Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Good afternoon, everyone. I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 24 of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

We are gathered here today on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation.

We are continuing our fourth study today, which is about Arctic Sovereignty, Security and the Emergency Preparedness of Indigenous Peoples.

On today's first panel we will be hearing from Mr. Robert Huebert from the University of Calgary; from Sara Brown, CEO, Northwest Territories Association of Communities; and from Mayor Nick Daigneault from the northern Village of Beauval.

I would like to remind you of the Board of Internal Economy's requirements regarding physical distancing and the wearing of masks.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules for us to follow. Members or witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services in English, French and Inuktitut are available for the first part of today’s meeting. Please be patient with the interpretation. There may be a delay, especially since the Inuktitut has to be translated into English first before being translated into French, and vice versa.

The interpretation button is found at the bottom of your screen, in either English or French, or Inuktitut. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and we'll attend to it and pause for a bit.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.

The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Members, please direct your question, otherwise, if it's assumed to be for all three witnesses, there may be a long pause, because nobody knows who should start.

Without further ado, we will hear from the first panel.

For the benefit of the witnesses, you will have five minutes each to make opening remarks, and then we'll proceed with a question period.

Without further ado, I would ask Professor Robert Huebert from the University of Calgary to kick us off.

Professor Huebert, you have five minutes.

[Dr. Robert Huebert, Associate Professor, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

First of all, let me tell you what an honour it is, and how intimidating, to come before such an august body in this regard to talk about such a critically important topic. I have two sets of comments to offer in my first five minutes.

The first is, of course, the traditional addressing of what we mean by sovereignty and security as they pertain to emergency preparedness and the indigenous peoples of the north. One of the big problems that we face whenever we have any discussions about sovereignty is that it is one of those terms that everybody uses, but very few people really understand what it means.

Sovereignty, of course, refers to the ability of a government to control a specific land mass and maritime region. For the Arctic context that means the control of the maritime zones; that means the internal waters of the Northwest Passage. We will be having a sovereignty issue coming forward with regard to the continental shelf. As it pertains to the roles of the indigenous peoples, we are going to have to be dealing with the terms of sovereignty as they pertain to the land claim settlement regions and what that means in terms of control, particularly of maritime navigation through the Northwest Passage.

In terms of security, we talk of two things. We talk about human security, which of course many of the preceding experts have addressed, and we also talk about the issue of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

One moment please, Mr. Huebert.

Ms. Gill, you have the floor.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Chair, the interpreter informs me that the sound quality is not good enough to do the interpretation. It has been like this for about a minute.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

Mr. Huebert, it has to do with the ability of the interpreters to translate your language. Have you set up on Zoom with the microphone as your headset microphone?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Yes, I have.

I'm looking at it right now. Is this better quality?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Ms. Gill, can you check if things are working on your end?

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Yes, of course. I'm sure the interpreters will let me know.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

We'll try to keep going. Perhaps speak a bit more slowly and a little more loudly. That will help.

Thank you.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

I'm sorry about that.

We have the issue of sovereignty and security. The security that I want to talk about is the security that is often overlooked in our discussions of emergency preparedness, which is military security.

The reality is that the issues in Ukraine have illustrated one of the greatest dangers that we have pretended have disappeared, which is the possibility of nuclear war. We have heard this several times coming from President Putin as he made threats to NATO and the NATO members, and it is a threat that we need to take seriously as it pertains to emergency preparedness. Once again, many people will say, “Well, it has a very low probability,” but the reality is that before the pandemic hit us, the possibility of a disease that would kill over 27,000 Canadians and have the impacts that it has had was, of course, viewed as a low probability.

Putin has not only threatened nuclear war. He has built the necessary weapon delivery systems and weapons to carry it out. A scenario is very easy to come up with. He is losing the war in Ukraine. He wants to hit the resupply regions. In doing so, before he hits them with the tactical nuclear weapons that he has, he has to blind the Americans. To blind the Americans, he has to hit the airbases in Anchorage and he has to hit the Tully radar sites. That presents Canada with a very real and explicit threat.

In terms of emergency planning, that means that we need to be able to deal with the Arctic and with the indigenous peoples and their communities, which would no longer have communications. The EMP blast that would occur in such a strike means that any electronics would be down. The Russians also have the capability of cutting all cables, so those communications would be down. This would be a long-term cut, and it would be a problem that the southern sections also have to deal with in Canada.

The other parts that we have not prepared for in Canada are any form of emergency preparation for the residual radio activity that would inevitably occur. We used to have plans during the Cold War, when we recognized a similar threat. In 2022, most of these plans are either non-existent, or are so old as to not be practical.

I come back to the point that this is a low probability, but as we have experienced through the pandemic, to not be prepared for the very worst means it will only become that much worse in our overall context.

