Evidence of meeting #123 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was infrastructure.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Mayor, City of Iqaluit
—or down in the Canadian Maritimes. Woodward is a company in Labrador that is super keen on potentially providing additional shipping services because they can do it cheaper.
It could have been done better. Again, I think we need to move away from doing things poorly, with poor consultations, not including all the stakeholders, not listening to what people have to say, underinvesting and not looking forward to the future. Those are not big fixes.
Mayor, City of Iqaluit
That's the goal. The contractor is doing significant daily blastings, working almost 24 hours at this point before the weather hits. I can't predict the future, unfortunately.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
I know.
As I said, I spent about eight or nine days up there, and there was a lot of excitement. The telecommunications.... You're absolutely right. There is no northern telecommunications plan. There is no northern energy plan. There is no transportation plan. Your housing is deplorable up there, and it's something that has to be addressed by every government, not just the current one, from what I saw. I went to seven or eight communities. I talked to mining executives. They're pumping in billions of dollars—not millions, billions. Unfortunately.... Well, your airport is seeing it now because they're coming in first from Quebec, landing and then moving forward to Baker Lake or wherever.
I should move on, because we also have another guest. Elder Kemp, your website is very nice. I've been looking at it. The road looks fantastic. I see it was $200 million. That certainly has opened up your area.
I don't see a lot of jobs or employment opportunities. The last one on the website here is from September 7, 2018, although I see that you're really trying to get your young people engaged in finishing school. I want to compliment you on that, but you have to get job opportunities in that area, as you said. There are 20,000 or 30,000 people who are in isolation, and when you're bored, you get into trouble.
Maybe you could just talk about the infrastructure. You mentioned that the Internet is barely available, if at all, and that's part of this report.
I sat on the heritage committee before I came here. We tried to get every community connected by 2020. I know it won't happen, definitely not up north, but how about your area? Is there a chance with this road that we're actually going to see some telecommunications companies there? Now that Bell Media has taken over MTS—they bought it a year and a half ago—is there a chance that they're going to service your area?
Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Waugh.
Yes. When the road was constructed into Berens River, fibre optic cable was laid in the road as well. Our chief and council have been in contact with Bell Media, and they are looking at providing services into Berens River next summer.
I understand there's also a first nations company, Clear Sky Connections, that's looking at this whole issue in terms of a province-wide initiative. I guess you could say there's competition in Berens River. When I was chief, Bell Media told us we had to pay for all the equipment put up on a tower in order to get cell service. They're not saying that anymore, but I guess they see a threat coming as well, so competition is good.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Let's hope that when they did buy MTS that was part of the agreement, to service rural Manitoba.
I'm running out of time. I want to ask you a question about your bridge replacement meeting on April 3. You talked about the roads and so on that you need, but what about this bridge? There seems to be a lot of consultation and a lot of.... Well, you can fill us in on the bridge replacement.
Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual
Okay. Regarding the bridge, the road opened last year into Berens River. I believe it was December 6 when they made the official announcement that the road was open. We still have the bridge at Berens River to cross to the north side. The north side is where 75% of the people live and where all the businesses exist. The bridge we have was put in there in 1982. It's an old railway bridge that we bought from Saskatchewan and put in there ourselves.
It's very narrow. It has a canopy on top. Semi-trailers can't fit through the canopy because, being an old railway bridge, it's all girders on top. The new bridge is slated to go out for tender this winter, with construction starting next spring.
Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual
I believe it's around the $15-million mark.
Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual
It's being done through Indigenous Services Canada.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to our witnesses today. Mayor Redfern, thank you for your presentation. Elder Kemp, thank you for joining us here today to talk about your work, both the work that you've done for many years and the work that needs to be done going forward, and for your clear recommendations to our committee. I certainly appreciate that.
As somebody who's been on the winter road to Berens River many times, I can only imagine what a huge difference the new all-weather road has made. I certainly appreciate the various points you raised, and most importantly, the question of life and death, as you pointed out. Nobody can deny that when you hear something like, “There have been no suicides since the road was open or even leading up to its opening”, I think it's very clear why we need to be building all-weather roads in northeastern Manitoba.
I'm wondering if you might also reflect on how critical it is to build this all-weather road system when it comes to issues like forest fires. This summer, we dealt of course with the very stressful situation in Little Grand Rapids, another community that was supposed to be part of the all-weather road system, where people were truly abandoned until the last minute, when the army was finally able to come in. It was made very clear to me by the leadership that if there had been an all-weather road, people could have left in their own time. Obviously, we'd still need an emergency evacuation plan, but access to a road would have made a big difference.
I think these are realities that anybody living in an urban centre or a rural community that's connected by road cannot understand.
Could you speak a bit to how it would make a difference on that front as well?
Elder, Berens River First Nation, As an Individual
Thank you, Niki.
You saw what happened last year when Wasagamack had to be evacuated. They didn't even have a road connecting their community to the airport. The airport up there is built on an island. In the middle of the night they had to evacuate out of the airport by St. Theresa Point. In emergencies, all-weather roads go a long way in helping reduce the impact and the need to use air traffic and airlifts and so forth. It's not only to get people out. As you saw at Little Grand Rapids, once a fire does occur and damages a community like that, how do you get hydro crews in there? How do you get 1,200 fridges and stoves back in there that were spoiled because they sat with food that rotted in them? A whole bunch of other impacts come to light after the fire as well. Those are the kinds of things that go on.
