Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 14th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Hello.

Welcome to meeting number 26 of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

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

Today we are continuing our fourth study on Arctic sovereignty, security and emergency preparedness of indigenous peoples.

On today's first panel, we will be hearing from Professor Christian Leuprecht, Royal Military College of Canada, in person; and Mr. Calvin Pedersen, volunteer with Kugluktuk search and rescue operation, also in person. From the Canadian Red Cross, we have Sarah Sargent, vice-president, programs, emergency management; as well as Shelley Cardinal, director of indigenous relations.

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

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Members or witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services in English, French and Inuktitut are available for 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 it can be translated into French, and vice versa. The interpretation button is found at the bottom of your screen, if you're attending virtually, in English, French or Inuktitut. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately. We'll stop the proceedings and fix the problem.

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. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name, and if you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. Those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. When speaking, I would ask you to speak slowly and clearly to help the interpreters, and when you are not speaking, please put your mike on mute.

A reminder that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

As with all of our meetings where we invite witnesses, each witness will have five minutes for opening remarks. I would ask you to stick to those five minutes, which will be followed by a question period.

Without further ado, we will start our proceedings. I would ask Professor Christian Leuprecht to start us off.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht, Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

I will give my presentation in English, but feel free to ask me questions in the official language of your choice.

Scholarly thinking on environmental security and the role of the military in the American and Canadian Arctic has identified vulnerabilities of communities and Canadian sovereignty in light of the capacity to respond to large-scale civilian disasters. Much of the training and focus is conducted by agencies and organizations other than the Canadian Armed Forces, including civilian academics and American security agencies.

A recent CAF paper suggested that climate change will precipitate varying degrees of unprecedented activity in the north, with the CAF having to prepare to defend Canada's interests. This understanding of the importance of the armed forces' response to civilian disasters is arguably more developed in Canada's north than it is in its more southern military culture.

Based on Canada's experience with wildfires and climate change, particularly in northern and remote communities, assessments of security and safety over the past decade foresee a rise in challenges that require an integrated CAF response as part of a more comprehensive approach. The chief of force development notes that “successfully implementing Government policy in the North will mean setting the conditions for human safety and security as increasing economic development takes place”.

However, the Canadian Armed Forces has a distinctly ambiguous attitude towards domestic deployment. They have no plans to develop specialized units or military occupations to deal with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. On the one hand, the CAF seems quite content in the belief that general-purpose combat training provides all the capacity that's required. On the other hand, the armed services seem to believe that humanitarian relief and domestic missions threaten their combat role. There is little factual basis for this belief. While there have been large, recent demands for assistance because of wildfires and flooding as well as the pandemic, demands have been even greater in the past. Requests for assistance have grown in number, but they've required only minor quantities of resources for a shorter period of time.

We can sense a shift in thinking, even by the current chief of the defence staff, who, in October 2021, stated that, although it was an essential function of the CAF to defend the country, the pressure of domestic humanitarian relief operations had made it necessary to redefine “defend”. He held open the role of the reserves and the possibility that Canada needed troops dedicated to civil defence.

The army reserve maintains 10 domestic response companies and four Arctic response groups. This component, however, is plagued by high turnover and an inability to reach training standards and is available only on a case-by-case volunteer basis, so there are limits to how far the armed services can go in assigning a core policy role to the primary reserves without the government first addressing reserve problems with job security and availability. The armed services needs to ask itself whether a core role can be left without a permanent formation and occupational structure.

My submission then walks through how, among the eight tasks for the Canadian Armed Forces, the two that are left without a permanent force structure are assistance to civil authorities for law enforcement and the provision of assistance to civil authorities and non-governmental partners in responding to international and domestic disasters and major emergencies, which are dependent on retasking forces designed for combat or combat support, as in the case of the company-sized disaster assistance response team.

