Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2018

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Chair, I would like to move the following motion: that ministry professionals come to the committee with the AG, and that the meeting on Wednesday be televised.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right, that's a valid motion.

MP Harvey, go ahead.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Madam Chair, I move that the debate on this be now adjourned.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right, sorry about that disruption. We had a little bit of committee business.

Madeleine Redfern, mayor of Iqaluit, welcome. We have you up first, I believe.

[Madeleine Redfern, Mayor, City of Iqaluit]

Thank you so much to the standing committee for the invitation to come before you.

I just want to say, for the record, that I'm also the president of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities and the vice-chair of the northern forum for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, as well as a board member of the same organization.

I'm very pleased to come before you to speak about the important issue of infrastructure in our north. I'm sure this committee has heard and knows quite well that there is a deficit of infrastructure in our northern region, especially in Nunavut. There hasn't really ever been a comprehensive northern infrastructure strategy in our north until recently.

There's now one for Nunavut on housing and homelessness, but I'd like to state that, while these regional strategies were done by our territorial government, they did not effectively include the municipalities in the development of that process, even though at that point in time the minister responsible had made the commitment to reach out to our municipalities to provide much-needed data for their inclusion. As well, the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, unfortunately, was not reached out to and did not participate, either.

Nonetheless, those reports, interestingly enough, do include recommendations that the municipalities, and the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, be responsible for implementing some of those recommendations. Ideally, that's not the way that we develop strategies.

There is no northern energy strategy and no northern telecommunications strategy. While recently northern transportation corridors were announced, they do not include the eastern Arctic.

Most municipalities, of course, are very pleased with the fact that the federal government has committed billions of dollars to infrastructure for this country. Nunavut did sign our integrated bilateral agreement. It provides our region with $566 million over a period of approximately 10 years. That sounds like a good amount of money, but $566 million is nowhere near what we require.

The integrated bilateral agreement contains the words “fair balance”, which, of course, we tend to interpret at the municipal level as fair share and fair say, we hope, especially as it relates to municipal infrastructure.

You are probably also aware that Canadian municipalities receive approximately 9¢ to 10¢ of the Canadian taxpayer dollar. In the southern portions of Canada, 60% of public infrastructure is in the cities. In Nunavut, this is closer to 100%, because there are no roads, no rail and no transmission lines; therefore, the infrastructure is in our communities.

Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, is the only community that receives property taxes, whereas the other 24 communities are 100% dependent on the territorial government for their O and M, as well as their capital projects. Iqaluit has approximately 8,000 residents and 1,000 non-residents, who are not residing or considered residents in our community but are nonetheless there. That's primarily because we have the hospital and all the patients coming from the region for medical travel; we have four correctional institutions; the only courthouse; the RCMP headquarters; the largest of the Nunavut Arctic College campuses, which is about to expand almost 100%; the legislative assembly; the majority of Government of Nunavut jobs; and, even with decentralization, we also have the majority of the federal jobs. Yet we have only 2,000 ratepayers. That is not very many to help the municipality with capital projects to build much-needed infrastructure.

We have a budget of approximately $45 million a year, with 85% coming from property taxes and user fees. Therefore, the Government of Nunavut provides only about 15% grants-in-lieu.

We're very appreciative of the gas tax funding we receive. It's around $12 million over a period of five years. It is the most flexible. They are the easiest infrastructure dollars we have. The eligibility criteria have recently expanded. We also receive a nominal amount of capital block funding from our territorial government.

We use these funds for our infrastructure projects. Recently, we used them for upgrading our waste-water treatment plant. We received approximately $19 million from the federal government, out of a $26-million project. We are receiving $26 million to close down our dump and open up new sorting and recycling and a new landfill. That is approximately a $35-million project.

When we had Minister Sohi visit in May 2017, when he was the minister responsible for community infrastructure, we were just opening up our new airport—a gorgeous facility that cost the territorial government about $300 million. The road to and from that airport was in horrendous condition. Instead of meeting with the minister in my office, I suggested that we do a town tour. In the month of May, I can tell you that the road was in one of the worst conditions ever, so the minister got to experience first-hand how desperately we needed to pave that road, which would have cost only 1% of that $300 million for the airport.

