Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 31st, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right. Thank you very much.

We are moving to the five-minute round; first up is MP Arnold Viersen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our guests for being here.

Murad, I'm from northern Alberta. We do a lot of forestry, agriculture, and oil patch business. We need a relief valve on the transportation system, particularly on rail. All three of our major products transport out on rail.

Will the Churchill rail be able to.... Oil is the most lucrative for rail, so our lumber and our agriculture products have to wait for some space on the rail, essentially.

When do you anticipate you will be shipping grain out of Churchill?

[Murad Al-Katib]

We're quite hopeful that 2019 will be the first grain season. I think linkage from Peace River country on CN rail out to Prince Rupert on one side and out to Churchill on the other is going to be a really viable route for a northern natural resources, grain and mining products corridor.

We're going to see that link from CN into Saskatoon and then The Pas in Manitoba, and then running up on the Hudson Bay Railway. We hope we're going to have that line up to a class II railway, 25 miles per hour transit, which will give a reliable cycle time, with 120,000 tonnes of storage too at the port of Churchill, so that will help.

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

One of the other things we've been hearing a lot about from folks who work and live in the north is the carbon tax. Have you seen any effect on your customers or your suppliers in the way the carbon tax has impacted them?

[Murad Al-Katib]

I think it's a cost-competitive environment. We need to be watching our costs, and I'm in the freight business, so the costs related to operations and fuel.... In some of the resource-based mining industries, we certainly see a little angst around the carbon tax. We see a lot of concern in an already relatively difficult environment and cost base in the north that this may be another layer of costs.

We're focusing on trying to be as efficient as we can and making sure our rail is efficient so we can bring efficiency to the mines, paper mills and the other businesses in the area.

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

Have there been any negotiations or have you secured an exemption from the carbon tax?

[Murad Al-Katib]

We have not had any of those discussions yet. We're pretty new. We'll have to take a look at what we can do, but there's nothing at this point.

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

I'll move to Matt. Matt, I was wondering how the carbon tax has affected the people that you represent in Yellowknife.

[Matt Belliveau]

There has been some commentary from trucking companies about the additional costs that the carbon tax will bring. Generally, costs here are already very high. People in businesses know they need to be efficient. I guess the carbon tax is going to further incentivize efficiencies. I really can't say how that will play out here.

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

One of the other things that we've heard, significantly, is that the northern drilling moratorium is going to be hard on the Northwest Territories. Have you any comments around that?

[Matt Belliveau]

Maybe you could talk to the Chamber of Mines. They may know better than I would the full impacts of that. If there's any way the federal government can let people here make the decisions about what to do with the natural resources here, that's probably a better way to go for everyone.

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

For sure, for sure.

You talked a bit about housing up in the Northwest Territories. I understand that the housing situation in the Northwest Territories is quite different from what it is in the rest of the country, in that it's very difficult to own your own home in the Northwest Territories, as most of it is public housing. Has that been your experience as well?

[Matt Belliveau]

This has not been my experience in Yellowknife. Yellowknife would be a lot like Alberta in terms of people having a fee simple title. I don't know as much about the real estate situation in smaller communities, but yes, there is a lot more public housing and a lot of overcrowded housing.

A lot of the work that goes out to tender here is...more than building new housing, it seems it's repairing what already exists, doing mould remediation and things like that. Yes, there's a clear shortage.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

Questioning now wraps up with Mike Bossio. I'm hoping he'll give me a minute, because I'd like to ask a question at the end too. Would you like to share?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

You were going to ask that question. If you'd like to ask that question, go ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right. Thank you.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Then you can pass the rest of the time, because I told Ms. Jones I would give her the rest of my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I have a different question. I wanted to ask Murad about the rail.

I'm familiar with...I believe it was Hudbay Minerals that brought in “con”, mineral concentrate, from Europe and tried to export metals. The railbed itself wasn't stable enough to handle the heavy loads that minerals would impose on the track. However, the potential is enormous and the need is there. When you're looking at your track, is your goal then to be able to ship minerals through Churchill? Is that part of your vision?

[Murad Al-Katib]

Absolutely. Listen, I'd invite anyone to go to our Arctic Gateway Facebook page, where you can track all the washout repairs. We're using what we call “geotextile tough cell material”. This is a new technology that is actually reinforcing railbeds. Up to three triple layers of geosynthetic material are providing almost like a concrete reinforcement of the railbed.

Part of that $50-million rehabilitation that we're doing, in addition to the repairing, is to tackle the areas of permafrost to make sure that they're able to carry, on a class II railway, every single type of load on normal freight train service. That is definitely part of it—safe, stable, reliable railbeds—and we're going to achieve it.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That's impressive. I wish you all the best.

Now the questioning is going to Yvonne Jones.

[Yvonne Jones]

Thank you.

First of all, I want to address the housing piece.

Matt, you may not be aware, but the Government of Canada did the first-ever housing agreement with Inuit in Canada, and a large chunk of that money went to the Inuvik area and also into Nunavut, as the MP for Nunavut who's here knows. It is one of the first programs that will be led by indigenous governments on the ground through the Government of Canada. That in itself has had historic amounts of investment. I should let you know that.

My question is around the price on pollution. I live in the north. I've worked in the north and in the Arctic all my life, and I feel the victimization of climate change, how it's affecting our communities and how it's affecting everything that we do, our way of life and our culture.

I'm absolutely surprised to get the sense that you don't see value in pricing pollution in Canada. If there's anyone in this country who should understand what's happening from a pollution perspective and how it's affecting communities, I would think it's going to be people who are in northern regions.

I'd like for both of you to comment on that issue and on the process that the Government of Canada is now undertaking on pricing pollution throughout the country.

[Matt Belliveau]

Am I going first here?

[Yvonne Jones]

It doesn't matter.

Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Yes. Go ahead, Matt.