Moving ahead, we of course have to be able to begin and prepare for the existential threat that climate change will present for all Canadians, but northern Canadians and northern indigenous peoples, in particular. At the same time, we also have to prepare for the threat and the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange. It is unfortunate, but it is something that I think the evidence is increasingly pointing to.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Huebert.

We'll now go to Sara Brown. You have five minutes.

[Sara Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Northwest Territories Association of Communities]

My name is Sara Brown and I represent the NWT Association of Communities. I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. We represent all 33 communities in the NWT, and as such we are planning to discuss four key areas.

First of all, the use of smart military investment is the backbone for building the new north. This relates to some of what Mr. Huebert was saying earlier. Certainly all of the aggression in Ukraine is creating angst about Arctic sovereignty for residents of the NWT. It's been raised in the press and in the legislative assembly.

Canada devotes fewer resources to the protection of northern and Arctic regions than does any other major power in the world. Russia's most recent assertion of national interest at the North Pole has already caused general concerns in the NWT, and the actions in Ukraine have increased this concern.

We need to leverage military investment. This would lay the foundation for sustained growth and prosperity in northern communities while supporting Canada's long-term economic and military interests in the region. We need a vision for the north that integrates an increased military presence with building healthier communities, protecting the environment and diversifying the regional economies. This includes projects like the extension of the runway in Inuvik.

The pandemic has recently highlighted the north's vulnerability due to telecommunications challenges, whether in terms of online schooling, telehealth or virtual meetings. The development of a more robust communications network could not only assist the military and assert sovereignty but also greatly assist communities in enjoying a level of service that the rest of Canada takes for granted.

These conflicts have potential to recast the north as we know it and to bring about dramatic and wide-ranging change. The convergence of these issues has reawakened national interest in the north. The role and effect of these transformations on northern communities must now be part of the federal decision-making process.

Second is to develop a long-term plan to invest in northern infrastructure. Canada needs to provide the funding to build the infrastructure necessary to sustain communities and support new industry, tourism, research and military activities. Recent federal investments are helping, but they are not enough to build the modern infrastructure and transportation linkages that northern communities need to grow stronger and be more secure. In particular, these investments need to respond to indigenous aspirations in the north. These include investments in hydro and all-weather roads. Every effort must be made to complete these projects using local resources and contractors.

Third, we need to make Canada's north the world leader in climate change adaptation. Like the rest of Canada, NWT communities have been experiencing increased risk from wildfires, and ice jams have been causing unprecedented flooding for the last several years. For the second year in a row we have seen large and small communities alike impacted in ways they never have been before. Communities are responsible for providing the first layer of response during an emergency, but communities are going to require more and more support from the territorial and federal governments moving forward. Further, there is a need to clarify roles in communities in terms of community and indigenous governments.

Massive environmental change has the Arctic emerging as the poster child for the real-world impact of climate change. Northern communities have so many more and different risks from climate change than southern Canada does. They're not limited to flooding and wildfire but also include permafrost thaw, melting winter roads, eroding river banks, thawing coastlines, extreme weather, reduced access to the land, overland flow, and the list goes on.

The costs from only a few of these risks has been articulated. For example, the cost of decay of permafrost on public infrastructure is in the order of $1.3 billion, or $51 million per year. This is outside the capabilities of both community and the territorial governments, and this is just one risk and only public infrastructure.

Climate change funding to date has focused on data collection and design. It has been hugely oversubscribed in the NWT, and we have been focused on treating traditional and local knowledge with respect. There's soon going to be a need for far greater amounts as we head into the capital phases of adaptation and communities attempt to take a proactive approach.

Canada has the opportunity to make sure that the north is a world leader in climate change adaptation, and we have done recent work to demonstrate that the greatest economic stimulus from dollars spent is at a community level. Every $1 million spent by federal, territorial and community levels creates six, seven and 13 jobs respectively. This clearly demonstrates the benefits of providing funding through community governments. Further, this leads to developing and fostering northern capacity.

The longer we work on the climate change file, the more it has become evident that tackling climate change through risk-based partnerships is really the best approach. This leads to recommendation number four, which is to make partnerships official policy. Leaving community and indigenous governments to try to become experts in and to tackle the various challenges on their own is unrealistic. Further, it leads to much duplication.

We have used the risk-based partnership a couple of times, first, working to do a geotechnical review of the community assets of the seven communities most vulnerable to permafrost thaw. This has proven an effective approach, with a lower burden on the community, and the data can be aggregated. We have more recently done a joint application to the DMAF with the GNWT and the 29 impacted communities, to complete firebreaks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Brown. Could you wrap up very quickly, please?

