Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 21st, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

We'll turn now to Ms. Bennett for the next five minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

I'd like to continue with that.

Maybe the two of you could describe how this should work. Everybody wants safe drinking water, as you've said. What would it look like if this was developed in proper consultation with first nations? How would you ensure safe drinking water in helping you develop your own laws and enabling the sharing of best practices with organizations like yours?

I think where we're coming from, this lack of trust on all of this, is shoving down legislation when, no matter what anybody says, the capacity is not there. Boasting about how much is being spent when it seems that the money is being cut and you're not getting what you need to do the training and build the infrastructure that you require, and also not even dealing honestly with the assessment that had so many water systems at moderate or high risk.... At the same time there are a whole bunch of people still getting it delivered who don't have boil water advisories because the water's still being delivered. This is a crisis, I think, that appalls all Canadians.

What we're trying to say, and what we tried to say to the minister, is that this legislation is not going to fix the crisis unless Canada accepts its fiduciary responsibility to fix this with a real plan. I mean money, funding it properly, and developing the regulations in proper consultation.

[Regena Crowchild]

We suggested that what we should be addressing is the implementation of treaty. Now when you do the implementation of treaty—the Prime Minister indicated last year and again in January that he would have serious discussions on treaty. That has yet to happen as well. We get all these empty promises. We want a nation-to-nation discussion with respect to water, our lands, our jurisdiction over all matters. We need to set up a proper relationship. When the Prime Minister does fulfill his commitment, then our chiefs will be ready to address all these issues and then they will set out a process to address the water, the fiduciary obligations, and the fiscal responsibilities.

The United Nations declaration, which was passed by the United Nations General Assembly, and which Canada and the Prime Minister later endorsed, talks about our rights as peoples, as well as Canada, the state, providing the mechanisms and financial resources to assist us to do this work. Right now, as you can see, most of our reserves don't have the necessary capacity because we don't have the money. Each year the Department of Indian Affairs is allocating less and less to each tribe, so where does that put us?

Now they are enacting this legislation and they're not responsible for anything, any negligence or anything else. If anybody gets sued, they're indemnified and guess who's responsible? We are.

Why is the federal government feeding us to the dogs? Why is it setting us up when we have very limited...and when Canada has not been fulfilling its responsibility towards our people? You must remember we were the first peoples here on this territory. If it weren't for Treaty Nos. 6, 7, and 8, there would be no such thing as the Province of Alberta. We've got to put that into perspective and honour the obligations under treaty and recognize our inherent and aboriginal rights. Thank you.

It's very frustrating. Canadians think they can legislate over us, dictate to us as to what we should do, not giving any care about the supreme laws of this land, interpreting them according to their own thinking. Let's sit down and discuss this and clarify treaty, set out our relationship according to treaty, and work things out so everybody can be safe and healthy, and enjoy the relationship we have with the non-indigenous peoples on our territories. We agreed to live side by side without interference, and yet Canada has interfered in our lives since prior to the treaties—the Indian Act first and now all these other pieces of legislation. It's frustrating.

Mr. Chairman, just for your information, there's one copy with signatures at the bottom. There are several more from our nations that will be following because when we do things to represent the nations, we consult with them and they support us. We just missed many sheets of this. They'll be coming.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Councillor.

We'll turn to Mr. Seeback for the next five minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I always find it interesting when I hear members talk about something needing to be done. When the previous government was elected in 1993 it took them until 2003 to actually look into an assessment of water and waste water, and then to somehow suggest that we're not moving too quickly...but I digress.

Vaughn, one of the things that you were talking about and seemed very focused on is incorporation by reference to provincial standards. You seem quite concerned about that, and I can understand those concerns. You gave a list of things, and if those were to be adopted, what the costs and the difficulties associated with that would be.

