Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

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

The board members' names are submitted to the Prime Minister's Office for screening. Is that how it works?

[Bernard Funston]

I imagine that's how it works. I'm not sure how they come up with the initial list.

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

Recently, I visited New Zealand, and when you go to New Zealand, you find very little difference in wealth between the first nations and the visitors, the New Zealanders. There's more involvement of their first nations people in the economy.

When I was there I asked the member of Parliament why they got it right and we didn't. He said they learned from North America's mistakes, because they started about 100 years later, and because of inclusiveness in resources, and whatever. They have a different template.

As we go forward with the Arctic, and you talk about how we don't want to get into this frontier mentality—between Canada, the United States, and first nations people right now, there seem to be land claims, resource claims, constant court battles, and whatever. Let's assume we might have a better chance of doing things differently here, and maybe have a different template in the way we deal with the communities up north.

That being said, and you already alluded to it, we can't have Ottawa as the centre, that it comes from here, as if the north is some sort of colony. The ideas about what we're doing have to come from the north. As a government, how do you see that we should deal with it differently this time around, so that we get it right for the people who live there? Should we learn from our mistakes and do things differently?

[Bernard Funston]

Absolutely. It's important to learn from one's mistakes.

I think we are actually doing it differently—certainly since I began working on these issues more than 30 years ago. The first and biggest step in that “doing it differently” approach was, of course, the settlement of land claim and self-government agreements. We still have a few outstanding ones in the Northwest Territories, but we don't have a vacuum in that area anymore. We have these legal regimes, which are protected at the highest level of our Constitution. In New Zealand, for example, the Treaty of Waitangi was a very early adoption of a notion of aboriginal law or indigenous law. That was signed in 1841, I think, so they've had a lot of time to work on this.

We are getting it right. We have the legal basis for it. The implementation of some of those undertakings is always challenging, and that will go on for some time, because you don't ever unbox a new way of doing things. It takes time. I think we're doing things as well as we can. We're always constrained by resources, and in this particular case, I think we've had the world come to our back door in kind of an unexpected way. I don't think anyone was prepared for the sudden upwelling of global interest in the Arctic after 2005. I think it overwhelmed national capitals across the Arctic states. Other than Norway, which had been doing this in a very different climatic environment for a long time—they were quite well prepared—the rest of us, I don't think, were as well prepared as we thought.

The bottom line here is that the issues have moved from what were primarily domestic issues—building nursing stations, schools, rinks, community centres, and so forth—in the north. We've done that very well since 1950, when I was born in the Northwest Territories. Where we haven't done a lot of building and infrastructure development, though, is on this offshore side of things. We weren't prepared for the Arctic to become accessible at an ocean level, and that is a big sticker shock for our nation, and for the U.S., and for Russia—less so, as I said, for Norway. For Iceland, it's not an issue at all.

But doing things differently also has to take into account that we now have a global conversation. It used to be an “Ottawa and territorial capital” conversation perhaps, but now we're talking to the Chinese about the Arctic, and now we're talking to...you know, India has applied for observership in the Arctic Council. It's a global conversation, as I said, because of the change that's being driven in the Arctic. It's not just Ottawa. I wasn't suggesting that Ottawa has colonized the Arctic. The pressure is coming from the middle latitudes generally, and it's a demand for resources, it's a possible shorter transportation route, and of course it's that whole trans-regional effect of climate change. The fact that the Arctic is melting has huge consequences for the middle latitudes, with sea level rise, with changes in climatic patterns.

So we are doing things as well as we possibly can in Canada, and I think some of the other countries—certainly New Zealand and Australia—have learned from us. But we're not perfect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

We're going to start with the next round of five minutes.

Go ahead, Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm going to share my time with Ms. Grewal, if we need to.

Mr. Funston, you may not like my asking this question, because you've obviously thought that you should have put a halt on asking people to be involved in the north. But Mr. Scott, particularly, you are talking about educating people and having people be more aware. Has there been any initiative through your organization to create some sort of curriculum for kids in schools? Is that part of your mandate, or do you have anybody who's involved in the organization?

My daughter is a new teacher. She's just done a unit on aboriginal peoples in Canada. There's very little availability, though, of opportunity to teach about aboriginal peoples of the north, and yet that has to be a component we look at. She is looking for resources. I suggested that perhaps looking at the north might be something she should do in her geography class. She is teaching grades 3 and 4. What kind of curriculum is being constructed, because the education needs to start at the very elementary levels now?

