Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 4th, 2022

[Steve Berna]

Thank you.

Mr. Weiler, it's a simple calculation. You take a look at the annual amount that Canada would supply to the FNFA to cover the principal and interest, and then you look at what today's interest rate is. Next, you take a look at the term you would like to pay it over. It's the same as when you go to buy a house. You take a look at your pay cheque and you say, “Can we pay it off in 15 years, 20 years or 25 years?” What's palatable for your cash flows?

Monetization is the same. The federal government would look at what's palatable for their cash flows over a long-term agreement.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much.

Committee members, that finishes round two. We have about 10 minutes left. We'll start round three, but we'll get through only a couple of speakers.

Mr. Vidal, you are first. You have five minutes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know that we have a bunch of accountants in the room—Mr. Calla, Mr. Berna, Mr. Daniels and me—so we could talk monetization and some of these things for probably 25 minutes, not five minutes. I want to be really quick and spend my five minutes looking at the first nations infrastructure institute and monetization.

In CIRNAC department plans since 2019, there has been mention of the creation of and support for a first nations infrastructure institute. That's several years. The data clearly shows that it takes five times longer to get a project built on a first nation. This is a barrier that needs to be removed.

I'll throw this question open to any of the folks here, but I think Mr. Jules spoke quite a bit about this. If there were one message that this committee could get in the final report to Parliament, what would it be regarding the first nations infrastructure institute and how it would be beneficial? How can we get this across the finish line? I guess that is fundamentally my question.

[Clarence T. (Manny) Jules]

Well, it's relatively simple: We need to empower first nations to look after themselves. In order to do that, we need certainty of jurisdiction and certainty of income. For me, being a tax promoter, it's taksis so that we would have independent revenues to be able to look after the infrastructure. We also need to have—clearly—federal legislation.

The message is clear: Let's move on. Of course, the preference would be to get this into the budget implementation act, but I don't think that will happen. Let's move this up as a priority. Let's get this job done before the summer. Have legislation in place so that we can stand up the institution and begin to do the necessary work. Otherwise, we're going to have yet another year of water that isn't potable and the lack of services within our communities.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you for that. We need to get this done. I appreciate the emphasis you put on that.

In the two minutes I have left, I'll flip over to monetization. In my opinion as kind of a numbers guy, there's clearly a correlation between the infrastructure institute and monetization. When we put those two pieces together, there are so many success stories that can be told, or would be told, out of that.

As far as I understand it from a prior presentation you made to us, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Berna, the minister has the legislative authority to sign off on a pilot project that could really show what the success of this project could be with regard to that concept of monetization. Do you have any idea why that hasn't happened? I know that you've been talking about this for a while. What is stopping this? What is the resistance? Why do we not get the approval for something that seems so obvious?

[Ernie Daniels]

It's a very good question. Simply put, the barrier we hear all the time is that there's a lack of government transfer for that. There is no funding available. There's no revenue available. But we know that there is, because there's $2 billion in there. You're building it slowly. With inflation this year, the cost of materials and everything has gone up. Really, construction costs are increasing over inflation, so it's really high dollars we're paying. The amount that's in the budget this year will only build maybe three-quarters of what it did last year and so forth. The idea is that we need to build it now—today—while we can, and take advantage of the costs today.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

I see that Mr. Calla has his hand up, so I won't ask another question. I want to let him have his input here.

[Harold Calla]

I think it's important to appreciate that the value of the infrastructure institute is to be able to utilize the monetization that hopefully will come, but it also provides value in looking at alternative procurement processes, such as public-private partnerships and stacking of revenues. If a first nation wants to use its own-source revenue, if it wants to use the money to provide infrastructure that's not just for domestic community use but also for economic development use, that needs to be enabled. The definition of what infrastructure is needs to be expanded. If you don't have connectivity to the Internet, you don't have an economy in today's world.

So a lot of policy issues have to be considered, but the main one is monetization of revenue streams and to not penalize a first nation if they choose to stack capital money from the department with their own money.

[Clarence T. (Manny) Jules]

I would say the biggest limitation is the lack of legislation. That's why we're promoting the first nations infrastructure institute. You can't get beyond piloting a monetization program without having the legislation in place. That's why we need the legislation ASAP.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

We seem to have lost the chair. I can keep asking questions if you want.

Maybe, Mr. Schmale, as the vice-chair, you might want to jump in here and cut me off.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

You can keep going, Gary.

Our next speaker—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I have a point of order, then.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Jamie—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

I'm only kidding.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I had a point of order I wanted to raise with the chair, so I hope we get him back. Until such time, I'll put my question to you.

Since the chair gave some witnesses more time to answer, members of other parties may have less time for their questions. I'd like to know whether we could keep going once the rounds are complete to restore the time that those members lost. I do realize, though, that we were hearing from the witnesses, so the time wasn't exactly wasted.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Is that a motion, Madam Gill?

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

We could extend for.... How many minutes did we lose? I wasn't keeping track of Gary. We can do one more round each....

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I didn't keep track either, but three people spoke.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Okay. Each party gets one.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Is that okay with you, Clerk? I can't see you on the screen.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Vanessa Davies]

Mr. Vice-Chair, I've just sent you the rounds of questions so that you can follow along and we can continue with the panel.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

All right. Did you send it to my P9 email address?