In the short term, the best option may be for the federal government to reprioritize, along with a slight formal expansion of the CAF, to support its domestic role by creating a combined capability of about 2,000 regulars concentrated on the Royal Canadian Air Force, which provides much of the regular force capability, and reserve soldiers, with an important Ranger component, to focus on improving infrastructure in remote first nations communities.

Some indigenous communities have gone on record to observe a fundamental need to engage in disaster response training that could be delivered as part of this liaison process. This combined force would spend most of the year liaising, planning and preparing to deploy to northern communities in the summer, but that could be postponed or rescheduled if they were called out to a flood or to a wildfire instead.

Such a dedicated domestic role has precedent. In the 1920s and 1930s and the postwar period, the Royal Canadian Air Force was tasked with mapping and charting Canada. During this process, the Royal Canadian Air Force generated skills and planes for bush pilots.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Professor Leuprecht.

We'll now ask Mr. Calvin Pedersen to give his opening remarks.

Mr. Pedersen, you have five minutes.

[Calvin Aivgak Pedersen, Volunteer, Kugluktuk Search and Rescue, As an Individual]

My name is Calvin Pedersen. I'm a long-time search and rescue, or SAR, volunteer in Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk, a former MLA for my community and a Canadian Ranger for 22 years. I have travelled approximately a quarter of a million miles on snowmobile, ATV, boat and on foot in my lifetime. Currently, I serve as a volunteer with Kugluktuk search and rescue. We have a ground SAR team and a coast guard auxiliary unit, although it's generally the same people in both. Through the dedication of all of our volunteer responders, we conduct SAR operations year round, but we are a small community with a small volunteer pool, which means that most of our members wear many hats. Some are GSAR, Coast Guard, volunteer fire and Canadian Rangers.

Look at Jack Himiak, our coordinator. He does all of the administration, the paperwork. He leads the fundraising and manages all ground and marine searches, alongside his full-time job.

Each community is extremely lucky to have a Jack—a jack of all trades, if you will—along with dedicated individuals to help when the time comes. Volunteer burnout is a real problem, made worse by a heavy caseload that is only increasing; a lack of training, equipment and funding; and no mental health supports for responders. We almost always know the people we are searching for or the bodies we are recovering.

We also have to deal with slow response times from southern-based SAR assets. This is true for all emergency and disaster events in our communities. Outside help is always hours or days away. Communities must be prepared to go it alone for extended periods. The Northwest Passage is getting busier, and increased traffic equals increased emergencies. This includes small pleasure craft, like that New Zealand sailing boat that was first spotted by Inuit marine monitor, Bobby Klengenberg, of Cambridge Bay in 2020.

These greenhorns will almost certainly add to our SAR workload. This traffic includes cruise ships with hundreds on board. If a cruise ship ran aground near our community, we would be the first responders and they'd be off-loaded into our community. Do we have the capacity? What if they eat all of the food in the community, or the rescue sucks up all of our fuel? What if they are injured? We don't even have enough medical assistance for our own community members. This is a big worry.

There are many SAR and emergency management challenges to overcome. Would federal SAR assets based in the region, particularly aircraft, help? Sure, but emergencies are always local. We need to build capabilities and resilience from the ground up. I'm a lead researcher on the Kitikmeot Search and Rescue project, working with community responders and academics Peter Kikkert and Whitney Lackenbauer to better understand the challenges we face and develop possible solutions. Our work has generated several cost-effective solutions that we think would make a big difference.

First, establish a permanent Inuit Nunangat or northern search and rescue round table that would bring community responders together with territorial and federal practitioners to work through the challenges and plan for complex scenarios like a mass rescue operation in the Northwest Passage. Inuit already feel responsible for these waters, so give us some responsibility for the planning.

Second, we need greater support for preventative search and rescue activities, including land safety courses and wilderness first aid built into the educational curriculum, which I had when I was young. Let's bring these courses back. They will decrease the number of searches for community members.