Part of the problem with a lot of these infrastructure projects that are done by our territorial government, even when they're funded with federal funds, is that a requirement to do a municipal infrastructure assessment—let alone a municipal service assessment—of those projects is not included at this point in time. While we are really appreciative that we're getting a deep-sea port, again, the road to and from the port is inadequate; it's unsafe.

The minister said we can put in a funding application. Ideally, it should be part of that whole infrastructure assessment. It means that the road had to wait. I don't like to use political embarrassment as a tool. It shouldn't be the way we convince our federal or territorial politicians to help.

Similarly, when Minister Garneau came to Iqaluit, as part of the territorial-federal government with that deep-sea port, we ensured that every visiting minister went to the site. None of them had realized that it was next to our dump. One rationale for the new port would be that when tourists come off the cruise ships and enter into our beautiful capital, the first sight they see is not a big pile of waste and garbage. I think that probably helped our business case in getting the funding we needed to ensure that the dump is closed and capped and doesn't look like a dump by the time the deep-sea port opens in 2020.

We also received about $4 million for our aquatic centre. That is about 10% of what the aquatic centre cost us, unfortunately. At that time, we weren't able to get more assistance from the federal government. They hadn't yet rolled out the big billions of dollars for infrastructure, and our territorial government was only able to help out with approximately $100,000 of gym equipment. The taxpayers and user fees are paying for that.

I would be remiss if I didn't speak to the fact that climate change is absolutely happening. One of the issues for us is that our pipes are breaking. We've been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair every pipe, and I can tell you that it is a temporary fix. It is nowhere near what is needed, which would be millions of dollars.

Those are my initial comments, but I'm definitely open to lots of questions, I hope.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I am confident you're going to get some.

Moving on to Elder George Kemp from Berens River, a community recently connected by an all-weather road. Welcome, by video conference, to our committee.

You have up to 10 minutes to present.

[George Kemp, Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is George Kemp. I'm a former chief from Berens River, 2008-14. During my tenure as chief, I was successful in negotiating an all-weather road into Berens River from the south. I don't know if you guys all got the handout I sent by email, but there's a map there that shows Berens River.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

George, we have a technical problem. The map you sent is not translated into French so we are unable to distribute it unless we have consensus from all committee members, so that's up to the committee.

Is everyone okay with that? Okay.

Please go on. I'm sorry to interrupt.

[George Kemp]

On the sheet that I sent in today, I put all the points. My presentation is on paper, what I'm going to speak about today.

In terms of Manitoba, the highest population of isolated communities is in our northeast region of Manitoba, which you see in the corner of the map here: St. Theresa Point, Garden Hill, Wasagamack, Red Sucker Lake, Manto Sipi, Bunibonibee, Oxford House, and the road leading out to Cross Lake. If you look at the sheet, the population of that area is listed there for all reserves: St. Theresa Point, 4,300; Garden Hill First Nation, 4,800; and the rest of them are listed there.

My point here today is to make the case for connecting the all-weather road from Berens River up to St. Theresa Point as the highest infrastructure need in our area. I present that proposal here today on behalf of Chief Hartley Everett of Berens River and Chief David McDougall of St. Theresa Point. My chief, Hartley Everett, and the chief from St. Theresa Point have a great desire for presenting today as a proposal the red line that you see there going from Berens River up to St. Theresa Point.

Today, 20,000 or 30,000 people live in this isolated corner of Manitoba. It's the highest concentration of first nation communities living in isolation in the 21st century. This population represents the future hub in northern Manitoba. Thompson, Manitoba was the hub at one point, but the mine is shutting down in 2020. The 20,000 people living here are shut off from the outside world.

In my paper, I have a statement from when I was chief. What I say is that isolation kills. By that I mean that the high suicide rates we see in our northern isolated reserves are a result of isolation, poverty, and no hope for the future.

