Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I call this meeting to order, please.

Good afternoon and welcome to meeting number 31 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 will conclude our fourth study, which pertains to Arctic sovereignty, security and emergency preparedness of indigenous peoples.

On today's first panel we will hear from Meeka Atagootak, an elder who is here as an individual. We will hear from Merrill Harris, who is a reeve in the Municipal District of Taber, Alberta, and from Mr. Kurt Eby, who is director of regulatory affairs and government relations for the Pelmorex Corporation.

Each of our witnesses will have five minutes for opening remarks, and then we will go to questions.

To ensure the orderly flow of this 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. Please be patient with the interpretation. There may be a delay, especially since Inuktitut has to be translated first into English and then into French, and vice versa. The interpretation button is found at the bottom of your screen and you can listen in either English or French. If interpretation is lost, let us know and we'll try to fix the problem before we carry on.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

With that, before we go to questions, we will have the witnesses' opening statements. I would now like to invite Elder Atagootak to start us off for five minutes.

[Meeka Atagootak, Elder, Hamlet of Pond Inlet, As an Individual]

[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

My name is Meeka Atagootak from Pond Inlet.

In 2010, a water truck ran into our house. The house has been damaged ever since and has started to flood.

We tried to have it repaired last year, but we started having health problems with skin conditions. We had to go constantly to the health centre. The house was deteriorating. The metal turned black. We try to keep it clean, but we haven't been successful.

We got help from the housing corporation, but they are very slow in repairing anything, and nothing has been done to the building ever since.

The staff of the Hamlet of Pond Inlet investigated the building, and we had to move out of our house. We moved to government housing for eight months. It has been a difficult year. Things moved slowly, so we stayed there at the government housing for a year.

Right now, they aren't working on the pipes and the bottom part of the building, the wood foundation, is very soft where the toilet area is in the bathroom. The housing corporation is looking into this at this time, but it would be very encouraging if you can push and get decisions when these types of things happen for us who are living in the north.

We have many children and grandchildren in my home. It's an emergency. In the past month, it has been an emergency because I haven't got any response about my urgent requests. The people who are living in the north should really be given a priority in consideration of this type of thing. It's not acceptable to be living in that condition.

There is mould in pretty much every house up there. Because of that, the housing corporation should be encouraged to help communities. I am now widowed and I have nobody to help me. It's been a struggle when nobody is really taking care of us.

Since the collision happened, it's been a slow process. Today the bottom of the building is flooded again. I don't know how long we're going to wait to have that repaired.

I encourage you to help the people who own their own homes in the north. With owning our own home, sometimes the paint wears off around the house. We cannot do our own painting. The emergency cases especially should be handled promptly. We don't have any insurance to cover the repair.

We have cardboard that's being used. I put the cardboard around where the mouldy parts of the building are. That's how we are in our home. There are rusting metal pipes, which are hard to keep clean. We just cover it up with cardboard.

Those of us who own our homes are neglected by the housing corporation, so we get sick, and those are the emergency cases. We try hard to keep our homes clean, but sometimes they have to be replaced. Once you replace them, they easily deteriorate again.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Elder Atagootak, and thank you for coming all the way from Pond Inlet to give your testimony today.

We will now go to our second speaker, Merrill Harris, reeve of the Municipal District of Taber.

Mr. Harris, you have five minutes.

[Merrill Harris, Reeve, Municipal District of Taber]

Honourable chairman and members of the committee, as we begin today, I would like to acknowledge that the land the MD of Taber is on and the lands in the projects I'm going to describe today are Treaty 7 lands. I acknowledge those whose ancestors walked and lived on this land.

We would also like to acknowledge that as part of the process with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, we have had to have consultations with numerous indigenous groups regarding the Horsefly emergency spillway, which I'm going to try to describe here today.

I believe your discussion today is around emergency preparedness. I want to thank my own MP, Mr. Martin Shields, MP for the Bow River riding, who has invited me to explain what the Southern Regional Stormwater Drainage Committee is doing to prepare for emergencies.

In 2010, southern Alberta experienced a one-in-a-hundred-years rain event in both the eastern and the western portions of the province. In 2011, while the rainfall amounts were less than what we experienced in 2010, there was significant flooding in many hectares or acres of land. These events led to the discussion between the reeve of the municipal district and the chairman of the St. Mary River Irrigation District on how the main canal of the irrigation district could be used as a conduit to move this excess water off farmland and minimize the effects of flooding.