Looking at our region north of Berens River and the Island Lake area in terms of airlifts, back in 1997, when the winter roads failed because of climate change, a huge airlift was needed to get the food supplies and the fuel and so forth in there. Every year that risk increases. We haven't had anything nearly like 1997 recently, but the day is coming when we won't get winter roads in.
Also, nowadays you can't trust ice. We make our winter roads across many lakes and rivers. An environmental disaster is waiting to happen when tanker trucks start going through the ice and into our rivers and lakes.
All-weather roads impact in many different ways that people don't normally think of because they don't live there. They don't understand all the things that go on in our communities because we are isolated. Two days ago, a 15-year-old committed suicide in St. Theresa Point. That goes on quietly. You don't hear about it, but when you look at the suicide stats in Manitoba and the rest of Canada, we have the highest; there's no question about that. You look at the stats in child and family services, and in the Churchill—Keewatinook riding they are the highest in Canada. There's a reason for that.
This whole idea that we have modern facilities and Internet, asking when we're going to get Internet and so forth.... That's all fine and dandy, but all it does is make our young people wish for more, wish for a better life. And you can't do that living in isolation. You can't provide any economic opportunities. We got the road at Berens last year, and now we have a chance to work on different things, our commercial fishing industry, our forestry industry. There's a new UNESCO world heritage park in place in our area.
Poplar River doesn't even have a road. In 2016, the environmental licence was issued for the road from Berens River to Pop River. When the PC government got in, they shut it down. Everything is approved. That's a shovel-ready project to go from Berens River to Pop River. The people in Pop River are asking when they are going to get hooked up to the road. By the looks of things, if we don't do something now with a government friendlier to first nations, I can't see that road to Pop River happening in the next 30 to 40 years. I can't, not with the climate right now in Manitoba.
We have a government here that said they had a billion-dollar deficit. The auditor just came out and said it was only $345 million. Yes, it's a debt, but the whole idea of "cut, cut, cut" is being borne by our communities up north now. The whole East Side Road project was shut down. Two months ago, we had a big announcement out of Red Sucker Lake, which is just north. On the map, you see Red Sucker Lake. There's a gold discovery and exploration project going on there now. They're estimating there's over $4 billion worth of gold there.
Every time we've seen development of all-weather roads and so forth, it's always about extracting the resources. What about us as people? We're there. Look at us. There are 20,000 people in one concentrated area who are suffering. There's no need for that. Let's end that type of thinking in this country today.
Liberal
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you to both of our witnesses. I'm sorry I wasn't able to take part in the presentations, but I feel fortunate in a sense because last year I had the opportunity for the first time to visit Iqaluit and to go around the east side of the island.
Way back, 20 years ago, I had an opportunity to meet the chief of Poplar River, Chief Louie back in the day, and paddle down the Bloodvein River with him. We flew out of Poplar River after visiting the communities, so I know exactly what you're referring to when you talk about that sense of isolation.
I'd like to ask both of you a similar question. We know that there is a long list of top priorities for infrastructure investment, whether it's roads, digital infrastructure or ports. The list is very long, and the available funds will never be sufficient to cover that long list.
I'd like to hear more about how your communities go about the exercise of prioritizing the top three or the top four in this context of northern infrastructure. How do you get to “It has to be A, B and C”? How can our government do a better job of appreciating that prioritization process?
Mayor, City of Iqaluit
Thank you.
For the municipality, I would have to say that our water infrastructure is a priority, as well as ensuring that we address climate change issues with respect to permafrost and the breaking of pipes.
For our capital city—which we happen to be—I would prioritize telecommunications and the fibre optic line between Iqaluit and Nuuk. We consume 70% to 75% of the broadband for the entire territory, even though we're only one of 25 communities and we have 25% of the population. It's getting to the point where you can't run any level of government, organization or business with the state of telecommunications, even with the nominal increase that we just got with the boost of funding. It's still satellite.
The other one, I would say, for a capital city, is energy. We need affordable, stable energy. With De Beers recently buying the mine near us, there's an opportunity for us to find an energy solution. It's not going to be wind, and it's not going to be solar. That's the reality in our area. It might be hydro or it might be SMR, small modular reactors. We need to look at that.
The last one, I would say, which would be beneficial for the entire region, is a university. We need to develop that capacity, the human capacity. We need people who have that education to be able to run our government and to fulfill their obligations in the government as senior management or middle management. A tremendous amount of Arctic research is done, but not because we have a northern university. It's done in southern universities in Alberta, Manitoba or Ontario. As a result, I would have to say that some of it is not always the best research that it could be and should be.
It's a huge economic factor, but it also develops a really important civil society, a civic-minded society. People are much more inclined to care about the different levels of government and democracy, and to participate. Can you imagine what your regions—Ontario, Manitoba or Quebec—would look like without a university? Just imagine the state of governance, the state of business, the state of innovation, the state of everything. That's what we find ourselves, that without a northern university, we are not going to address that really important investment in the people.
Liberal