[David J. Scott]

Thank you for raising that. It gives me an opportunity to emphasize one of the pieces of our outward communication strategy, and that's very much focused on kids who live in the north.

Curriculum, of course, is a territorial jurisdiction, but we absolutely recognize the need to support the teaching of an appropriate curriculum. We've begun a number of initiatives to start to work with that. We're starting to work with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which has a long and very strong history of producing teacher-friendly materials. They have expressed a strong interest in working in partnership with us to focus on the north as well, so the curriculum that is required to be taught in each of the three territories and the northern parts of the provinces can be better supported. We're looking to partner with other organizations to help fund the creation of materials that can assist the delivery of each curriculum across the north.

The National Film Board of Canada has recently come to us to see if we could help them with one of their projects, which is to help them return historic films made in the north to the north, in the dialects of the areas where they were filmed. One project that they're seeking our assistance with is to make sure that copies of those historic films, which in many cases include the elders of people living there today, can make their way into the schools and into the homes of northerners.

These are just two examples of initiatives where the Polar Commission, through its mandate to reach out and raise polar awareness, can do some very practical things at the school/child level—and of course we all know kids are pretty good at teaching their parents.

We're very pleased to start to work on these things. These are nascent projects that we hope to finalize and get under way in the coming months.

It's a very strongly recognized need. We believe we're very capable, through our mandate, to convene and bring partners together, the right players, who can do it properly in respect of local curricula.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Grewal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Grewal, you have a minute and a half.

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

Thank you.

Your organization is our ears and our eyes in the Arctic region, but since the cutbacks in 2000, you have lacked a northern presence. The Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has now provided the necessary funding for that, for the commission, and to open an office in the Arctic.

Could you please comment on the importance of this office and how it will allow you to do a better job to fulfill your mandate?

[David J. Scott]

Thank you for the opportunity.

We're very proud of the fact that we now have a northern presence. Once again, we are mandated to do so, and for a number of years we were not in compliance with that mandate.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs did put funding on the table for us this fiscal year. We acted as promptly as we could to describe and advertise the position. Our strategy was to seek the most appropriate candidate across the north, regardless of where he or she lived, and then to set up the office in that person's home community, rather than identify a community and try to import someone to it. We were very fortunate. We had widespread interest. We had over 25 expressions of interest, 17 applications. We interviewed 10 individuals in the north and wound up with Mr. David Miller of Yellowknife.

We are very excited. He is extremely well connected to northern communities, predominantly in the Northwest Territories, but through his long history, his 33 years in the north, he's quite well connected to the other territories, as well as to the northern parts of the provinces. With this local voice, he is very well connected. We are already changing the way we are thinking about the program we deliver, in terms of making it more relevant to northerners. It's an excellent opportunity to once again refresh our presence and become much more northern. Despite the fact that our headquarters is here in Ottawa and six of the staff are based in Ottawa, we now have a couple of folks in the north.

I'll also add that, as a consequence of this search process that brought us Mr. Miller, we also identified a young woman by the name of Jocelyn Joe-Strack, who's with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nation. She lives in Whitehorse, and she has joined us on a part-time basis. While she finishes her master's of science at the University of Northern British Columbia, she's giving us a hand on some analysis of northern research needs and the state of knowledge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bevington, sir, you have five minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I'll share some of my time with Ms. Péclet.

I just have a couple of questions.

I want to put the education stuff in an international perspective, of course, because that's what we're here for.

On the UArctic, the international virtual university that was supported by this government up until 2010, do you think we should get back on board with this in a bigger way? They had a very successful meeting in Winnipeg about a month ago. Is this something that you see as a great tool for sharing knowledge throughout the northern hemisphere with northerners?

[Bernard Funston]

It is a very interesting initiative. It's one that actually originated in Canada back around the time of the Iqaluit ministerial meeting in 1998. The people who first came up with the idea sat down at that meeting and put it forward. It's a very worthwhile approach. They're trying to come up with curricula that are relevant to northerners, and to allow people, through Internet capabilities, to actually study in their resident communities without needing to go south if they don't want to.

It has a lot of challenges in terms of the cost, of course, and I think that's where we withdrew some funding in 2010. I would love to see it back on its feet.

From a Canadian perspective, we are the only Arctic state that doesn't have a university north of 60 in our northern precinct. But I must say, and Dennis would know the numbers a lot better than I do, when it was first initiated in 1998, the dissonance or the misalignment with the Canadian situation was that we weren't graduating a lot of kids into the university level of education. Those numbers have improved more recently, but we had more challenges in those days, even 10 years ago, in graduating kids from high school. Getting the balance right is always the trick. You don't want to invest in higher education if you're not having people funnel through the system to actually be able to utilize it.

