Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2018

[Charlie Watt]

When you look at the question of rights, I think the rights are there, but how are you dealing with that in terms of using the recognition that you require to be able to consult with the people that have the rights? This is not what's happening.

How do they intertwine? Well, that's something that's down the road, and hopefully we'll be able to deal with that. This is what I mean when I say we end up setting up a table for discussion purposes and if we need to identify areas that we need to sit down and negotiate, this is where they're going to have to be rectified. Whether that is going to....

One of the interesting things is that we have so many rights overlapping with each other now because of our constitutional rights, aboriginal rights, negotiated rights, United Nations declarations, and so on. Those are all of the rights that describe what we could do and how we could deal with it. I think, as I said earlier on, we need an estimate. The government has to agree to sit down with us, and we need to set up a table. The process has to move. If we don't move it, who's going to move it? Is the government going to act on its own to move this file, or is it going to use the Inuit in some way, recognizing the fact that the Inuit are the key to the whole question of Arctic sovereignty?

Don't forget that we are very close to the next-door neighbours up north in the Arctic. At times when you see restlessness between the two countries from time to time, especially with the kind of president we have on the American side, you don't know what's going to happen. We need to realign ourselves. We are Canadian. I hope we are appreciated as Canadians.

Thank you.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I would dare say you are appreciated.

I did pick up on what you said, though, about the tokenism and the fact that there should be some kind of permanent decision-making representation of Inuit people on the Arctic Council. You talked about being taxpayers and being Canadian. How would you see that? Would it be an indigenous presence, or maybe a Canadian indigenous presence?

[Charlie Watt]

I guess there are two possible ways you can look at that.

One is to keep the importance of the Inuit in the Arctic. Let them become a chair of the Arctic Council. That's one.

Another possibility is that since the seven Arctic countries rotate on the chairmanship, maybe they can be a co-chair to those rotating different countries that take turns from time to time. I think it's every three or four years. I think it's a three-year term. They need to have more input. They don't feel comfortable enough at this point to say, “This is the place where I can address my concerns.”

[Robin Campbell]

If I could follow up really quickly on your question, you had asked how this would work and whether it would be like ICC Canada.

If ICC could come and address the committee, it would be so much better, but since they are not here right now, I will tell you that they are a pan-Inuit body. They sit at the Arctic Council as permanent participants already, as this pan-Inuit group, so it would be looking at giving permanent participants the ability to make decisions and have those decisions recognized.

[The Chair]

Just as a point of clarification for the committee members, because they may not be aware, the Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada, the ICC, was invited to participate in this panel and was confirmed until yesterday, when there was some kind of emergency and they had to cancel. They have said that they're going to send in a brief. They were actually scheduled, I think as you know, to be part of this particular panel today.

With that, we'll go to MP Blaikie, please.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much.

I want to come back to some of the discussion we've had around a framework for development or decisions going forward, some of which will be development decisions. We heard a little bit from a colleague about decisions being made without adequate consultation to not have development go forward. We've heard recently from the Federal Court in regard to some cases further south about development going forward without adequate consultation.

Can you speak to the kind of framework you think we could put in place, and to what extent having a framework that requires consultation but without any decision-making authority or without a seat at the decision-making table means in terms of the likely success of indigenous peoples and Inuit feeling adequately consulted?

What kind of framework might we put in place so that if there are development decisions going forward in the north, Inuit feel that they have been adequately consulted and that those consultations have actually made a real impact in the decisions to proceed or not to proceed, or to proceed in a way that was different from what was originally envisioned by the project proponents?

[Charlie Watt]

There are many needs. Let me try to describe them.

What you are asking is twofold. One is down the road, and the other one is what we do now in coming up with a framework.

Are you talking about a framework in the same fashion that the Government of Canada looks at a framework in regard to dealing with domestic matters? We are comforted with that right now. There have been several attempts to describe what that framework is going to be. As far as I'm concerned, it's still very incomplete.

When you are asking me, I guess you were asking me more at the international level. I'm not sure whether nailing down a framework is going to do it. I really feel, rather than trying to come up with a framework, that you're going to end up discussing the issues and eventually maybe the negotiations. What are we really doing talking about a framework? Who are we preparing? Are we preparing ourselves, as the Inuit people, that we would be a lot better off if we come up with a framework, and that we know what the name of the game is, and what we can touch and what we cannot touch? I don't think that's the right way of dealing with it.

What you need to do is agree to recognize that we do exist, that we have rights, and that therefore we have the rights to have the discussion with our government. We have the right to exchange with our government. Is simply writing a framework just a way of saying, “Let's just delay that. Put that on the back burner. We'll deal with later?”

I don't see how a framework is going to help us. It will probably help the government. It could even be a disadvantage for us to try to live through a framework that is going to be established, for the domestic and also for the international aspects. A framework to me is what is already imprinted in the Constitution itself. We also have a land claims agreement. That is the framework. We have a role to play with the government with regard to the ocean. That is the framework.

