Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 20th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

I would like to convene the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development of Tuesday, February 20, 2007.

Committee members, you have the orders of the day before you. This morning we'll be having a briefing on the 2006 report of the Cree-Naskapi Commission. Our witnesses are from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Mr. Michel Roy, assistant deputy minister for claims and Indian government; and Terry Sewell, director general of the implementation branch, claims and Indian government sector.

After we deal with the briefing on the Cree-Naskapi Commission we'll have time for committee business to discuss aboriginal housing. We'll have a presentation and then we'll have questions. We also have a motion from Madam Neville that we'll deal with.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

We're going to leave it to next week, because I didn't bring my notes with me. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Thank you.

Welcome to the committee. Thank you for your attendance. If you want to open with a little bit of a brief, we appreciate that.

Thank you.

[Michel Roy, Assistant Deputy Minister, Claims and Indian Government, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to meet with you today to discuss the important work of the Cree-Naskapi Commission.

I have had the opportunity to read the blues of your session of February 1, 2007 when you had invited the Chair and the Commissioners to present their findings from their 2006 Biannual Report.

As committee members are aware, the Cree-Naskapi Commission was established by the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act to provide independent advice to the Government on the implementation of this Act. This is an important role. As the committee has learned, the Commission does its work by providing forums for Chiefs, community leaders and others to present their views on the implementation of the Act and on various other concerns on which people wish to be heard.

As the committee will appreciate, such processes are valuable as opportunities for concerns to be aired and for governments to be made aware of them. The Commission is a unique forum in Canada. It is the only commission of this kind where chiefs and community leaders have an opportunity to talk about the problems they are experiencing.

As we work with our partners to implement our oldest modern treaty and to forge a new relationship outside of the Indian Act, I believe that the Commission's advice is helpful to us.

As someone who is very involved in the business of negotiating and implementing modern land claims agreements, I was very pleased by the message of the Chairman as he reviewed the period “1986-2006: Years of Change”.

When people ask me why we put so much effort, time, and resources into the pursuit of modern treaties, I believe that the chairman has captured it well when he notes:

If one looks back to 1986 and before, and compares the life of the Cree and Naskapi communities then with the life of those same communities today, the changes are obvious and dramatic. Clearly the overall standard of living has improved. Health in general has improved with, for example, longer life expectancy and a decline in infant mortality. ... Levels of educational attainment have risen dramatically. Many successful new economic enterprises are in operation. So, in spite of some serious challenges, the past twenty years have seen a very significant improvement in the standard of living.

Although we have much work ahead of us, I believe that this is an important perspective to keep in mind. In this regard, I would also like to let the committee know that we are in the first stage of a process of formally evaluating the impact of comprehensive land claim agreements to better understand their full impact.

Also, I am pleased to say that the important work going on in pursuit of a global agreement with the James Bay Cree through the Chrétien--Namagoose negotiations will address a number of the commission's recommendations. We are encouraged by the progress and hopeful of a successful outcome soon.

Although the Commission raises a wide variety of topics and issues that are brought to its attention, I was pleased to see in the introduction section the following remarks:

Since its response to the 2002 Report of the Commission, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has provided a comprehensive response to the recommendations of the Commission. The responses of the Department represent an entirely different approach in its dealings with the Commission [...] It appears that the Department wants to improve its relations with the Commission as well as with the Cree and Naskapi communities.

I would like to take this opportunity to underline this point to the Committee.

Mr. Sewell and I will be very happy to answer your questions and to listen to any comments or suggestions that you may have.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

I'll ask the Liberals who will be first to speak.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'll begin, and my colleague may follow up.

I'm interested not in the specifics, but in a comment you made, Monsieur Roy, about the process of the first stage of evaluating comprehensive land claim agreements. Could you elaborate a bit on that?

[Michel Roy]

Of course. Mr. Sewell will take the answer.

[Terry Sewell, Director General, Implementation Branch, Claims and Indian Government Sector, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

Thank you for your question.

The Auditor General has been recommending for some time that the department evaluate the impact of land claim agreements, because we've put a fair amount of energy into negotiating and implementing these agreements, so we have developed an approach.

This year, we are taking a look at five candidate comprehensive land claim agreements. The guidelines we received from Treasury Board directed us to look at agreements that had been in place more than ten years and that consequently would have had the opportunity to make some impact. They were also to be comprehensive land claim agreements that were not in the process of being reviewed or renewed, to avoid complicating that particular process.

