Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for having the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami here this afternoon. I look forward to the discussion later. I want to thank you for the invitation.
ITK is the national representational organization for Canada's 60,000 Inuit. We are spread across Canada's Arctic or as we call it Inuit Nunangat: Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador; Nunavik in northern Quebec; Nunavut, which is its territory and also has a land claim body within that territory; and then Inuvialuit region in the western Arctic.
The foundation of our relationship with the federal government is our land claim agreements. The first was signed in 1975 and the last was signed in Nunatsiavut in 2006. The relationship we have is one that is based on the Constitution. The organization that I represent represents a very defined link between each one of our beneficiaries, the members of each one of our four land claim agreements, and the regional bodies that represent them to the regional bodies that elect the national Inuit leader, which is me. Those regional bodies also elect an international leader on the Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada.
We have a very tight governance structure. Also, Inuit on the board that I'm president of have the insight and perspective of our women with the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada and also the National Inuit Youth Council.
In these days of debate and discussion about who represents whom and the way in which indigenous peoples of Canada choose to represent themselves, I present you with a very clear model from the individual Inuit who live in Canada to the national body that is an unbroken chain of representation, an Inuit democracy, if you will.
Our rights stem from the Constitution. We also draw from international law through UN declarations and UN conventions. We also have the shared space, as I mentioned before, through our comprehensive land claim agreements.
We have a shared space that sometimes is focused on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, and often Indigenous and Northern Affairs is the place where everyone goes for the direction on the Inuit perspective. I'm always worried about that, because so many different government departments play a role in the way that Inuit services are delivered, the way that policies and programs are developed, and then the way the overarching relationship that Inuit have with the crown is actualized. While the lead per se always in land claim implementation has been INAC in its many different iterations, I think moving forward it would be safe to say that we would hope that this is expanding out and onward beyond just one department, because while the nuts and bolts of land claims may happen here within Indigenous and Northern Affairs, they spread out across the entire federal government.
Our population is unique. Our median age is 23 and that is a very different median age from the rest of Canada. Our population has grown 26% between 1996 and 2006. We have a very young and rapidly expanding population.
We also are unique in that many of us didn't live in settlements prior to World War II and so many of our people grew up on the land or were born in igloos or sod houses. The story that you often hear about, the very romantic version of Inuit, does exist still in our land, even though the reality for us of the younger generations is very different.
The challenge of our organization is to respect the relationship we have with the land and our traditions, the fact that over 60% of our population still cites as its mother tongue Inuktitut, which is the Inuit language in its many dialects, and the fact that we still feel like we live with the environment and are still coming to terms with this new reality of melding southern Canadian values and southern Canadian governance concepts with the way in which we've always lived our lives.
At the national level, our organization works with each of the four regions to understand what our national concerns are. We released our strategic plan today. In that strategic plan, we talk about seven different objectives and priority areas that we'd like to move at the national level.
Before I get into those seven objectives, I'd like to pause on the relationship piece. Politics may change very rapidly, but bureaucracies, programs, policies, and the implementation of indigenous rights move at a very different pace. We are very encouraged by the recent change of events that has allowed indigenous peoples to participate in events such as the climate change discussions last week in Vancouver, or the fact that the Prime Minister came and participated with us and our board at a meeting at our offices in January.
These changes are all welcome, and hopefully these are all signs of things to come, but we know there are systemic problems that we need to overcome with regard to the way in which we interact with the Government of Canada, and the way in which programs, services, and terms and conditions from Treasury Board all roll out in different ways for Inuit than they might for first nations, without consideration of the Inuit when those different programs, services, or terms and conditions are being drafted.
We think there should be a broad standard across each one of the federal government departments to ensure that whenever we go to talk to a minister, or to a deputy, or down at the program level, there is a structural relationship, and that it doesn't vary from person to person or from department to department. Our rights don't fluctuate that way, and therefore our engagement with the federal government should not be at the whim of a public servant, or at the whim of a particular minister, or be limited by the lack of understanding about the realities of Inuit who don't live on reserves, whose relationship is dictated by land claim agreements and public governments. There is a self-government in Nunatsiavut, but still, the way in which we interact with Canada should be at the forefront of the federal system as a whole.