Third, our community responders need sustained funding and support. These groups save lives, while also providing the safety net we need to move, live and work safely on the land, water and ice. These groups support Canada's wider aims. Better protection of the passage by Inuit groups would show that we are here, we live here, and these are Canadian waters.

Finally, we believe it is time for the establishment of a community public safety officer program in Nunavut and across Inuit Nunangat. This program would provide communities with full-time public safety officers responsible for SAR prevention, preparation and response, and all-hazards emergency management and emergency medical services. Such a program would build off the local knowledge, Inuit qaujimajatuqangit, and the community relationships of the officers, while providing the space for the development of new capabilities.

They could lead the land safety classes in schools, make sure emergency plans aren't just gathering dust on the shelf, train volunteers, coordinate searches, conduct debriefings, drive the ambulance, work with private industry and perform a wide range of other emergency tasks.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Pedersen.

We'll now invite our guests from the Canadian Red Cross to give a five-minute opening statement.

I'm assuming that will be Ms. Sargent, but of course you can share your time.

You have five minutes.

[Shelley Cardinal, Director, Indigenous Relations, Canadian Red Cross]

Thank you.

My name is Shelley Cardinal. I am the director of indigenous relations at the Canadian Red Cross. I am joined today by my colleague Sarah Sargent, vice-president of programs, Canadian operations.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am Cree first nations, and I am joining you from the territory of the Lekwungen speaking peoples. I also want to acknowledge the land in which my colleague Sarah Sargent is currently situated and where this testimony is being heard—the unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.

The Canadian Red Cross has a long history of working alongside indigenous communities, having worked with close to 800 communities over 30 years. Each year, with increasing frequency and severity, we are seeing the growing impact of climate change on Canadian soil, particularly in indigenous and northern communities. As we speak, the Red Cross is supporting Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, which has once again been threatened by spring flooding, forcing more than 1,800 residents to be evacuated.

In recent years, we have embarked on unprecedented growth and expansion in our work with indigenous peoples. On average, the Red Cross now stewards over 500 relationships with indigenous communities each year.

At the Red Cross, we believe the time has come to stop treating large-scale events as exceptional. We also believe we must expand our view on security to include both catastrophic climate events and other crises, including social emergencies and social crises. These events often intersect with one another and threaten the security of individuals, families and communities. This includes precarious housing, food insecurity, displacement, increased violence and inadequate health and psychosocial services. Adequate tools and response and recovery systems are needed to address these realities.

Indigenous peoples are the most exposed to the effects of climate change, yet they have the fewest resources to adapt and mitigate its impacts. Northern communities in particular are witnessing significant changes to their environment that are affecting their health, livelihoods and safety.

The Red Cross recommends a number of actions to support indigenous and northern communities to reduce risk and prepare for and respond to climate-driven disasters and social emergencies.

Recommendation one is that the Government of Canada ensure that cultural safety is embedded in strategic planning, policy and program design and delivery. As indigenous people are the traditional stewards and caretakers of their land, we need to make space for indigenous world views and traditional practices that have guided their communities since time immemorial and fully understand historical harm and the impacts of trauma.

A holistic view of a crisis is rooted in cultural safety. Cultural safety also recognizes the inherent right to self-determination for indigenous peoples, as communities can identify what is important for their security, protection and preservation of cultural practices. Our experience supporting communities has shown that responding to disasters and emergencies, particularly social emergencies, in a culturally safe way is vital.

Recommendation two is that the Government of Canada better support indigenous leaders in preparedness, risk reduction including adaptation, and response activities to climate-driven disasters and social emergencies. This includes programming to create readiness capacity and contribute to prevention education, as well as more investments in indigenous innovation, research and development in disaster response and recovery efforts as well as risk reduction and adaptation in order to support communities to develop their infrastructure to respond effectively and recover.

