Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2007

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

So is the implementation of these measured within the department, and is the success measured, and therefore are there consequences that come about from those that aren't being successfully implemented?

[Michael Wernick]

Yes, of course, and some of the issues will have to do with the resources that go into the structures created by the agreement. Most of these treaties and agreements create water boards, management boards, land management boards, and so on, which become part of the permanent structure of governance in that area. What happens is there are funding arguments about the budgets of those organizations, and from the perspective of the group that signed the claim in the first place, it's unfulfilled implementation of the agreement. But it's also just the ongoing argument about what's an appropriate budget for an institution.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Wernick, but that wasn't my question. My question was, within the department itself, is there a form of measurement? Is there a form of goal-setting, if you want to call it that, that we determine whether or not we are successful with our implementation process, and if not, why not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

One minute.

[Michael Wernick]

Yes.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Yes, there is?

[Michael Wernick]

Yes.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

One of the reasons I bring this up is because some of this stuff--I mean, this is all very serious, but the lack of implementation over 23 years.... We need to discover and not recreate the same issues the previous government had. Therefore, I want to ensure that with the agreements that are within these supplementary estimates and the agreements we're moving forward with, we don't run into something 20 years down the road with people asking why this committee, this Parliament, wasn't successful in implementing these things. Do you have any suggestions as to what went wrong within that process and what we can be doing better in moving forward?

[Michael Wernick]

I can't comment on the past. What we're trying to do now is pay more attention to milestones and the implementation parts of agreements. We are doing audits; we're doing evaluations. We're trying to make sure there's a 100% audit coverage within the department of all of our activities, and that includes implementation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you. Your time is up.

Ms. Karetak-Lindell, you have five minutes.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you.

I'm sorry the minister is not still here. I'm finding it a little difficult to listen to the minister telling us we shouldn't make negative comments so that we don't hurt the people who are involved. I sat in my early days as a member of Parliament while he voted against every land claims agreement piece of legislation that came before us, namely the Nisga'a treaty and the Nunavut land claims implementation legislation, so it's a little difficult for me to take those kinds of comments coming from that particular minister. I want to put these on record, because we have to put them in perspective. Your history always comes back to put you in your place, I think.

I look at the supplementary estimates and notice that there are a lot of transfers. I know the minister said they're spending more money in the Indian Affairs department than any previous government. I'm not going to get into nickel-and-diming this stuff, but what I'm interested in is how much of the supposed increase in actual spending on services is related to transferring of different services from other departments to Indian Affairs.

I made comments before about Aboriginal Business Canada transferring from Industry Canada and about other services managed by different departments moving to Indian Affairs. I remember my comments to the previous minister, that in a way we're almost ghettoizing services in Indian Affairs.

I wonder how much of that money is actually for transferring over to INAC and how much of it is for the salaries of the people who went with the transfer, and not so much as an end result of services going to the people this department serves. That's a little worrisome for me. And how much of that money is really for the International Polar Year, above and beyond the money we use for service delivery, whether for education or land claims or whatever?

I'm worried that the actual dollars they're saying have increased the spending for the Department of Indian Affairs are really money spent on the International Polar Year, or money taken from Industry Canada for Aboriginal Business Canada, and not so much money for the delivery of services, which I think is what we all want to see.

[Michael Wernick]

There are several questions there. I'll try to answer a couple of things.

The whole point of the estimates is to report to Parliament on where the money has flowed—through which votes in which departments. The Minister of Health will be presenting estimates that include over $2 billion on first nations and Inuit health.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

I'm referring to these right here. You have—

[Michael Wernick]

It's not unusual that one department would be coordinating an activity and money would come in from another department. We pay into some initiatives and we collect from other initiatives, and those are there.

What you're seeing in the supplementary estimates involves some organizational transfers. When Aboriginal Business Canada came to the department, they brought their budget with them. When the aboriginal representative organizations program came to the department, they brought their budget with them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There's one minute.

[Michael Wernick]

The appropriations are what they are. It's $6.3 billion in the main estimates; here's another—

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

How much of these factor into the minister saying he's actually spending more money in INAC than any other previous time?

[Michael Wernick]

We'll end the year just under $7 billion, I would think—$6.7 billion or $6.8 billion. There will probably be another round of supplementary estimates in the spring.