We have the five candidate land claim agreements in Canada, and this year we have consultants engaged to do what's called an evaluability assessment, which means going to each of the five areas and checking out whether we have the tools to do the measuring--finding out what kinds of data exist. As you can appreciate, if you're doing an assessment of the impact of a comprehensive land claim agreement, you need to know what the situations were at the beginning, and those data don't always exist, so we're doing an assessment this year to determine which of those might be the best candidate for a full-blown evaluation that we hope to do next year. It will be an evaluation of the impacts of the land claim agreement.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I know we're supposed to be on a specific issue, but I'm more interested in this process. Are you saying that when the land claim is settled, you have no original data to make a comparison with where they are now?

[Terry Sewell]

Normally when you want to evaluate the impact of something, you take the situation at the start of the event, you check the situation at some phase during the event, and you compare the two. What we have consultants doing right now is trying to determine what amounts of data exist, particularly data that we can measure going back. I can't tell you exactly what exists in the way of data; that's being searched out right now by the consultants.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

What communities are you looking at?

[Terry Sewell]

I'll see if I can remember the five candidate land claim agreements. It would be the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and I think the Inuit of northern Quebec. I'm not remembering the others offhand. I could get that information for the committee, if that's desired.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I would like it. I don't know whether other committee members would, but I would like it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Go ahead, Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Good morning.

When we had the presentation from the commissioners, one of the issues brought to the table concerned the ongoing land claims negotiations with the Nunavik Inuit and the impact upon the Naskapi. Apparently there's only one table at this time dealing with that particular land claim. They make the assertion that there's certainly an overlap of interests in terms of their traditional lands, hunting areas, tracking areas, and things like that.

What is the department's view? It seemed to be a very serious issue from the perspective of the Naskapi.

[Michel Roy]

Thank you for the question.

Of course we are negotiating right now with the Inuit group from Nunavik, but just to be clear, we are not negotiating a land claim. That part has been addressed in the past and they are under the new treaty. What we are negotiating is a self-government agreement with the Nunavik group. The Naskapi have some concerns about some overlapping in terms of territories and powers of the Inuit people over the Naskapi territory. We are, of course, keeping other parties involved in the discussions. We are making sure to keep everybody involved and inform them about what is going on.

The commission, however, made a recommendation on the creation and implementation of a quadripartite forum in which we can have the Quebec government, the federal government, the Inuit, and the Naskapi participating in the committee to discuss overlapping issues, settlement issues, for the Inuit. We already talked to the Inuit about this, and they think it's a great idea. Our negotiator for the Inuit self-government negotiations will be talking to the Naskapi chief to propose that approach. We think that the commission made a good proposal and we are following up on it.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

How far along are the self-government negotiations with the Inuit of Nunavik?

[Michel Roy]

We are right now at the stage of the agreement in principle and we are close to an agreement in principle with them.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

If you're that far along, does that have any implications for a multi-party table? Obviously, when you're that far along, you've reached an agreement on any number of issues, I would think, at that particular time. It makes it much more difficult then for another party. At times it can make it very difficult for another party. Of course you get all these non-derogation clauses being brought in as well in many of these agreements.

Is there any fear that with the settlement or the signature or the agreement, a number of these different elements could influence how a multi-party table would function?

[Michel Roy]

We're not too concerned about that because we are keeping the Naskapi as well as the Cree aware of the discussions going on. They know. The negotiator had some meetings with the chief and the council. It's not the first time that they will be talking. They don't necessarily know all the details, but that's why we follow up on this idea of the quadripartite forum. In the context of an agreement in principle, an AIP, you still have a lot of marge de manoeuvre, if I could say, and issues that need to be negotiated. It's just at the stage of an agreement in principle. I don't think it's too late to amend, if necessary, the agreement eventually to accommodate the Naskapi concerns or input.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Mr. Lévesque, please.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you for joining us, Mr. Roy.

I'll try to go easy on you. I visited the Naskapi reserve which is located on Inuit land. Negotiations involving this reserve have been underway for several years, as I understand it.

This summer, we learned that the federal negotiator had awarded all of Nunavik to the Inuit and that no separate territory has been split off for the Naskapi, despite their ongoing land claim.

What is the current status of this file? I believe you were scheduled to be involved in the negotiations between the Naskapi, the Inuit and the Government of Quebec. Correct?

[Michel Roy]

The negotiations currently underway with Nunavik relate to self-government. Territorial issues have already been broached in the agreement. The real purpose of the negotiations is self-government on land already recognized as Inuit land. The Naskapi are claiming proprietary and usage rights to the land.

Given this context, the agreement on self-government will ensure that the rights of both groups are respected. If aboriginal rights to the same lands were recognized, we would ensure that structures were put in place, for example, to oversee the joint management of lands or decision-making in terms of self-government. Thus we would have some assurances that the voice of the Naskapi would also be heard.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

You are in the process of negotiating the very same things that were negotiated in the case of Whapmagoostui and another neighbouring village in Nunavik, on the west coast of Nunavik. Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuarapik are sister communities.

[Michel Roy]

Is this a mixed community?