Part of the Canadian Red Cross's mandate is to support indigenous leaders in responding to disaster and reducing risk by building local capacity for emergency preparedness in a culturally safe way. For example, with the support of Indigenous Services Canada, the Red Cross launched the indigenous helpdesk for indigenous leaders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing critical resource information and referrals as well as one-on-one guidance to indigenous leaders virtually. This program continues to provide risk reduction support in response to climate-driven disasters.

Recognizing indigenous rights, and inclusive of community input at all times, the Red Cross and the Assembly of First Nations have established a relationship protocol to undertake joint efforts in the development of strategies and initiatives intended to advance and improve first nations' quality of life and well-being in accordance with the Red Cross mandate to alleviate human suffering.

It is critical that responders reflect the communities they serve and support. The Red Cross is actively working to increase the representation of indigenous personnel across our organization. At the helpdesk, we provide services in eight different indigenous languages and 80% of our virtual responders identify as indigenous.

Our recommendation three is that, in an increasing digital world and learning from the success of COVID-19 virtual interventions, the Government of Canada invest in virtual programming and improve digital infrastructure for indigenous and northern communities to ensure that humanitarian organizations like the Canadian Red Cross can provide critical prevention, risk reduction and response services virtually.

Barriers to digital infrastructure means that limited connectivity is impacting the ability to respond to emergencies and contribute towards disaster, crisis and emergency prevention efforts virtually. Virtual tools are an important component in emergency management efforts. For example, to help and prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Red Cross was able to support epidemic prevention and control measures using virtual walk-throughs and to provide guidance through virtual Q and As.

We also respond to social emergencies through online psychological first aid training and other virtual supports. To support the growing relationship in indigenous communities across Canada, and particularly in the north, and to be able to provide effective prevention, risk reduction and response activities, virtual support is essential.

Our partnership with nations across Turtle Island have made it—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Ms. Cardinal, I'm going to ask you to wrap up so that we can get to questions.

[Shelley Cardinal]

Okay.

Our partnerships with nations across Turtle Island have made it clear the responsibility for reconciliation lies with the government and their partners, and accountability needs to be tied to communities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Cardinal.

We'll now go to the first round of question.

I have Mr. Viersen up for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the honourable witnesses for joining us here today.

Calvin, I want to thank you for all your service in the north for sure.

Christian, I'll start with you.

I was just wondering if you could give us an assessment, particularly given we are neighbours with Russia despite us not necessarily thinking about it. Do you have any expertise or opinions around what the threat is and how prepared the Russians are on their northern border compared to us?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

My friend and colleague, Robert Huebert, who you probably know, will be able to provide you with a much more detailed breakdown than I'll be able to, but certainly I would say one of the challenges in the north is that Russia, as an adversary, currently has the initiative. We need to think about how we can regain the initiative. I think everything you've heard here from the various witnesses are ways of us regaining the initiative, rather than being on our back foot, and being proactive in how we invest strategically to advance both our national security objectives but also our human security objectives.

If you ask northern communities what their understanding of security is, it is very different from our southern understanding or from your and my understanding—focused around issues of food security, for instance. I think we can reconcile these with the various interventions you've heard here, while at the same time being more proactive in deterring and containing the initiative of our adversaries, in particular Russia.

But I would also remind you that, of course, as you know, China has been quite active in our Arctic domain.

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

My next question was around China.

Do you have any specific examples of what Russia is doing in the north that we should be aware of?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Russia has made significant investments in the north. It appears that for now Russia is done with the investments they have provided, in particular in resuscitating significant numbers of Soviet capabilities and installations, as well as a more significant forward deployment of resources. One of the concerns that should also be of interest to this committee is where Russia has essentially decided that, in the northern passage around Russia, which is technically international waters, Russia now requires Russian ships to accompany any ships that use that northern passage and is charging fees for that privilege.

This, again, shows that there is a disregard by our adversaries for international norms and international law when it comes to how we manage these very challenging, as well as scarce, resources in the north. Canada needs to, I think, double down on making sure it has the capacity to insist on the commonly agreed-upon norms, conventions and legal imperatives because those will have adverse effects on local communities when they are not being adhered to.