One of the biggest variables—we've had this exchange before—depends on when some of the settlements kick in. If we reach a land claim settlement or a lawsuit litigation settlement, it may show up this year or it may take till next year to make its way through the process. So, give or take, a couple of hundred million dollars each year will depend on the timing of settlements.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you, Deputy.

Mr. Bruinooge.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Perhaps I'll just further comment in relation to Ms. Karetak-Lindell's comments. Regardless of what she said, it is still very appropriate to be mindful of this important phase in the history of the Indian residential school era. I think right now it is a clear moment of reconciliation. So I think the minister's comments are very timely and very important to be mindful of.

My question is going to be in relation to the very important role that the Prime Minister has given the Minister of Indian Affairs, and of course your department as well, which is in relation to the focus we've put in the throne speech in relation to the north.

Of course, being northern myself and knowing a number of the colleagues across the way and how important the north is to many of us here, perhaps you could expand on how we're going to be focusing some of our departmental staff and budgets towards coordinating these efforts in the north.

[Michael Wernick]

Thanks, Mr. Bruinooge.

This actually goes to Ms. Karetak-Lindell's question. It is largely a coordinating role, although there are some very specific things that flow from the minister's responsibilities as northern affairs minister and from some services that we actually deliver as a department. Mr. Strahl has been asked to coordinate his colleagues who are working on arctic and northern issues, and I have been asked by the clerk to chair a deputy ministers committee to bring people together so that the efforts are working in harness.

Of course, things like the military facilities would come up through the national defence process. The issues around transportation and shipping through the arctic waters would be largely a Department of Transport thing.

There are a lot of players in arctic research, as you know: the National Research Council, Natural Resources Canada, and so on. The mapping initiative will largely be done, I guess, by people going out in ships and dropping sonar buoys in the water, doing the measurement and so on.

So very little of that will actually flow through this department's spending, but we do have a northern affairs group. Patrick Bourby is the assistant deputy minister, and we have a director general who spends most of her time chasing other departments and trying to keep people on to timelines and to get things to cabinet and Treasury Board, pursuing a strategy that was laid out in the Speech from the Throne.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

In terms of the budget itself, how many departmental staff would be allocated towards this coordination process? Is there any enhancement being provided, or does that come out of the A-base funding?

[Michael Wernick]

I could get back to you on the numbers. We haven't added bodies. We simply refocused the ones that are there now. I have a director general who does nothing but chase northern strategy coordination. So we added a bit of a focal point, but this is not about adding resources so much as focus.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Again focusing in the north, as I do have a major interest in this area, and I know it has been brought up already, the next question I would like to go into is the food mail program. It is something I have been lobbied on very diligently by a number of people across Canada.

I know there are many people in the north who rely on the food mail program in order to get fresh goods that many of us in the south take for granted.

Perhaps you could talk about some of the enhancements that are being made in terms of the budget towards this program.

[Michael Wernick]

If you've been at this committee for a while, you will have seen the food mail program in supplementary estimates every year. One of the quirks of the program is that its base funding is about half of what it needs, and we have simply had to add money by going to Treasury Board and then getting it approved by Parliament to keep up with the cost.

There are lots of questions on this, and it would be helpful, Mr. Chairman, to come back on food mail and give a more technical briefing on the program. I would be very happy to do that.

There are issues about the cost of fuel, the cost of the food, and the stocks that are going, and also the volume. It is literally how many kilograms have been moved through the program.

Its costs are in an upward trend. I think about five or six years ago we were doing about 11 million kilograms, and we are now up to about 16 million. There are some really tough policy questions about the points of entry, the role of Canada Post, who should be the carrier, what goods you should be subsidizing.

The pilot projects that were referred to suggest a much higher focus on specific kinds of food stocks. What about people who want to order food over the Internet from southern suppliers? Should they be in? Should they be out? There is not a lot of consensus on this in the north, so we are caught between consulting and driving forward.

We accept the responsibility we have to put some proposals in front of the minister that he can take to his colleagues. We are late on the commitment Minister Prentice made, but we hope to have the program renovated. The minister told you there is a role for such a program, and we're trying to make it cost- effective.