What's wrong with what already exists and has been established over the years? Why do we need to create another one all the time?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Granted, there are a lot of rights that are recognized in many different forums now. Hopefully soon, when my colleague, Romeo Saganash's, bill goes through the Senate, as we hope it will, it will be another re-emphasis of the importance of the United Nations declaration.

[Charlie Watt]

I heard he lost his cool today.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes, he did lose his cool a little yesterday, and one can understand why, in part because there are a lot of rights for indigenous peoples that are recognized in many different ways, but from the point of view of the process and when you get a concrete project moving ahead, for all the success in the abstract, when it comes to concrete projects, it doesn't seem to matter what has been negotiated or not.

When I'm talking about a framework, I take your point that we don't need another agreement, but we do need a way to actualize or to put into motion what already exists on paper. I wonder what you think that looks like in terms of what needs to change from the way things are working now. If the development model that we're seeing in many places across Canada right now when it comes to indigenous people obtains as the north opens up, we can expect similar types of conflicts and frustration by indigenous people who feel that they're not being heard.

What do we have to do differently in order to honour those commitments that we've already made in a number of different forums and make sure that the development that is very likely going to happen in the north happens in the right way and it's not something that we're apologizing for 70, 80, or 90 years after the fact?

[The Chair]

I'm sorry, but the time is up on that. Maybe you'll be able to squeeze a short answer to MP Blaikie into one of the follow-up questions.

[Charlie Watt]

Maybe I'll just get my lawyer to....

[The Chair]

We're going to move to MP Wrzesnewskyj, please.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Senator Watt, for your compelling testimony. It's good to have you back on the Hill.

[Charlie Watt]

I recognize you.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

You touched on an issue that we're grappling with: all of these overlaying claims of sovereignty by different countries, and the indigenous claims. We also have a layer to this that makes it very hard because of the concept of how territorial claims are laid out: They're based on mapping and maps.

Our cultural understanding of maps is very different from the cultural understanding of the land in the north. It's in the report that your legal counsel produced back in 2012, wherein they talk about the ice being just an extension of the land. Most of the time, it's ice.

When you began your testimony, you talked about how you had mapped out the territories through which the Inuit ranged. It would be tremendously helpful if we could get a copy of that map, at least what is within Canadian territory, so that we have a full comprehension of that range and how it overlies our claims to sovereignty based on UN rules and international agreements, because there's also this whole question. I don't know, but they might not correspond, because in it, it also talks of the Inuit claim going without interruption to the seaward-facing coast of the Arctic, meaning Ellesmere Island, and so on. How far out does it range? If we could be provided with that, it would be tremendously helpful.

Perhaps to the analyst, could we have clear maps of all seven countries and their claims and what the international waters are, and from the Inuit Circumpolar Council, the various Inuit groups from those various countries and their claims, if they have them? Although I'm sure the legal framework is very different in some of those countries, that would at least help us start to try to sort things out.

I make that request, if you'd like to address it. I'm thankful that you mentioned the whole incident about Inuit being moved from northern Quebec in 1955 to Ellesmere Island. It actually strengthens Canada's case for sovereignty—

[Charlie Watt]

Exactly.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

—but it is a painful historical episode.

[Charlie Watt]

Yes.

In regard to your question, this mapping that I talked about had nothing to do with making a claim. All it does is show how the Inuit of the Arctic travel and interact, even though they're so far apart from each other, and so on. Examples are Greenland and Canada or Alaska and Canada.

It's a trail. It's a trail of the people, the movement of the people. They've been fluctuating back and forth between the high north, which is the top of the world, down to the bottom of where the last Inuit people are—I shouldn't say last.

Labrador is also a part of it, so we did the mapping there too, and in Quebec. This is big. The travel routes start from there, from the bottom on up. Whether it was wintertime or summertime, you travelled either by dog teams or by boat. This is what is on the trail. That's what we have mapped out, but this has nothing to do with an attempt to make a claim.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

If I could come back to this, the understanding of the environment is so different there, and of land and ownership. It's a whole different understanding, as we heard in the first hour. Here's where I have a problem. We have land claims being made by one of the countries—Russia. According to the Lomonosov Ridge, which is under the sea—

[Charlie Watt]

Along the continental shelf—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It extends all the way to Ellesmere Island. It's not just a claim to Arctic international waters; it's claiming Canadian territory based on rules that don't reflect the reality of the north. Those were rules set by seafaring nations that weren't icebound and that were trying to extend jurisdiction out from ports that were accessible.

Those rules are being applied in an area where we don't acknowledge land claims based on sea surface and ice. The UN, however, appears to be perhaps on the cusp of saying that there might be some claim based on ridges under the sea.

[The Chair]

MP Wrzesnewskyj—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Could we have your quick thoughts on that? I'm struggling with some of it.

[The Chair]

I hear you. What I'll say now—and I'll use this to refer to MP Blaikie's question too—is that there's clearly lots of information being sought by the committee. We can have the clerk follow up, but regarding MP Blaikie's question and the last question, if you'd like to submit anything to the committee, we'll certainly take that in. We clearly didn't have time to dig into some of these issues more deeply. I do want to give time for members to ask their questions.

We're going to move to three minutes for MP Baylis, and then three minutes for MP Aboultaif as well.