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

Switching to China, can you give us a fairly concrete example of what China is doing in the area?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

There is considerable concern about China's resource exploitation—fishing resource exploitation and other potential natural resource exploitation—in international waters in the north.

As we know, these Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems are extremely fragile. If you disturb them.... We know what the consequences were when fish stocks collapsed in other parts of the country. If we have active overfishing or other resource exploitation that is not extremely carefully managed, it will have, for decades, adverse consequences on the ability of local communities to sustain their lifestyles and cultures.

This is why it is important for us to have surveillance and intervention capacities—if we believe outsiders are engaged in activity not commensurate with our interests or with international agreements or law—and the ability to enforce those. We can't always rely on our U.S. neighbour, because, as we know, their security resources are in very high demand these days. We need to make sure we have our own assets and the capability to assert our interests and the interests of our northern co-citizens.

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

In terms of natural gas and oil reserves in the north, do you see China trying to access any of that?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

We have already seen China aggressively attempting to invest in mining capacity in northern Canada, in ways that triggered national security concerns in the federal government. We have concrete evidence that China is not just actively eyeing but also trying to find mechanisms to access our natural resources.

Of course, Canada, having three trillion-dollar natural resource industries—oil, gas and agriculture—and being among the tiny number of countries having the wealth of three such natural resources, must be prepared for the fact that China will aggressively attempt to access all three of those resources.

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

Do you have a clear recommendation for combatting that?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Certainly, any investment we can make in the north is significant.

What we need to keep in mind and what is often forgotten—my colleagues here can speak to this—is that it's about 10 times more expensive to do anything in the north than in the south, because of the challenges around infrastructure, skills and so forth. I don't think we take that into account when we allocate budgets, either for military training and Rangers or engaging in northern development.

Those costs are going to rise with the rapid impacts of climate change on a rapidly shifting geography in the north. As a huge country with a tiny tax base, Canada has limited resources. We need to be very strategic about how we invest those resources to ensure we advance our security interests and northern development.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Viersen.

Go ahead, Mrs. Atwin.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today for joining us, especially Mr. Pedersen, because of the long trek to get here.

You mentioned some of the burnout that occurs with volunteers. There's already such a small pool to draw from. Are there any mitigation efforts or supports that exist, or that you would like to see exist, to help support volunteers for search and rescue?

[Calvin Aivgak Pedersen]

Right now, there's very little support for everybody, and I would like to see a lot more support.

As I said earlier, we most often know the people we're searching for or the bodies we are recovering, and we're pretty much left on our own to deal with things afterwards. To have someone professionally help us out would mean a lot. It would do a lot for the community members and the search and rescue volunteers. We don't even do debriefings afterwards. We go home and do our own thing. These guys are very strong and capable of doing this.

I think that's why there's a very small volunteer pool. It takes a different kind of person to do this. Imagine looking for somebody you've known all your life and you find a body. That's very hard on a person. Then, you go home and you're left alone to deal with it in your own way. To have professional help would mean a whole lot to the whole north.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

You also mentioned a lot of long-term and short-term goals as far as ameliorating the situation. You mentioned preventative education. I think you're the first witness to bring that forward.

I'd like you to touch more on that. Could you expand on what kind of education programs would be the most beneficial to deploy to try to be more preventative?

[Calvin Aivgak Pedersen]

I was part of one of the last groups where we actually received firearms safety training in school—in class. I think it was in grade school. I also got wilderness first aid. There was an outdoor leadership program that one of my teachers spearheaded, which was great. I owe a lot of my skills to that. It helped me a lot in the quarter of a million miles I've put on so far.

The earlier we teach the children, the better. They can take that knowledge and run with it and work with each other. Starting early is the best.

You have schools here that teach driver education. I believe it's just as important to have firearms education in the north as driver education.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you.

What role would provincial and territorial governments have in some of these initiatives for some of those long-term and short-term goals?