[Sara Brown]

Finally, I'll just highlight the four things that I found in a 2010 report saying the same things: Use smart military investment; develop a long-term plan to invest in northern infrastructure; make Canada's north the world leader in climate change adaptation; and make partnerships official policy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

We'll now go to Mayor Nick Daigneault from Beauval.

Mr. Daigneault, you have five minutes.

[Nick Daigneault, Mayor, Northern Village of Beauval]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm both humbled and honoured to be able to present today, from a small village in northern Saskatchewan. I'd like to extend my thanks to our MP, Gary Vidal, for the invite to present today.

As mentioned, I am the mayor of the northern Village of Beauval, which is located roughly 500 kilometres north of Saskatoon, just to give some context. We are at the centre of two major highway arteries, Highway 155 and Highway 165, which makes us the centralized location for northwest Saskatchewan.

I've had an interesting 10 years in my time as a politician in northern Saskatchewan. Previously, as a councillor, I was much involved in the emergency measures coordination for the wildfires that happened in 2015. There were a lot of wildfires surrounding our community, not necessarily near, but close enough to cause worry. With the smoke, we had a significant number of community members who needed to evacuate. In recent years as well, we've had wildfires break out near the community, but none to the extent of 2015, when we had to do some minor emergency coordination as well with the Saskatchewan protection agency. We've since developed a great partnership with Saskatchewan now that they've amalgamated all their resources into the SPSA. We've been coordinating efforts on the ground and creating a good emergency team.

There have been a lot of lessons learned over the last few years, and we've decided that our village staff should become a very pertinent part of that emergency planning as well, so as not to rely too much on volunteer services in the community. We made sure that the resources were flowing to the community and that accurate information was being presented and disseminated to the community through social media posts as well as radio spots on our local TV and radio station. We've had some very good communication resources to utilize to get that proper information out to the community.

During this recent emergency, when we had the COVID pandemic, we had a real opportunity to create a government-to-government relationship with the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan. For the most part, this relationship started off very strong, and we were very proud to sit down with our Métis government to discuss the strategy for the communities.

Again, here is some background. Most of the communities, from Green Lake all the way up to La Loche along Highway 155, are predominantly Métis communities.

This also presented an opportunity to work with our surrounding first nations. We created Beauval as a staging area for the whole northwest region, to create a regional approach to the pandemic response. Through federal supports and relief funds, we were able to procure PPE here—purchases as well as donations—and food supplies for the homes, so that we had food security during this tough time when stores, including grocery stores, in the surrounding area were closing.

We were also able to procure rental RVs that were deployed when isolation events occurred. This was very much appreciated at a time when we had households that were already experiencing overcrowding. We did not want to experience outbreaks in the households. They were able to isolate the specific case and move to an RV for the time of isolation.

The partnership was working quite fine for the most part, until the months passed—unfortunately, politics tend to get in the way of great ideas sometimes—and then it appeared that agencies wanted to be the hero of the day and claim credit when it came to news media time. This was not our intent at the time, and it didn't become an issue until the later part of the pandemic, when requests for resources and the sharing of resources went unheard. This then became a concern for our community.

Municipalities are not necessarily given any sort of emergency response budget, so a lot of unrecoverable costs went into managing our communities to protect ourselves from an invisible threat. As you all know, this was not a wildfire situation, where we can see and assess the threat. We had to create some very impromptu responses, such as blockades, whereby we had to close entrances and exits to and from the community and funnel everybody through one entrance and one exit. They had to be screened coming in and out of their communities. We were not the only community to do this. This also happened in Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan, Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan, and La Loche, Saskatchewan.

We also had to hire nightly security, who did patrols to make sure that individual households were following the emergency measures laws that were created by the province for families to stay within their own bubble, with no mixing between households, to curb the pandemic. We had to create that nightly security detail that would create logs that would come to the mayor and council in the morning. They would sometimes warrant a visit from one of our community leaders or the RCMP themselves, to remind households and educate them that we were in the midst of a pandemic and that rules needed to be followed.

The introduction of the CERB money also made matters a little bit worse, especially in a community that's already struggling with addictions. This money, which was well intended, obviously, for those suffering job displacement or loss, was abused by so many individuals already on some sort of social assistance program, causing further incidents for our community and breaches of the pandemic orders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Mr. Daigneault, I will have to ask you to wrap up at this point, so we can get on with the questions.

[Nick Daigneault]

We wanted to ensure that there was a regional approach to this as the communities banded together at the beginning of this pandemic.

I really would like to see some sort of a federal response to bring all first nations, Métis communities, Métis governments and municipalities together, as we here in the northwest believe we have the ability to create a very strong regional emergency response team. We also have the resources and people to work with the existing Saskatchewan protection agency as well.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present this and give you a ground-level idea of how we responded.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

We'll now proceed with the first round of questions. I have Ms. Stubbs up for the first six minutes.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of the witnesses for being here.

