Thank you very much, Vice-Chair McLeod.
First of all, thank you for the opportunity to participate. It's an honour to be asked to appear before one of your committees or one of the Senate committees. I hope that I can add something to the debate that is currently ongoing with respect to this issue.
In full disclosure, I have testified on three different occasions on this issue: twice before the House of Commons committee, once in June 2009 and another time on January 2014; and before the Senate committee on December 2013. I've had the questions asked at some point on some of the issues, but we'll see how they go today.
I'm here to explain my report, “Road to Improvement”, which I'm sure all of you have had an opportunity to read. Maybe it's put you to sleep at night. That's fine, too. This was commissioned, as you know, by former minister Chuck Strahl, who was the minister of INAC. I was commissioned to do this report in fall 2007. The purpose of the assignment was to make recommendations to see if the regulatory systems in the north, at least north of 60°, could be improved.
The process that I engaged in through winter 2018 was to attend and spend most of my time in the north, most of it in Yellowknife. Although I did go to Nunavut and to the Yukon, I concentrated my efforts on the Northwest Territories. By the way, the process was to meet with everybody who would meet with me—all the regulatory bodies, the governments both territorial and federal, officials, aboriginal groups, at that time the treaty groups. Anybody who wanted to talk about this issue I was prepared to meet with.
We ended up then following those discussions by having a round table discussion in Yellowknife, where we invited all of the participants to come to hear what I had heard and to tell me what we should recommend in this report. The round table was opened with a prayer by Ms. Gabrielle Mackenzie-Scott, who at that time was the chair of MVEIRB. I just want to read it to you because it's important and it focuses on what we were talking about. She said the prayer was to look at the regulatory system to see if there can be some jobs created at the same time as making sure the environment is totally and absolutely protected. The overriding principles were to protect the environment and to ensure that the people who live in that part of the world make the decisions relating to resource development. The themes were clear.
The second theme, beyond the one of making sure that people in the north were engaged, was to ensure that the regulatory bodies had some improvements made to them to make them predictable, effective and efficient. To address these themes it was decided at the round table that I should make recommendations in three areas. First was for the local input of the residents, to make sure that the decisions were made in the north. Second was to make structural changes to the regulatory bodies, to make them efficient, responsible and so on. The third was to make some process changes to the regulatory bodies.
The input from the residents, an overriding suggestion, and it was the number one recommendation in my report, was that the land use plans for all the territories, particularly for the treaty areas in the Northwest Territories, had to be completed. They were delayed in completion. They had to be completed. That's where the voice of the north was to be provided.
Structural changes were to be made because there was recognition that if the land use plans were completed, the regulatory bodies would perform a different function, which would be a far more technical function relating to the environment, to safety, and to other issues of a technical nature. Therefore, there had to be some reduction in the number of regulatory bodies.
The one recommendation that seems to have attracted the most attention, and probably what I will be questioned on, is the reduction of the land and water boards from three to a super-board, as it was called later. My position was, and at the round table we all agreed, that if the land use plans were completed, there would not be a need for every regional body, every treaty area, to have a regional body. Rather, it should be one focus for the entire Mackenzie Valley.
I should point out at this stage that the recommendation with respect to the reduction of the bodies was in two parts. One was a complete reduction. The other was that the quasi-judicial nature of the decision-making would be concentrated on one Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, but that the administrative activity would take place at the local treaty level.
The question often came up as to whose idea it was. I don't know whose idea this was. It certainly came out of our round table discussions. There certainly was no surprise when I made my recommendations, because it was clearly debated during the round table discussion with all of the interested people in attendance.
Second, as is my custom, having been around government for a long time, I made sure that I spoke to the leaders of not all of the groups, but most of the groups, to advise them of what my recommendations would be. They said that was fine. They might not publicly support it, but they thought the recommendations were good. In fact, at one point in the course of the round table, I was told to have an honest and hard-hitting take-no-prisoners report. In other words, they said, “Be bold.”
That completes my opening remarks. I have some closing remarks that I'd like to make later, after the questioning.
Thank you, Madam Vice-Chair.