Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That wraps up your time. We're going to move on to MP Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Madam Chair, thank you, and welcome to our guests. I'll give up the majority of my time to my good friend from Nunavut because I'm a good guy.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

First, I do have a very short question. I know that implementation has been an issue with modern land claims agreements throughout this country. Among the members of the coalition, how many of those agreements contained dispute resolution mechanisms to deal with conflicts and interpretation issues?

[Alastair Campbell]

I think most of them have something in there. My recollection is that the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement did not have something like that, but the Inuvialuit agreement was the next one that came along, and it did have the provision for binding arbitration. After that, the federal government tightened up and said that it wasn't going to do that again, that it had to be by mutual consent. As far as I know, the Nunavut agreement is the only one that has since achieved the binding arbitration option. I can't speak to all the other treaties, but that's my understanding.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you.

Hunter.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Romeo, and thank you, Madam Chair.

Ullaakkut and welcome.

My first question has to do with implementation. You talked about the lack of implementation coming from the federal government. Some of the reasons I've heard over the years for not following through on implementation or for having a narrow view, as you say, on what implementation means, have to do with the simple fact of a loss of control or the fact that it will cost some money.

I'm wondering about your experience with the coalition. Have you found that restricting the resources or the funding, having that narrow view, and the losing of control over those some of the issues are challenges that are faced in the actual true implementation of these treaties?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yes. The financial one is a problem. We know of cases where, for example, a certain amount of money has been put in an envelope for claims implementation, and it has become a question of which claimant group has enough pressure to get the money: if A gets it and B gets it, there's nothing left for C and D. That is a problem at a general level.

At the control level, I think it's often a case of senior officials having a lot on their plates and issues being delegated to officials lower in the pyramid, and the people this gets delegated to don't have any real authority to make the kinds of changes that are needed.

I don't know if that answers your question, but that's some comment.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

That's a good stab at it, I think, Alastair.

Another thing you talked about was appropriate consultation and the lack of participant funding. You mentioned Clyde River as a really good example. They said they weren't consulted, they ended up having to go to court, and they won. You mentioned the Nunavut Impact Review Board, There are other institutes of public government. My understanding of that process is that if they are funded to ensure that the consultation does take place, that will cover off the federal government's duty to consult. My understanding as well is that when these things were developed, it was envisioned that it wouldn't be necessary, that they wouldn't be doing these consultations.

Do you think the NIRB and other institutes of public government should have participant funding to ensure that the community, the people, will have an opportunity to properly bring forward their issues and challenges in relation to any type of development?

[Aluki Kotierk]

Yes, I think it would be ideal to have participant funding so that Inuit groups at the community level who could potentially be impacted by various developments happening in their backyard would be able to build up the capacity, get the technical information, and be able to have positions on whether or not developments should be happening in their backyard.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you.

The other thing you mentioned was that there is a deputy ministers oversight committee now. I think that's probably a step in the right direction. I'm just wondering if you think that's enough. Is there something more that could be done to help ensure that oversight is followed? I've been attending this committee over the last year, and a lot of groups are saying that they're hearing the political will, but they're not seeing the direction coming from the departments. I'm just wondering if there are any other suggestions either of you might be able to add to try to help move that forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

There are 10 seconds left, so please be really quick.

[Aluki Kotierk]

I think there is an additional thing that could happen. I mentioned earlier that the OAG had done some reviews on four modern treaties. I think it's important that there be a modern treaty implementation review commission that would be able to review and monitor how all the modern treaties are being implemented.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

We'll move now to MP Anandasangaree.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have one question. Then I'd like to share the rest of my time with Mr. Saganash and Mr. Tootoo.

With respect to the agreement in 1993, were future rights extinguished at that point, and has there been a change in the current climate with respect to full and final release on those rights?

[Alastair Campbell]

There have been different approaches by the federal government. With the Nunavut agreement, what happened was title to land: Inuit gave up the aboriginal title to land in exchange for ownership in fee simple and all the other things in the agreement. Other aboriginal rights that are not directly tied to ownership of the land are not affected by the agreement.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I just want to come back to the challenges in terms of complete implementation of land claims agreements. My people were signatories of the first modern treaty in this country, back in 1975. I think I was 13 back then, when they signed. The problem of implementation was the biggest challenge with that agreement back in 1975.

I like giving this example. Under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, chapter 28, there's a promise that on an equal basis, Canada and Quebec would construct “a community centre” in each Cree village. It's as clear as I said it. However, that provision took some 25 to 30 years to implement, because the federal government and the provincial government claimed that there was no definition of community centre. What's a community centre? I call that bad faith.

Has it been your experience that most of the time these are questions of different interpretation by the parties?

[Alastair Campbell]

Often, it's problems of interpretation, and in that sense, I guess—how would say it?—there should be a federal policy that would guide interpretation, although in the general sense we would also say that there are objectives in our agreement, and they should guide the interpretation as well. Sometimes you get into a kind of lawyer's interpretation of what it means, and you say, “Well, hmm, I don't think it necessarily means that.”

But yes, there are some things, and one of the things we dealt with in the lawsuit was the Nunavut general monitoring program, which had never been set up. The agreement was quite specific: it had to be set up. Yes, the courts found with us that the government was in breach of the agreement with regard to that.

On interpretation, with article 24, which is government procurement, again.... I don't know if you want to say that it's interpretation or not. From 1993 to today, the Government of Canada has not developed a procurement policy in accordance with article 24. I realize that article 24 doesn't say exactly what should be in that procurement policy, but it does say that there has to be one and that it has to be developed with NTI, and it hasn't been.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Romeo and Gary.

Following up on that, I've heard a number of stories about how NNI and northern Inuit procurement issues are completely ignored in federal contracts. What types of challenges are there, or what are you running up against from the federal government, in developing that policy?

[Alastair Campbell]

With the Government of Nunavut, the NNI contracting policy was developed early on. It has been adjusted a number of times and, in our view, has been meeting the objectives of article 24.

On the federal side, the one bright light, I would say, is the Department of National Defence, which, for the cleanup of the DEW Line sites, did establish criteria by agreement—it negotiated an agreement with NTI—that set standards for Inuit benefits from contracting and employment benefits from contracting. That was a major accomplishment, but kind of unique.

When we went to the federal government on article 24 in a general sense, they regarded this as something special because DND has defence construction in Canada and they don't report to Treasury Board. They don't have to follow the same rules and, therefore, we can't apply the same rules to other contracts. Right now, we're still trying to negotiate a policy for article 24.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

You have 30 seconds.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

What message would you pass on to the committee here to help achieve that and finally cross that finish line?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, the message, I guess, would be to identify in your report the problems we're speaking about.