Of course this motion is very diverse and wide-ranging. For my portion of the questions, I'm going to focus on the security threats relative to the people and communities in the north.

Dr. Huebert, in early April, you testified at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that “Russia is an existential threat to Canada”. You said that it is reaching the potential level of a crisis. You touched on this again today, and your testimony there noted that the most important element of that threat, which has been largely ignored, is the Russian way of war, in particular the potential use of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles and Russia's willingness to do so in order to achieve its policy objectives of putting it on a direct collision course with NATO.

I think your testimony at the public safety committee pertained to a general threat to Canada. I wonder if now, for this committee, as you did in your opening remarks, you could add some more details and context to the threat in particular for the people and communities in northern Canada. In addition to that, could you outline perhaps three to five top priorities that governments could move on immediately to get prepared?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Thank you very much for this opportunity, and thank you for paying such close attention to what I have been arguing for a long time.

The Russians have been a threat since the return of an authoritative governance in Russia. This was, of course, when Putin became acting president in 1999. What many people do not know is this: One of the first decisions Putin made, from a military security perspective, was to develop a series of weapons systems, as early as 2002 or 2003, that could challenge the American anti-ballistic missile system. In other words, they were clearly developing the capabilities to engage in the series of wars they have engaged in: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

How does this pertain to the north? It pertains to the north because the Russians clearly see the Americans as the greatest challenge they have in achieving their policy objectives. In order to meet the American challenge, they have developed a series of weapons systems—hypersonic Avangard missiles and underwater autonomous vehicles—that are all designed to take out the American capability of striking back. The ability of the Americans to strike back is based on their northern capabilities, which we share with the Americans under NORAD.

If the Russians were, in fact, to strike the Americans, to allow them to then escalate in other parts of Europe, the conflict would automatically spill over into the northern component of Canada. This is what's leading the Americans, under the leadership of General VanHerck, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, to talk about the concept of integrated deterrence. He has publicly stated that the Americans do not have the capabilities of detecting the new Russian delivery systems, and that these new Russian delivery systems are, in fact, designed to take out the American ability to know and the American ability to respond.

Thule and Elmendorf are two of their most important bases. These are in the north. Canada, as a member of NORAD, supports the Americans through co-operation at forward operating bases for our aircraft and such, and with our NORAD radar systems under what used to be known as the DEW Line. The North Warning System is also part of it. Therefore, a Russian strike to blind the Americans would inevitably require a strike on Canadian targets, as well.

Once again, I want to make this clear: This is not a high probability, but it is still something that is clearly in the Russian way of war.

You asked me what our priorities should be. The first, of course, is to take NORAD renewal seriously. We have, in terms of our detection system and radar, 1985 technology. We need over-the-horizon radar systems. We need an improvement in our satellite capabilities. I dare say that simply having the systems we have in place now, never mind maintaining them, is problematic.

We also have to show the Americans that we are serious. This committee is looking at sovereignty. As much as Russia is a direct and existential threat to Canada for the reasons I have just outlined, there is the ongoing possibility—as illustrated in comments made by Senator Sullivan two weeks ago—that American political leadership may see us as a “freeloader”. When that happens, the Americans will act on their own to provide themselves with the necessary security.

That becomes a sovereignty threat for all of Canada, therefore, particularly for northern Canadians. If the Americans feel they have to do something in the north, they will act accordingly when they believe—as I believe they already understand—the Russians to be an existential threat.

Ensuring our seriousness about NORAD is the first priority.

The second, in terms of the response of this committee, is to ensure we have the proper emergency plan in place. As I said, our COVID response—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Professor Huebert, you're going to have to wrap it up. It's been six minutes, so please wrap it up.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Second is the NORAD.... Get the procurement—the F-35s—and an emergency plan in place, one that goes beyond what we've been able to respond to.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much.

Just before we go to the next witness....

Mayor Daigneault, the IT people have asked if you could lift your head microphone closer to your nose, if that's possible. Thank you.

The next speaker is Mr. McLeod.

Mr. McLeod, you have six minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the presenters today. It has been a very interesting discussion, for sure.

I'm glad to see Sara Brown joining us. She always brings forward a lot of energy and many good ideas.

I wanted to ask about the north's preparedness when it comes to emergency situations. In the last three years in the Northwest Territories we have experienced quite a few floods in the communities. Last year we had seven, and we have had several this year. There's always the threat of forest fires, and many of the calls I get are from community leaders and individuals who are asking for information on the process and who is responsible for what, even when it comes to looting in the community after the community is evacuated. Sometimes the communities will be asking for the rangers, but the rangers don't have that mandate.

I want to ask Sara if she thinks that additional training opportunities and additional resources would help ensure that there is no confusion in the emergency situations that we've experienced.