Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 17th, 2009

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

I have always heard that if I ever had to negotiate with aboriginal people—and I see you smiling—I had better do my homework because you are very good negotiators. It is hard to imagine asking someone who wants to develop your resources to assess your needs.

Have you considered hiring people who are knowledgeable about the resources that will be developed on your land, people who will work for you and represent you, instead of asking those who are negotiating with you to tell you what is good or bad for you? It might be a bit much to ask a government to give you the resources that will help the producers to own you. In that sense, I think you have the ability to negotiate, insofar as you know how the resources are exploited. Do you agree?

[Chief Ruth Massie]

First nations are good negotiators. We've been at it for over 30 years up here, but we also expect to negotiate in good faith. With respect to industry coming in to tell us about their business and extraction of resources, we know our lands. We know what's there already, and we hire expertise to help us when we need it. But if they want to extract our resources, we expect them to come to our communities and to sit down and talk to us. We need to have a common understanding, so that they know what we expect and we know what they expect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

That is all, unfortunately.

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

I have many other questions, but I will come back to them later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The next round. Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I think I'll adopt the Bagnell strategy: I'll ask all the questions first, and then you can respond to each one of them in turn.

Ms. Byram, you're really talking about relationships between provinces and territories, and incentive programs to maintain businesses within territories. We have those in the Northwest Territories; I guess maybe you don't have them to the same extent in the Yukon.

When it comes to Alaska, moving forward here, we're seeing that there's been a pretty remarkable change in the currency over the past four or five years. That's going to impact your ability to work in Alaska. Alaska has state provisions for infrastructure programs.

I'd like you to talk a little bit about that as well, because that is a national issue.

To Mr. Clarkson, we just went through an exercise where we changed the Navigable Waters Protection Act. What's your experience with those changes?

Finally, to Ms. Massie, in the Northwest Territories we've moved ahead...and great expectations have arisen around the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. Those may cause us to...or that expectation may not be met.

We have a $500 million fund from the federal government, the socio-economic fund, that will only come into place when the pipeline is actually permitted to build. The arrangement with the first nations in the Northwest Territories on the ownership of the pipeline will only accrue benefits if the pipeline goes ahead. There are many things here that are really out of the communities' hands. The focus on the pipeline means that, perhaps in many cases, those communities have not looked at other opportunities.

I'd like you to comment on that as well, because that's the situation right now in the Northwest Territories.

I'll turn it over to you guys now.

[Jennifer Byram]

With regard to your first comment, some jurisdictions do have things like the BIP. We have, in the Yukon, the BIP that applies to just local hire, not to local....

Well, I guess there is local manufacturing; it's just not local purchasing.

As well, a lot of the Alaska Highway construction was done by Public Works--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Jennifer, perhaps I'll stop you there.

You used the term “BIP”. Can you tell me what that is?

[Jennifer Byram]

Sorry. BIP is the business incentive program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

No worries; I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

Please carry on.

[Jennifer Byram]

The Northwest Territories and the Yukon both use the term BIP, but it's two different programs. Ours refers only to local hire and local manufacturing, whereas in the Northwest Territories it's also local purchasing.

In terms of Alaska and the currency, I'm not quite sure what you're asking me there.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

How are you going to compete in Alaska for infrastructure programs? Is that going to be possible? Or are Alaska companies going to be coming into the Yukon to compete?

[Jennifer Byram]

Well, we haven't ever seen Alaskans come in here--or not that I can remember, and I've grown up with the company.

The Shakwak money was United States federal money. They were allowed to come here, and they still didn't bid. So far, there hasn't been any incentive for them to come across, and we haven't seen any barriers for us to go over.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We'll have to move along if we're going to get this part done.

[Jennifer Byram]

Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

No, that's okay. Thanks, Ms. Byram.

Mr. Clarkson.

[Randy Clarkson]

I'm not that familiar with the recent changes to Transport Canada's Navigable Waters Protection Act, but the KPMA would like the same arrangement that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has with the placer inspectors. They're basically deputized to inspect on behalf of DFO.

That's what we would like Transport Canada to do. These inspectors have local knowledge, and they understand how placer mining works. That's basically what we're asking here.

My understanding is that there's a minimum eight-month wait list in both offices, Edmonton and Winnipeg, for Transport Canada even to review an application. Then there's quite a bit of back and forth before that gets going.

Currently I have three projects that have water licensing and all other permits in place. It's been several months since we've applied to Transport Canada and gotten any information. I understand that the City of Whitehorse has already completed some waterworks projects without authorization, just because of the tardiness of that office.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mrs. Massie.

[Chief Ruth Massie]

There are two proponents with this project, unlike the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, where you have just the one proponent. First nations are feeling caught in the middle, because if we go to industry--both of them, there are two competing companies--they want signed agreements to talk to the first nations. What we want is to learn about the industry and get the information so we can make appropriate decisions in the communities. They're not willing to contribute to us. This is a $30 billion proposed project, and they want access to our communities, to come through our communities, affects everybody's lifestyle, and our communities want to make sure that if there are opportunities, we can capitalize on them, but also minimize the impacts. This is going to be huge.

We're hearing from other jurisdictions in Canada about the influx of people where pipelines are built. It really scares a community when you hear that 7,000 people are coming, and only 200 people live in the community. It's very fearful for them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, that's great, but we'll have to end it there.

Now we'll go to Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses here today.

There are two people at the table I'd like to question, but I may just deal with one and perhaps revisit it in the second round.

Mrs. Massie, you spoke about the need to develop some capacity with respect to this process. I wonder if you might take the opportunity to talk a little bit more specifically about the kind of person you would be looking for, for each community. The reason I ask is that before I was elected, I acted as a lawyer exclusively for first nations communities, and in a consultative capacity in other sectors. Nonetheless, I understand that can be problematic sometimes as well, whether it's a consultant who may have interests that perhaps are in conflict, or doesn't really bring much capacity to the community but simply does the work that's asked of him. There isn't much residual benefit for community members.

My questions are specific in these regards. What kinds of specific technical expertise would this person you have in mind require? Is there the potential for a local person or persons to receive the kind of training you think they might require to advocate and consult effectively for your communities? Has the coalition visited that at any great length? Perhaps you could take a couple of minutes to flesh that out for me.

[Chief Ruth Massie]

The coalition originally came together to learn all about the industry and to start communicating that to all the community members. In each community we have chief in council, but we also have community members outside the government structures. We were looking at a community liaison officer who would communicate between chief in council, community members, key stakeholders who live in the community, and converse with industry, with other governments, and with other first nations. Who's doing what, and what are the expectations of this industry coming into the community? How can they capitalize on employment opportunities, training opportunities, for people who live in the communities? You have a $30 billion project going by your doorstep, so surely somebody can get some employment, or training, or spin-off businesses, economic opportunities of some sort.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

You're talking about communication and information management, which is a subset of expertise. Do you feel as if you have the people in your communities to be able to respond and deal with that information?

[Chief Ruth Massie]

We do feel we have somebody ready, a key member, in each community. We've been requesting support for the communities for this, and this is why we approached the Government of Canada to provide some financial resources. We have land claims, but the implementation of our land claims is inadequately funded at present, so to add that on to somebody else right now--

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

The private interests in this pipeline, have they come forward with any offer of resources to help you develop that liaison person? I would think they would have an interest in that from a public relations perspective.