there might be for cost recovery by providing those search and rescue resources from, say, the owners of super tankers or cruise ships that might be passing through the region.

[Shelagh Grant]

On the cruise ships, yes, I've been on one as a resource person. It all depends on the cruise ship company and their sensitivity to the Arctic communities. Evidently, The World, which is an absolutely enormous ship—I think there's a picture, but maybe I took it out—landed at Cambridge Bay, but they did not interact with the community.

The communities are excellent up there in terms of having a program for visitors, but they expect visitors to buy some crafts and artifacts. Some cruise ships prefer to have their own gift shop, you might say. It varies with the cruise ship and organization. I don't want to bandy names around, but the larger the ship, the more it's a problem of getting people on land, and the fact that we all have to go by Zodiac into each community multiplies it. Also, there's our own sensitivity. There needs to be a sensitivity person speaking to every cruise ship before they go into a community. The Inuit are so proud of what they've done. We have to be very careful that it meets our standards.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

People in the Caribbean would probably tell you there are similar issues there. Certainly, there are opportunities for people to have great travel experiences and to leave some of their hard-earned money behind for the benefit of the people in the region.

Ms. French.

[Sara French]

I would add that it's important when we are talking about the cruise ship industry in the north to recognize that only 10% of Canadian Arctic waters are charted. Increasingly as the ice recedes you're seeing cruise ships going further and further off the charted routes to find those unique experiences for their passengers, the majority of whom are older and can afford these very expensive cruises. That's a great economic benefit to the communities. The communities are welcoming them with open arms.

At the same time we need to understand that these ships are in Canadian waters. What is our capacity to respond if the unthinkable happens? We've been lucky so far that the weather has been good and everyone has been safe. However, our capacity to respond is seriously limited, so as cruise ship tourism picks up, we need to couple that with better search and rescue and emergency response.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Can you give us any details on what you think is needed and what the cost might be? Should we be charging the cruise ship operators for providing that search and rescue capability?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Can you do that in less than 15 seconds?

[Sara French]

Yes. We're at the beginning of a study that will look at exactly this question. As a starting point, it's important to learn from what has happened in Alaska, with their robust cruise ship industry going into remote communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. We are done our official rounds, but we still have 15 minutes. I saw Mr. Schellenberger's hand up, as well as Ms. Brown's, and Mr. Benskin's.

We have four questions here. We've finished here, so we'll start with the NDP, and then we'll come back to the Conservatives and go that way for a question to each to finish it up.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

I'm the interloper for the day. I'm not a regular member of this committee. I was struck by a couple of things that were said.

First off, Mr. Breukelman, in terms of the work that you're doing in Gedex, especially in IMAX, we're connected in that way in that I've done a number of narrations for IMAX films. It is an interesting way to help Canadians understand the north and maybe take on a sense of why the north is important.

My question, however, is going to be in regard to the permanent participants, just getting a better sense of that.

Ms. French, if I understand correctly, you were saying that the permanent participants don't have the resources to fully participate in what's going on in the north. If that is the case, how are they going to speak for themselves in terms of what they want and don't want in their territories?

[Sara French]

The lack of funding does make that difficult. We're currently working with some partners to work with the permanent participants to identify specifically what their needs are around capacity. To put it into perspective, it's one staff person working out of their home that represents some of these permanent participant organizations. It makes it very difficult to do so.

In the coming months we will be releasing reports, along with the permanent participants, about what specifically those capacity gaps are, and proposing funding mechanisms to address them.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Ms. Grant, I get the sense that you want to weigh in on this.

[Shelagh Grant]

She covered where the dialogue has to start, but there's a need to actually identify funding, government funding, Nunavut funding, and whether it's internal. It's complicated because it's not straight government funding for the Arctic Council. We have layers. They hope to have it in place before the Arctic Council—

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

To take it a step further, then, as this exploration and development process goes on, initiatives are being pushed forward. How do you balance the lack of voice on the indigenous people's part with the speed of the progress of these development initiatives?

[Sara French]

In terms of when we're talking about Canada domestically, there are imported processes included in the land claims agreement that provide processes to deal with this.

One thing we're doing is working with communities around how to negotiate impact benefit agreements. We are holding workshops so that they have the tools when they're faced with large mining corporations coming into their community. It's important to recognize that not all communities have the same view on development. Some welcome it; some are more reticent. Either way, if they decide to go forward, to negotiate, they have the information about what's been negotiated elsewhere and are able to go into processes.

One of the things underlining everything we're talking about today is capacity. That's something important to look at. There is no university in the north for northern students to not have to leave their home to go to university. There are colleges. But capacity is the major underlining issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks. We'll see what we get back to.

Mr. Schellenberger, then Mr. Eyking, then Ms. Brown will finish off that round.

Go ahead, Mr. Schellenberger.

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

Thank you.

It's been said here today that we lag behind in technology. In the last three years, the Stratford campus of the University of Waterloo opened in my riding. That campus specializes in new media, and as we hope, will help Canada to lead in technology in the future.

Right now I think somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100 students attend that particular school. It just opened a new facility this past fall. We figure there are going to be between 500 and 1,000 students at that school in the near future. Hopefully, there will be some ideas, some new technologies coming out of there that may be able to help in the Arctic.

Have any of you heard of the Stratford campus? I'm very proud to have been part of that. Hopefully. there can be something that can come out of it that will help all our people in the north.

[Shelagh Grant]

I have just a quick comment. Yes, I do know of it, and it's wonderful.

I think that in Canada we forget we are so far ahead of technology in the Arctic. Their infrastructure hasn't caught up with us. It always happens. In World War II it was the Americans who had the technology well in advance of us. This is one thing. We have to get those ships, the infrastructure, to support that wonderful technology.

NORDREG has done an absolutely superb job of monitoring shipping traffic—it's unbelievable—in their new centre up in Iqaluit. We should be telling the rest of Canada about what they're doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What I've been hearing from most witnesses over the last few times is that there's no big challenge, as far as the international community is concerned, with respect to our sovereignty for our northern waters. We had a bit of a drama with our Conservative defence minister that the Russians are coming and all that stuff. There was that little flash, but at the end of the day, I don't think that's the big threat I hear from the witnesses.

Let's talk about domestic waters. Ms. Grant, you mentioned a couple of things. One was from the Churchill perspective, that Churchill could become a real port of export. Who knows: there could be a pipeline going from Alberta to Churchill and you could be loading up oil and gas there and going all over the world. Then you mentioned also that the Chinese might be leading a convoy with an icebreaker up front.

Should we have special regulations for just our Arctic waters, different from the seaway, where we say this activity's going to be happening, so we need special-hulled ships, and they have to travel at a certain time? Do we need a different protocol or regulation within our own domestic waters, so that when we get the ask from the oil companies or the Chinese, we can say, “That's fine, but here's the scoop”?