Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Neil McCrank]

Thank you, Mr. Lemay, and thank you for the compliment that you made to me.

The answer to your question is yes, it should be the final decision-maker as it relates to permitting of resource development. I've never contemplated that it would be in any way the arbitrator of land claim disputes that arise out of the land claim agreements. Perhaps one could set up a board that would do both functions, but I actually believe that the regulatory function I was talking about was just the permitting of the resource development, and not that component.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I respect your opinion a great deal. However, if I understand correctly, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs would continue to be responsible for implanting and ensuring compliance with the treaties.

[Neil McCrank]

With respect to other issues, other than permitting of resource development, yes, I would think that INAC would still be responsible for the decision-making until devolution actually occurs in the NWT.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

It would be difficult. Your opinion is probably valid for everything that is going on in the Mackenzie Valley, but could this also apply to the Yukon and Nunavut?

[Neil McCrank]

In the Yukon at the moment, the permitting is actually finalized at the territorial level. In Nunavut it is not yet. There, as in the Mackenzie Valley, recommendations for development have to be made to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. So depending on which jurisdiction and where devolution is at, that would be the answer to the question.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Who currently plays the role that you want to see transferred to the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board?

[Neil McCrank]

At the end of the day, these recommendations are made by the Mackenzie Valley.... It's not all issues, but for instance, on class A water licences it's the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board that makes the decisions. Whether it be the regional boards or the central board, they make a recommendation to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and that decision is made here in Ottawa.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

You would like these decisions to be made in the place where they will apply, that is, in the north.

[Neil McCrank]

I suggest that once the body has been structured in a way that works and there is some maturity associated with the board, the final decision would be made at the board level. There are always court challenges that can be made in any board in any part of the world, but that decision is final and it does not come to Ottawa for that decision to be made.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lemay.

Mr. Payne, you have five minutes.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank Mr. McCrank for coming. He's a fellow Albertan, as was noted, so I'm pleased to have one of my folks here with me today.

Mr. McCrank, in terms of some of your recommendations here, your number 7, which notes that the federal government should ensure that each regulatory body has a structured plan for orientation, training, continued education for each member who's appointed, could you describe the average level of these three important capacity-building initiatives in existing regulatory bodies?

[Neil McCrank]

Thank you, Mr. Payne. It's good to be here with you from Alberta.

Actually, I reread this last night on the way down, and I think I would have reworded this a little better if I'd had a little more time. Having said that, let me just talk about those three areas that I talk about.

I don't think the NWT is much different from any other part of this country: people are appointed to boards, they're told to make it work, and they don't really get any guidance from anybody.

I chaired a committee in Alberta a couple of years ago on the agencies, boards, and commissions that come out of the Alberta government. When we started the process, I was told we were to look at 125. When we finished, we found out there were 250. Obviously, governments don't necessarily keep track of their agencies, boards, and commissions as well as they should, and in keeping with that, training and orientation and continuing education are often absent. So the NWT is no different.

Having said that, I think an ideal system would be that when people take on these roles, they.... The NEB is a good example of people who are actually, I think, brought to Ottawa for some course that's put on for them. They're continuously upgraded, and they're allowed to go to meetings where they can get upgraded. I don't think that's necessarily occurring in the NWT, or in most boards in Canada. It should be. It's very important that we allow them to keep up with current technology and current thinking in those areas.

I hope that answers your question, sir.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay.

In looking at the different boards, did you see any differences in anything in terms of any training or capacity that each of these boards would have had?

[Neil McCrank]

I don't want to be unkind to any of them, but frankly, I don't think there was much with respect to any of those areas. There was very little orientation. I did meet with some of the new members of some of the boards, and there didn't seem to be any real effort made.

Part of it was funding. Part of it was just that new boards take a little while to develop the process of engaging. The NEB, which has years of experience, now knows how to do it. I think it just takes time.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

You did touch a bit on some of the ideas that you thought of in terms of having those individuals come to Ottawa and take some training. Are there any other best practices that you would suggest as well as that?

[Neil McCrank]

One of the new things they are doing at the moment--it started just before I started my review--is the board forum, which is developing a best practices approach for all the boards in the NWT and trying to share those. That was new on the scene, and that should be continued and furthered and supported by all government levels.

I think there's just a variety of efforts that can be made to make sure that the boards are capable and have the capacity to do the job, including those areas I've talked about.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

In terms of the boards and the number of boards and the future boards that might be there, the NWT certainly has a small population. What are your thoughts in terms of how they'll be able to recruit individuals, particularly the skilled individuals who would be required for these boards?

[Neil McCrank]

I think that's one of the key problems. It's one of the reasons I think the number of boards should be limited, in that the ability to appoint people who would have the interest and the energy to do the job we're talking about is limited with the number of people who exist in the Northwest Territories.

I don't want to be critical--I saw people really trying to do their jobs as well as they could--but, you know, there's a limit to what you can expect from a small community of people. I hope I made my point clear there, without going further.

The other side of the coin is that we're expecting an awful lot from these small communities in terms of leadership and expertise that we perhaps spread too thinly. If we take out of those communities all of the local leaders and put them on boards of this nature, which are supposed to be neutral in terms of development, who's actually going to represent the community in its thinking about development in an area?

That, I think, is one of the problems, and that's why, if we have one board, we could provide money--in fact, intervenor funding is not something I talked about in this document, but it was talked about at the forum--to these communities, to these people who are not appointed to these boards but are still leaders in the community, who can provide the input that we need in local communities as to whether or not there should be development in an area.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

That will do it, then, Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.

Just before we go to Mr. Bevington, Mr. McCrank, I'll ask for one point of clarification. You said you didn't see a lot of effort put into training. I presume that meant training up to the organization, in terms of getting its board members up to date. You said afterwards that there was, in fact, a lot of genuine interest on the part of individual land and water board members, but that this was somehow a failure of the organization from lack of effort. Would that be correct?

[Neil McCrank]

Chairman, there were many complaints about the fact that each of these organizations was underfunded. Whether that was accurate, I don't know, but because of that view, one of the areas that immediately suffers when there's an underfunding issue is the training and the orientation of people.

The point I was trying to make is that the individuals were very genuine in their efforts to try to do the job they were required to do—very genuine in that respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Thank you for that.

Now we'll go to Mr. Bevington for five minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You've talked a lot about the importance of qualifications. My experience with these boards over the years since their inception is that there have been many people with good experience on them. In the beginning, many people on those boards were highly skilled. Those people, if they took a strong attitude on the boards, weren't reappointed. We see that over and over again. These appointments were put forward by land claims groups or by the Government of the Northwest Territories and were rejected by the federal government. I can go through a list of names if you want, but I think it's more important to understand that this process has been going on.

We get people on these boards—good people, people with Master's degrees, chairs of one of our renewable resource or college boards—and then they get taken off. Right now, the attitude towards the boards is that if you're not politically tied and don't keep your mouth shut, you're not going to stay on the boards.

My experience on the boards, when we stood up against the cooperation plan, was that every single member on that Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board who stood up against the cooperation plan on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, because we thought it wouldn't work, was removed from that board and replaced with someone else, whether it was Gordon Ray, Frank Pope, me. This was a list of people—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It might be better to refer to the--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

This is a very important recommendation that has been made. There's nothing wrong with the appointments.