I'm sure you're aware that subclause 5(3) actually says, “Regulations made under section 4 may incorporate by reference laws of a province, as amended from time to time...”. The legislation actually doesn't say “shall” or “will”; it says “may”. That's a key distinction, because it's not actually saying that this is what's going to happen. The other thing that's important is that the preamble of the legislation states:

And whereas the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Minister of Health have committed to working with First Nations to develop proposals for regulations to be made under this Act;

It appears to me that the concerns you're raising are very clearly set out in the legislation, both in the preamble, which says there will be a very good discussion on these regulations, and in the proposed subsection, which uses “may”.

Do you not agree that in terms of these concerns you have, there will be adequate time for all of them to be raised in the process going forward?

[Vaughn Paul]

Not necessarily. If the legislation is passed, from our perspective that will open up a whole new jurisdictional labyrinth that nobody knows—you don't know; we don't know. I don't have a lot of faith that it's going to come out in favour of first nations.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

One of the things the expert panel talked about, and I know they also talk about funding, was that a critical thing to do is the creation of a new federal statute establishing single water standards across first nations communities. As I look at it, it's an enabling statute. It says that we're going to pass legislation that says we can develop regulations—so there will be uniform regulations—but after consultation with first nations.

To me it's the first step. Maybe you and I are going to disagree, but you're suggesting that the first step is resources and then to figure out regulations. Quite frankly, I think that's backwards. When you look at it, if you don't know what the regulations are, how can you resource properly? So what you do, and this is what I think we are doing, is you look at developing regulations in consultation with first nations. Once we determine what those regulations are, we'll have an idea of what the costs are going to be, because organizations such as yours are going to say if you put in place regulation a, b, c, and d, this is what the cost is going to be, and there will need to be funding to implement that.

To me that seems to be the more sensible approach to developing this.

[Vaughn Paul]

I think you can do both. I think you can do them simultaneously. I think you can invest in bringing those community systems up to a standard that's acceptable to whatever jurisdiction you want to follow, developed in meaningful consultation with first nations in each respective region, or if it's a uniform regulation, that's fine too. But I don't think it's fair to be creating legislation without knowing what the end results are going to be.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

The legislation doesn't create anything. It just says we're now enabled to go forward and pass regulations.

[Vaughn Paul]

What's the big rush of passing the legislation then?

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Then we can move forward and get the consultation on the regulations, because we actually have to do something.

[Vaughn Paul]

You've had all these years to consult.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

We don't want to be like the previous government that did nothing. We actually want to move forward with this.

Consultation takes time. There was extensive consultation. There has been a lot of funding implemented already. You talk about funding, and there's been about $3 billion, when you take both A-base funding and the targeted funding, and plan-of-action funding on water and waste water. Since 2006-07 there's been almost $3 billion invested in that. There certainly has been money invested.

[Vaughn Paul]

Yes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

I think we need to move to regulation in consultation with first nations and then figure out what other additional funding there needs to be.

[Vaughn Paul]

We won't agree on much.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Councillor Crowchild and Mr. Paul, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your testimony.

Mr. Paul, if you wanted to forward your documentation, we'd make sure it was circulated to committee members.

[Vaughn Paul]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Colleagues, I have one quick piece of business that needs to be undertaken and that's a consideration of the budget for this study. I think you have a copy of it. If there are any questions with regard to that, I'll entertain them; otherwise we'll move to a vote on it.

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I note we have a fairly significant request specifically for witnesses. Was any thought given, especially in the case of western witnesses, to utilizing the services of a video conference to save money for the committee?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Every effort; as this committee is known to do, we make that available to every witness. This budget is put together with the assumption that everyone chooses to come. However, there is always the option.... We have witnesses who have already indicated that they'll testify by video conference.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Of the 11 witnesses from Vancouver, are any of them similar to other organizations. Is there a means to find savings? No?

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you.

We'll now move to a vote on the budget.

(Motion agreed to)

Colleagues, I will meet with several of you in the next number of hours or days with regard to future witnesses. I know several of you need to get to another committee meeting, so we'll adjourn.

The meeting is adjourned.