Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Bonjour.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's nice to be here with you. I would like to thank your clerk for making the arrangements so easy for me.
I hope to make a few opening remarks, because I understand that everyone has had access to this document, which is the report I prepared. I was hoping there would be somebody here from Indian and Northern Affairs to provide copies in case you didn't have them, but I see most people have it in any event. I haven't seen my colleagues from INAC show up, so I'm not sure if they're coming.
I thought for ten minutes or so I would outline the report, and then, as I understand it, the purpose is for you to ask questions about the report, which you probably had a good chance to review in any event. The outline would consist of a little discussion about the process and the mandate I conducted in preparing the report, some of the findings I made in the course of the time I was doing the report, some of the recommendations, and a brief comment about what I hope are the themes that arise out of this report from your reading of it.
First of all, in terms of the process, I was appointed a ministerial representative by Minister Strahl in November 2007, and the basic objective was to hold discussions with all the stakeholders in the three territories to see if recommendations could be made that would improve the regulatory environment. It was left fairly vague in terms of the specifics of the assignment itself, because a lot of initiatives are going on in the north, as I'm sure you are aware, and I don't think the minister wanted to tie me down to one area.
It was part of what is referred to in the federal government as a northern regulatory improvement initiative, and this was just one component of that. Ongoing improvements were being made at the time I did my report and are still being made, and this was to be part of that initiative.
I held meetings in about a dozen places in the north and in other parts of Canada with over 100 groups or individuals. Sometimes it was one person. Mr. Bevington and I met at one point, and at other times we met with groups of people, or I met with groups of people pretty well all the time on my own, although I have to say I was very well supported by INAC, who provided me with logistical support and any other support I needed. They did not try to influence in any way the shaping of the report or the recommendations, but they were a great support to me.
The groups I met with were local communities; aboriginal groups; some signatories to the land claim agreements; and all three of the territorial governments, including premiers from two of the territories. I had a lot of involvement with the federal government and the various departments, because as I'm sure you know, there's regulatory overlap in a lot of areas from the federal government's point of view, and of course I spent a lot of time with the various regulatory bodies. I'll go through that in a little more detail in a minute, but that gave me a good perception or good perspective on what was happening north of 60.
Initially, and it continued to be the mandate, I was to look at all three territories. But it became pretty clear to me at the outset that this was a pretty ambitious project and that perhaps it should be limited to where I thought the most serious issues were, and in my view, that was the Mackenzie Valley south of the Inuvialuit area. So while I did spend some time in Yukon and Nunavut, most of my time was spent in the Northwest Territories.
After all the meetings were held and I got some ideas together, we held a round table of all the stakeholders who were prepared to come. We had a very big room, larger than this, full of people from all the different stakeholder groups that I talked about from the three different areas, including industry--that I should have mentioned, by the way--which was one of the participants. We had two days of intensive discussion, where we bounced some ideas around about what some of the recommendations might be. At this stage I would confirm that most of the ideas that are in the report are not necessarily ideas of my own but ideas that came out of that round table and earlier reports that had been commissioned.
Moving on to the findings, the findings of course were that there could be improvements made, as there can be in any regulatory system, I suspect, in any place in the free world. What I tried to do, though, was to put some science behind the review. I tried to compare what was going on in the territories with what one might consider to be a model regulatory system. And I outlined 11 criteria that I think should be looked at if you are looking at a regulatory body for the first time and trying to set it up.
And then based on that analysis, I came up with some recommendations as to what should and shouldn't be repaired in the territories. There were 22 recommendations of a specific nature, and they apply right across the three territories. Again I have to say that none of those are rocket science and none of those are dramatically new.
One thing I did in my report was outline all of the previous reports that have been conducted in the north, and the recommendations that were made and the status of the implementation of those recommendations, some of which have been implemented and some of which have sat on the shelf some place. I regenerated all of those reports and, from those, came up with another 22 recommendations, which, as I say, are repetitive to some extent of what had happened in the past, but they are still good recommendations that still need to be implemented. And we can talk about the individual ones in a minute. Most of them, again, refer to the Mackenzie Valley, although they refer to all three territories in the broad sense.
The major recommendations I made were with respect to restructuring in the Mackenzie Valley area. And this is the one that has probably gathered the most interest and attention from parties that are in the north or elsewhere and have commented on it, some favourably and some not favourably in terms of what the recommendations were. It was and still is my judgment that at the moment the regulatory systems, at least in the Mackenzie Valley, fail to deliver on two specific grounds. One is that the system is far too complicated, and second, there is not the capacity in the various boards that exist in the north to perform the duties that you would expect from a regulatory body.
I should outline at this stage that my count—and there were different counts of how many regulatory bodies exist in the north—as well as I could do it, was 17 regulatory bodies in the Mackenzie Valley, all dealing with resource development. As I say, that adds a huge amount of complexity and in many ways under-delivers from a capacity point of view because of the numbers of them.
So my recommendations were that some of those boards be merged and that there should end up being one land and water board and one environmental board in, for instance, the Mackenzie Valley. One would say that takes away from the northern influence because the land claim agreements were all signed on the basis of local involvement and co-management of the resources. My suggestion is that it doesn't have to take away, because the influence can be brought to bear at an earlier point in the process, and that's at the land use planning stage. So a key or a fundamental component of the recommendation that we merge the boards would be that the land use plans have to be completed. They are not completed in most of the area of the north at the moment, and I think that's where the local influence, which is very important and is key, really, to the development of any community, has to be brought to bear.
The second component of that was that once this board that I had recommended be restructured is up and running, it should become the final decision-maker and it should not have to send recommendations here to Ottawa for the minister to make final decisions on. In other words, if we're going to set up a regulatory body that we have some confidence in, set it up and let it operate with that amount of confidence and make it the final decision-maker.
Of course, that board would consist of appointments by the federal government, but with the influence of the local government and the Northwest Territories government. That could change over time to be a NWT appointment process, or something of that nature.
Those are the recommendations I made. If one had sat in on the round table in Yellowknife in March 2008, one could have predicted those recommendations, because the discussion circled around all of those recommendations, including restructuring.
My final comment is on the themes that I hope come out of this report. The first one is that by no means is this report about resource development. It is not up to me to make a decision or recommendation on whether or not there is resource development in the north. That's to be made by the people who live in the north and are responsible for the northern communities. So this is not about resource development.
On what it is about, if a decision is made by those who are responsible--governments and local communities--to allow resource development, how can that resource development be done in an orderly and responsible way and in the public interest? That's where my recommendations come in on the regulatory bodies. That has been my role in life for a long time. I've been with regulators for a long time, and I've always said I am ambivalent as to whether or not development takes place. But if it's going to take place, let's ensure it takes place in a responsible way. So it's not about resource development; it's about ensuring that if there is resource development, it takes place responsibly.
The second theme that I hope comes through clearly is that local input is absolutely key to any development in the north. This has been clear from the land claim agreements that have been signed, which I fully support. The only difference I take with the current structure versus the way I suggest it should be is that the more appropriate time for that local input and influence to take place is at the land use planning stage, and not at the regulatory stage. At the land use planning stage you can carve off entire areas and say there should be no development for a variety of reasons, or there should be development in this area. But at that stage the regulatory system should kick in and make decisions as to whether or not the resource can be developed in an orderly and responsible way and in the public interest, taking into account very serious professional objectives relating to conservation, safety, engineering components, environmental aspects, and the like. But at that stage it's a technical decision and not a policy decision, as it is at the land use planning stage.
With those opening remarks, I'm open to try to respond to any questions members may have.
