Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 1st, 2020

[Duane Smith]

I would say that would be extremely helpful.

Where I reside it still takes around 10 days for the government to get the results back, just because of the remoteness. They have not, in any real sense, expanded their rapid testing outside of the capital of Yellowknife, where we see the vast majority of the testing taking place. There's very little outside of that area. As I said, it takes at least seven to 10 days to get a result back, while the testing in that community is, like you say.... I don't think it's quite as short as 20 minutes, but I think what they say is that it's about 48 minutes.

Any expansion of that to at least the regional hubs like my community would alleviate a lot of stress and anxiety of the people in the communities, just knowing that the government is doing this outreach and enhancing rapid testing to some of the more remote communities and showing some care and concern, basically.

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

Would you make the recommendation to pursue the rapid testing more aggressively?

[Duane Smith]

I would most definitely be recommending that, because, like I said, it's pretty well non-existent. People have very high stress and anxiety.

I did not point out that one of the services that we've been able to provide is professional psychological counselling made available at a long-distance phone number for people if they need to talk to somebody who has that skill set as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Damoff, you have six minutes. Please go ahead.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for this testimony. It's been very helpful.

Mr. Smith, I'm really disappointed to hear that you don't have rapid testing. I know Indigenous Services has made rural and remote communities a priority with the GeneXpert machine, so I'll certainly be taking that back to find out why you haven't been included in that, because all of the witnesses have talked about rapid testing and I think the government recognizes the need to really ramp that up.

Ms. Agrell, I have some questions for you. I am extremely proud to have known the operating engineers for many years, long before I was a member of Parliament. I had conversations years ago with Mike Gallagher, the business manager for Local 793, about the work you've done training indigenous peoples to work as operating engineers.

You talked about the challenges and the barriers to training. I was reading that you developed a regional training centre back in 2014 with Neskantaga. I'm just wondering if that still in existence and if that is a model that could be expanded.

[Kirsten Agrell]

It's certainly still in existence. My understanding is that right now that community has had some serious water treatment and water quality issues, and it's in a bit of an evacuation state right now.

Certainly, yes, that sort of organization and bringing it into the communities is something we're continuing to try to support. Most of our training is based in the south, and we do what we can to facilitate people coming to us. We've been working a long time to get the equipment, the area, the location and the ability to transport the equipment up north and closer to where people need it. Those sorts of initiatives are certainly something I think are worthwhile and worth pursuing to keep people close to home, both for pandemic purposes and for economic drivers.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Would it make sense to have a training centre in the north or is that not practical? I know you have one in Oakville and in Morrisburg. I've seen the one in Oakville and, for those who don't know, you're the large crane operators. You need an awful lot of space to operate one of those.

[Kirsten Agrell]

It's a great idea and it's something we've been working on for a long time, because just getting the amount of equipment necessary into place—obviously it's big, heavy, expensive equipment—you need earth to move around and you need space. If you want to be able to transport it and move it around in the north, you also need the ability to move it. The costs for that for private organizations or for employers to sponsor have today, as I understand it, made it a bit impractical, but it's certainly something we're continuing to look at and push into.

I know there are people in our training institute who are more knowledgeable than I am on the steps they've been trying to take to do that, which have all been rather interrupted and thrown into chaos by these last nine months.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

You mentioned 15% of your workforce on Baffin Island were Inuit. Overall, what percentage of your workforce is indigenous? Do you know?

[Kirsten Agrell]

We don't. We've been talking about that because we've never tracked the heritage of any of our members, voluntarily are not. Our training side has been better at that because they target programs towards indigenous people, particularly, and work with the groups, but overall, our membership doesn't know that. We know it for the north because of Inuit benefit agreements and conditions like that.

I really can't say. I can look into it and see if I can find out, but I suspect we don't even have the numbers for you. We know it's growing and that we're continuing to work on it. We're continuing to see more wholly owned indigenous businesses in Ontario, but even anecdotally, that's a small number and it's taking time to grow.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Vodden, a fairly significant amount of funding was announced in the fall economic statement yesterday for regional airlines. I'm wondering if you've had an opportunity to see that and if you think any of those dollars will be of benefit to you.

[Nick Vodden]

Yes, I was aware of that. I have reviewed it. I do believe that is the package the federal government is working with the provinces on and working with air carriers like ourselves. I believe within the last 45 to 60 days, we have had some balls in motion there, working with our provincial governments who are working with the federal government for deals on that.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay. That's great. Because when I look at the numbers, they're fairly significant. It's always important to make sure they're getting to the right places and they're serving the needs.

You're still part of those dialogues or the conversations going on, are you?

[Nick Vodden]

Absolutely.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay. That's great.

Mr. Smith, I have very little time left. You had to stop your presentation. I just wondered if there was anything else you wanted the committee to know that you didn't have time to get on the record previously.

[Duane Smith]

Thanks for the opportunity.

I think I would agree with Mr. Vodden's view. We have a lot of remote communities in our area, and they're only accessible by one ship a year to get their annual supply, and/or by aircraft. We have been able to get the airlines in the region subsidized to make sure this essential service was provided. It was right down to one flight a week for a while, but the services have ramped up to two or three to some of these remote communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much.

Thanks, Ms. Damoff.

Ms. Bérubé, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, so my question is for you, Mr. Vodden.

Mr. Vodden, I understand very well the difficulties of air travel. What measures have you put in place for your company to limit the spread of COVID-19?

[Nick Vodden]

I missed the beginning of that, but I think I caught most of it.

From the onset, some of the measures we put in ahead of any regulatory requirements. We immediately went to mandatory face coverings. We bought thermal image scanners to accurately scan every passenger before they were checked in to make sure the temperatures were in place. We bought a bunch of fogging equipment in February as we saw this coming. We fog all the aircraft and all the facilities in between flights. For a flight that does two communities, we put segregated waiting areas in place. We boarded the airplanes separately so the communities weren't intermingling.

We provided sanitizer and PPE to all the passengers. We worked with each community for pre-clearance for passengers so the communities could see who wanted to travel before they travelled and make sure they had pre-clearances. We have a list of items we've done for each community.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

You also said that you had 850 employees before the pandemic. Have you had to cut any positions because of the impact the pandemic has had on your company?

[Nick Vodden]

Yes. We've continually adjusted the size and scope of the organization throughout the pandemic. I couldn't give you the exact number now, but it has gone up and down and up again with each wave of the virus. Depending on the jurisdiction we're operating in, that largely affects the size of the operation.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

When the pandemic is a thing of the past—we know it will end one day and we'll return to some semblance of normalcy—should consumers expect the cost of airfare to increase?

[Nick Vodden]

I don't know that I can answer that yet. I do know that there have been some increases from some of the airports and Nav Canada. That's really the only thing I see coming or see that's currently in place. Those are the two areas.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

My next question is for Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith, you said earlier that you have helped your community by making cleaning kits and food hampers, and providing support for fundraising.

What support have you received from the government to help you support your community?

[Duane Smith]

We received approximately $5.8 million to deliver all of those different services, programs, kits and so on.