However, as an initiative, it was a very exciting one, and I know it struggled.

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

Thank you very much.

One of the functions of the commission is to counsel the Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. As you know, the Minister of Health and Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency will be taking on the chairmanship of the Arctic Council in the course of the next few months.

Are you going to meet with her to advise her, in particular with respect to the priorities Canada should put forward at the Arctic Council? I would also like to know what you think of the priorities the government has set out. Do you think that they are the right ones? We have heard about development of northern communities, development of the north and of natural resources. These concerns are more national than international.

Do you not think that we should instead prioritize questions like climate change, the management of fisheries and of risk, for instance the risk of oil spills? What do you think our priorities should be? Will you be meeting with the minister to advise her on that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

If you can answer all that in one minute, that would be great.

[Bernard Funston]

Okay.

No, we haven't met with either of the ministers yet on those priorities. We have offered to assist. Our invitation hasn't been taken up as yet; I think there are a lot of things going on.

In terms of the priorities, as mentioned, they are set in the Kiruna ministerial meeting in May 2013, and that will be done in collaboration with our Arctic state partners. The key here is the consensus rule within the Arctic Council, so Canada cannot unilaterally push an agenda, say, for sustainable development in communities in Canada's Arctic.

A lot of the ongoing agenda of the Arctic Council will include things like climate change, short-term forces of climate change, those sorts of things. That agenda will be quite full. What I take the Canadian agenda to be is for Canada domestically to focus more on these issues. I can see that it's really bringing home the Arctic Council's work in order for it to be better disseminated within Canada, and that is a role where the commission could assist. Because of our strategic planks, aggregating information, synthesizing information, and distributing information by better communications at the local level, we could certainly make the Arctic Council more understood in the communities of the north.

We haven't been asked to set priorities, and we haven't done that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn it back to Mr. Van Kesteren, for five minutes, sir.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Ms. Grewal has a question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Go ahead, Ms. Grewal.

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

Could you please tell us how the Canadian Polar Commission compares to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission? Could you play a similar role to that of the American commission?

[Bernard Funston]

I'll start and then let Dave finish, because it's a very good question.

We're almost an amalgamation of two bodies in the U.S.: the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and the polar board, which does more with the Antarctic side of things for the U.S. Their focus is primarily on research and I think on coordinating departmental and agency thinking on Arctic research in the U.S. We don't have that function. We don't organize departments as to their research agendas.

Otherwise, we have a lot of common structural issues. They're appointed by the president. They've had some vacancies on their board that have only recently been filled. They have a chair who is also a northerner, Fran Ulmer, from Alaska. She is the former lieutenant governor of Alaska. I must that say when we sit down and talk to each other in our joint board meetings, we have a lot in common.

Dave.

[David J. Scott]

On a more operational level, through bilateral dialogue that we've had over the past seven months, we have identified a number of areas where we, as independent commissions, can better coordinate work of various scientific organizations. In Canada, obviously, there's the academic world and the networks such as ArcticNet, as well as the federal departments and territorial players. We can help to bring those folks together.

One geographic area where we're currently focusing our efforts is the area of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. There's an international boundary in the Beaufort Sea, of course, but the ecosystems don't recognize that boundary. The mammals move back and forth. The water flows freely.

The research agenda that can be done can be more effectively delivered with better coordination, so we're working very closely now with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and players in Alaska to ensure that, for example, a coast guard vessel is used by the scientists of both countries for efficiency and effectiveness. It ensures that the data that are gathered are compatible so that the natural ecosystem that is out there is better understood more holistically, rather than by trying to attack it independently. We're trying to create that coordination.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I have a question, Chair.

Thank you for being here.

Along that same line, what about the Russians? Are you engaging them? Do they have the same interests that we have as Canadians and that the Americans have? Are you finding any difficulties or challenges there that you could share with this committee?

[Bernard Funston]

The Russians are tough to engage. In our council role, I worked very closely with the Russians for their chairmanship of the Arctic Council from 2006 to 2008. It's a different approach. They're a little less keen on the information sharing side of things. It's not a natural sort of process for them since the fall of the Soviet Union. They're more interested in coming to the Arctic Council cafeteria, if you will, and taking the various reports; they don't leave many on the table themselves.