Evidence of meeting #78 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 agreement.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Justice, Government of Nunavut
No. You get a long-term, 30-year lease in the municipalities and you can renew it every 30 years. It's a lease, though; it's not fee simple. Inuit have fee simple ownership over their lands in the territory.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Each land claim has different ways in which they've created rules around land tenure. So in the Nunavut case, the Inuit-owned lands are owned by the collective. Individual Inuit do not own individual parcels of land in fee simple. Inuit development corporations or Inuit representational organizations hold those lands as a collective.
Other jurisdictions have other land regimes. The land regimes in Nunatsiavut go back to the 1700s with the Moravian Church. There is fee simple ownership in communities in Nunatsiavut in ways there that aren't in other Inuit regions.
Just broadly, in the land claims settlement regions, and the 14% to 17% of the settlement areas that are owned in fee simple by Inuit, those lands under comprehensive land claims agreements are owned in a collective, not in an individual sense. What happens in the municipalities often predates the settlement of the modern comprehensive land claims agreements.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
Thank you.
That concludes our rounds of questioning. I want to thank you for coming out, for travelling, and for taking time to share your thoughts on these important matters with the standing committee. Meegwetch.
The meeting is adjourned.