In Berens River, we announced the road project in 2009 and we finished hooking up the road in 2017, and we haven't had a suicide, because the youth of our community were very excited that a road was coming.

The same kind of situation exists here. We're asking the committee to place a high priority on this area. This area is the riding in Canada with the highest child poverty rates. This area has the highest child and family services apprehensions.

Everything hooks back to isolation and poverty. That's what we're looking at here. We're asking you to consider this proposal for a $400-million road construction project under a hybrid P3 model to construct this piece of road from Berens River to St. Theresa Point. It's 270 kilometres of road.

We're also asking for a connection into Poplar River First Nation. On the map, it's identified as P4. That's 95 kilometres. We're asking for $140 million for that project.

We have the experience in terms of building the road into Berens River. Both communities have the infrastructure and the capacity for rock blasting, drilling and hauling all the rock to build it. The terrain and the topography are no different in Hollow Water First Nation up to Berens River and to Poplar River, and to St. Theresa Point.

We're looking at setting this up as a project that can be financed through a P3 model and getting the communities involved in shaping the project and so forth. We would like to ask the committee to support us in terms of all the points you see on our map here, and in terms of the bulletin that we've presented here.

We want to say to the people who don't live in isolation today that isolation is worse today than it was 50 years ago in terms of the social impact on our people, because everybody has Internet and everybody has Wi-Fi. Our youth face it in these communities and they feel shut out from the world because they can't access anything. Once you have a highway in place, you can get access to the south and access to hope, hope for a better future. That's what the youth are looking for. In our communities, over 45% of the population is under 45 years of age.

I can't stress enough that, yes, this is a road, but it's also a way out, a way out of a present situation that is intolerable for the people living in northeast Manitoba. This concentrated population will be accessed tremendously by this one route, and you can see the route is directly going south.

You can see a hookup of roads to the north of that, which are basically winter roads. That is to go through Thompson and then down Highway 6. Well, it's 16 hours to go that way right now to Winnipeg, versus going south to Berens River, which is eight hours. The quickest route into Berens River is as you see it, between St. Theresa Point and Berens River, to access south, because the road is already at Berens River.

The road impacts everything in these communities. We've seen positive change in our community, in Berens River, since we've had the road in there. As I said, we have no more suicide problems as we had before, touch wood. Thank God for that. However, we also want to stress that the change our people have seen in getting the road has been tremendous. It has been night and day. The people are happy. They're happy that they have a road now.

The people in Poplar River want a road. They want a road bad, because we're next-door neighbours and they see the benefits of the road to Berens River.

Just on Friday, the provincial government here announced that they're cutting $2 million from the airport maintenance budgets in all northern communities. There were a chief and council trying to fly into Tadoule Lake, to Barren Lands First Nation. They got there and they had to turn back. They couldn't land because the pilot said there was too much snow on the runway. They turned back and ended up back in Thompson.

We've experienced as first nations in this country that every time we have a PC government in place, we go down to the bottom of the totem pole. We see this as an opportunity for the Liberal government to help our region.

We've put down on our paper here that the cheapest time to build this road is now, with cheap interest rates, with the cheap gas rates, and so forth. If you wait until 30 years from now, the cost of this road will be just tremendous. We're looking at this as an opportunity in time, an opportunity in history for the Liberal government to step in and end this isolation here, because we know and we see as first nation people what goes on in this province when we have a PC government sitting in the provincial legislature. We get nowhere. All we do is face cutbacks.

Right now, there's tremendous concern in the north over cutbacks to airport maintenance. The sale of six airports is up in the air right now in terms of privatization.

These are services that our people depend on. The government is in place to provide services to our people, not to privatize things in the north. That does not make sense in remote communities.

Therefore, we ask you to consider the road proposal as one of the most important things you can do to have an impact on all aspects of our people's lives in this region of Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you so much for your presentation.

We're now going to start the question period from members of Parliament with MP Yves Robillard.

[Yves Robillard]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their wonderful presentations.

I'll be asking my questions in French.

