Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 7th, 2024

[Chief Sherri-Lyn Hill]

I think there are a few more. There's what I talked about with legally recognized government, so that one. There's to recognize access to safe drinking water as a human right through inclusion of a new subsection. There's requiring achievement of outcomes, not simply “best efforts”, so what I talked about with the wording. There's to ensure the bill guarantees access to an adequate supply of clean water not solely for domestic fire protection and emergency management needs, but also for economic and cultural needs through an additional preamble or statement and an amendment. Then there's adequate funding for water services on first nation lands, not simply to “make best efforts”.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chief Hill.

If all of those amendments were passed, would this be a bill you would support moving ahead?

[Chief Sherri-Lyn Hill]

I think it would be closer to our approving it. Again, what we've missed in the beginning is any consultation with first nations.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Again, I really appreciate you both being here to provide this kind of testimony this afternoon.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrice.

With that, we'll be turning it over to Mr. Bachrach, who's joining our committee here, for two and a half minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Before we hand it over to my good friend Taylor, I just wanted to say a very quick thank you to all of the witnesses for appearing on this study. Thank you for making such clear and strong statements regarding the changes that we need to make to make sure that this bill is more acceptable than the way it is at the moment.

I think that, if MPs were getting the same quality of water that first nations get, we wouldn't be able to legislate, so I know it's very important that we do a better job to make sure that indigenous rights are being respected in a much better way.

I'm going to now hand the floor to Taylor.

Qujannamiik.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Qujannamiik, Lori.

Thank you to the committee for allowing me to join your meeting.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I hope you'll forgive me if I shift gears for a brief moment to bring up another matter that is before the committee. Obviously, Bill C-61 is a very important bill and, as one of the witnesses said a little while ago, it's going to take a long time to move it through this process and get it right.

There is other business before the committee. One of those pieces of business is Bill S-16, the Haida Nation recognition act, which passed through the Senate unamended relatively swiftly and now awaits this committee's deliberation.

We would like to propose that the committee pause its work on Bill C-61 and turn its mind to Bill S-16 for two meetings in order to quickly hear from witnesses, conduct the line-by-line review of that legislation and hopefully report it to the House as quickly as possible.

I do have a motion that's been duly put on notice, and I'll move it at this time, Mr. Chair. I move, as it relates to the committee’s future business, it be agreed:

That:

i. The committee dedicate its meeting on October 24, 2024, to hear from witnesses as part of the committees review of Bill S-16, An Act Respecting the recognition of the Haida Nation and the Council of the Haida Nation;

ii. Any amendments to the bill be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on October 25, 2024;

iii. Clause-by-clause consideration of the bill start no later than 8:15 a.m. EST on October 31, 2024; and,

iv. That the committee report this bill to the House as soon as possible following the conclusion of clause-by-clause consideration.

Having read that, I'll note that I understand that there's a friendly amendment to change the date of clause-by-clause consideration from October 31 to October 28, which would get this business done even faster, so I would be happy to accept that as a friendly amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Of course, this motion was circulated with the required 48 hours' notice, so we're now moving into debate. First on the list I have Mr. Battiste.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

As it would happen, Mr. Chair, from the discussions that we are in support of this, we do need a little bit of time to go to the stakeholders on some of the amendments around the first nations water legislation, so we would be proposing to move this up by one day. As opposed to having it on October 31 at 8:15 a.m., we would like to see it at 3:30 on October 28 instead.

I think that would give us, not only an ability to get through Bill S-16 in a way that is good for that nation, but it also gives us the ability to hear from the stakeholders about the possibility of amendments for the water legislation, which we need to get right.

With that, I'd hope that we'd all be in agreement with this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Thank you very much, Mr. Battiste.

I'm going to see if there is anyone else who would like to make an intervention.

Mr. Schmale, I know I had you on the previous list, but would you like to contribute to the amendment to the motion?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Yes, I'll speak to the amendment to the motion. I thought I was going to speak to the motion, but that's fine. Thank you.

I understand the importance of the Haida Gwaii legislation. I want to echo some of what Jaime was talking about and suggest that we wrap up or at least get as far as we can on C-61 and hopefully get this finished before we jump to S-16. I think we've heard a lot of powerful testimony through this study, and I think it's incumbent upon us to try to get that done as soon as possible and then, of course, move into the Haida Gwaii bill as soon as possible.

I agree. I don't think it'll take very long, but at the same time, bouncing around here a bit might take the focus off the clean drinking water legislation.

You're saying the 28th and their motion said the 24th. Is that correct?

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Yes, they said the 31st—Halloween—and we're saying the 28th, that Monday, instead because we do need some time to talk to the stakeholders about amendments that are coming from C-61. We just don't see that happening prior to that, so it gives a perfect little break for us to engage with the stakeholders on possible amendments while at the same time getting S-16 through.

If you think we can do it in one meeting, I'd be more than happy to see that, but line-by-line usually takes at least two full hours.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

To build on that, at what point do you see, as the government, going back to the excise tax study we had?

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Do you have witnesses you're planning to call who have confirmed?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

We also have the ministers coming. We passed a motion that they come within two weeks, and we're going on three now.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I would say the first things we want to do are to make sure we get the legislation across the finish line and then come back to the ministers and make sure that, if you have any additional folks for the excise tax study who we haven't heard from and are brave enough to come and talk about taxing their people on the reserve, then we're more than happy to—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Keeping tax harmony is what it was.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Then we're more than happy to hear from them.

First, let's get the legislation all figured out. I figure that with any help we would be able to get the final amendments in by October 29 for the water legislation, and that would give us the ability to almost get into line-by-line in early November for C-61. I think with that time frame we'd have the ability to get through both pieces of legislation, with line-by-line, by the first week of November or the second week of November at the latest, before we get to the ministers and other studies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Mr. Shields, go ahead.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

What we need is an actual date and a timeline for when we're putting all these three pieces together. We're talking about it, but we have a couple of dates moving here and an amendment, so we need it broken down clearly on the dates we're talking about.

You're getting into November now, so I need a little more of a timeline of exactly what dates we're talking about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

I have Mr. Bachrach and then Mr. Battiste.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, since I used our last round of questioning, which was going to be a two-and-a-half-minute round, to introduce this motion, I wonder if the committee might excuse the witnesses, unless they want to stay and hear us haggle over the dates. I'll just offer that as a suggestion.

I have one brief comment after that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

I'm seeing agreement here.

With that, obviously, if our witnesses would like to stay, you're more than welcome to, but I would invite you to take your leave if you wish, because this is likely going to take us until the end of our meeting.

With that, I want to thank you very much for your testimony here today. It will be very helpful in the continued work that we're doing on C-61. I really appreciate your taking the time to be here in person and virtually so we could do that. Thank you.

We're back to Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

On the issue of the dates, I'm a little bit confused. It seems like there's some other stuff being introduced. The motion is very clear that the committee dedicate two meetings, one to hearing from witnesses and one to clause-by-clause consideration of the legislation. Based on the friendly amendment, those meetings would take place on October 24 and October 28, I believe. Those were the dates that I was provided.

[The Chair, Liberal, Patrick Weiler]

Those are the dates I have as well.

Mr. Battiste put forward an amendment here. That would be on clause-by-clause and the deadline for amendments to Bill C-61, unless I'm mistaken.