I was in Nunavut 30 years ago, in 1986 and 1988. I taught for two years in Kuujjuaq and Akulivik, so I know a bit about the subject matter.

My questions are for the mayor of Iqaluit.

According to the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, it is more difficult to build and maintain northern infrastructure because of the environment, the short construction season and other such factors.

How will you adapt to those conditions when the deep-sea port is eventually built in Iqaluit? What could the federal government do to help you on that front?

[Madeleine Redfern]

Thank you to the member for the question.

The deep-sea port in Iqaluit will effectively help reduce the number of days to unload the cargo from the number of ships that we get from early July to approximately the middle or the end of October. It's not a year-round deep-sea port. Quite a number of our territorial or federal politicians did not realize that. We're appreciative of that. It should save the shipping companies approximately $75,000 a day that they spend when it takes longer to unload. Ideally, we could have, and probably should have, looked at a year-round deep-sea port, which would have required a road. It would have been transformative for not only Iqaluit but the entire region.

Nuuk, which is our sister community in Greenland, has a year-round port. They're able to bring in construction materials, office equipment and goods, and of course food, including perishable food year-round. Then it could have been flown to the smaller communities in our region after that. We're appreciative because it's better than not having the deep-sea port that's going to be coming, but I would like to see that we move away from the smaller investments to the more transformative ones that would make a difference, not just for shortening the days for the unloading of the ships, but actually something that would transform our infrastructure, our services and cost of living for decades and centuries, like what we see in other Arctic nations.

Thank you.

[Yves Robillard]

Transportation, energy and telecommunications are three types of infrastructure that are particularly important in the north, so these kinds of infrastructure investments could stimulate economic development.

Iqaluit has limited funding, so how should the federal government prioritize projects to support?

[Madeleine Redfern]

Thank you.

It's really important that we get all the right people into the same room and talk about the short-term, the medium-term and the long-term investment that's required in our infrastructure.

The problem I've seen, including the work I did with the Qikiqtani Truth Commission in doing historical inquiry, is that there have not ever been proper strategies in any particular infrastructure.

As a result, things are very politically driven, in four-year terms, and not always what the communities need. We should have the federal government, the provincial and territorial governments, the municipal governments, indigenous governments, our development corporations—and even those who are interested in the private sector and want to invest in this country and in our nation-building—come and actually do an infrastructure assessment. What exists? What is the age and condition? What is actually needed? Where are the gaps? Then we should have a proper strategy in place, so that we don't see certain things being funded that are not the priorities and we don't just look at one region but at the pan-territorial, pan-northern provincial regions because, as you heard earlier, some projects are inter-regional. Yet, the funding doesn't work that way.

Thank you.

[Yves Robillard]

I have only one minute and 34 seconds, so I'll leave it for the next round if you don't mind.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Oh, that's kind of revolutionary. I don't know that we do that.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We're moving on to MP Kevin Waugh.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you to both of our guests here today.

I was in Iqaluit in February, and it does get very cold there, despite the last person saying it doesn't get to -40°C. It was -53°C for the entire week, so it does.

Anyway, that airport is a game-changer. It is marvellous. Your community, because of the airport, is the gateway to the north now, especially Nunavut. I want to congratulate you on that. At the same time, I did check out the port, or what was to be the port. You've had a few explosions this past summer trying to get it going.

Where are we on that? Many up there do not feel they have been properly consulted about the port, so I want you to talk about that and about the consultations that really have not taken place. Some have, but I read a lot from your newspapers and I understand your community felt a little left out, knowing what the port is going to bring.

[Madeleine Redfern]

Thank you.

As I indicated earlier, the first issue is that it's not a year-round port. Second is the issue of the road to and from. Three is how much local employment it's going to provide, or is not providing. Four is that....

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Offshore...?

[Madeleine Redfern]

I was just trying to be diplomatic.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Okay. I'll say it then.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Madeleine Redfern]

It's the fact that the governments looked at the current users. The port, at its size, is not addressing all the future opportunities, which it could have and should have, so everything, from being able to offload fish, which currently is being done in Greenland—