As you might know, an irrigation district is designed to deliver water to farmland and not as a means to accept flood waters. Irrigation canals get smaller as they move east, as they deliver water to farms along the way. Drainage canals need to get bigger as they move east to accept more drainage water.

A quick example of the size and amount of water that's carried in this canal is where the canal leaves the Chin Reservoir, southwest of Taber. It has a capacity of about 110 cubic metres per second, or roughly 29,000 gallons of water per second. When the canal reaches west of Medicine Hat, Alberta, its capacity has been reduced to about 8.5 cubic metres per second, or about 2,000 gallons per second, so the canal significantly decreases in size over that 250-kilometre stretch of main canal.

The Municipal District of Taber spearheaded the drainage project and brought onside the counties of Lethbridge, Warner, Cardston, 40 Mile and Cypress, as well as the towns of Taber, Coaldale and Bow Island, the city of Medicine Hat, the St. Mary River Irrigation District and Taber Irrigation District, Alberta Environment and Parks, Alberta Transportation and Alberta Agriculture. This has been the makeup of our committee since 2013.

The committee was able to secure funding to do a regional drainage study for the area, which encompasses over two million acres of land. Over 500,000 acres of that land in the study area is very high-value, irrigated land, producing diverse crops such as potatoes, sugar beets, seed canola, alfalfa, timothy hay, vegetables and numerous other specialty crops that are the economic engine of southern Alberta.

The study was completed in 2014 and identified seven projects that would help reduce the flooding risks in the area. The total cost for all of the projects in 2014 dollars was about $152 million. With inflation and so on, the estimated cost for all seven projects is now about $169 million.

The Horsefly emergency spillway was identified as a top project to start with, at a point about 10 miles southeast of the town of Taber. The St. Mary River Irrigation District main canal is closest to the Oldman River, a place where the excess drainage water can be returned to a natural river basin.

Also at this point on the main canal is the first downsizing in the canal since leaving the Stafford Reservoir, south of Chin, Alberta. The capacity at this point is 110 cubic metres per second, and the plan is to divert about 47 cubic metres per second out of the main canal and into the diversion or spillway. This will leave the main canal able to pick up more drainage water as the canal continues eastward.

In reality, this project has two purposes. The first is to drain flood waters off private land, using the SMRID main canal as the delivery method. The second is to protect the St. Mary River Irrigation District main canal from a breach or a washout by diverting the excess water back to the river.

This main canal is the lifeblood of southern Alberta irrigated agriculture. Economic devastation would happen if the canal's ability to deliver water was lost for a growing season, or even part of a growing season.

Again, the two purposes of the project are to drain flood water off the land and to protect the main canal's ability to deliver irrigation water in an efficient and timely manner.

In the spring of 2018, we had another flooding event. There was a lot of snow over the winter and a quick melt. We almost lost the main canal. It was almost breached by the volume of flood waters entering that main canal. It was the worst overland flooding that the MD of Taber had ever experienced. We were in a state of local emergency for 50 days due to the flooding.

A call for tenders for phase 1 of this project has now been put out. That closes on October 13 of this year, and we still hope to get construction started this year. Phases 2 and 3 of the project are in the engineering design stages, and we hope to get those tendered and constructed starting next year.

I'm sure that I'm over my five minutes already, so I would take questions anywhere along the line.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

We'll now go to Mr. Eby from the Pelmorex Corporation.

Sir, you have five minutes.

[Kurt Eby, Director, Regulatory Affairs and Government Relations, Pelmorex Corp]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As introduced, I'm Kurt Eby. I work at Pelmorex Corporation. I think most of you would know us more by our popular brand names The Weather Network and MétéoMédia in Quebec. These are our primary businesses.

What I'm here to talk about is another thing that we lead and do for the country. In 2010, as a condition of our broadcasting licence, we built what we call the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination system, or the NAAD system, which is the technical component of the national public alerting system. Originally it processed alerts that were distributed on TV and radio, so we're talking about Amber Alerts and alerts for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flooding and forest fires. I'm sure everyone is probably familiar with these now, especially because in 2018 we launched the wireless alerting component of that system. That's increased its presence in people's hands and in people's homes.

We're effectively the technical vendor of the alerting system. We have two roles. One is the technology. We take direction from authorized government agencies—basically all the emergency management organizations in the provinces, as well as Environment and Climate Change Canada and Public Safety Canada—on technical upgrades to the system. We are also the system administrator, which means we have agreements and manage the accounts of every province and territory and Environment and Climate Change Canada right now. That's what we're here to talk about.

We manage those accounts based on who has the jurisdiction to issue an emergency alert. Environment Canada issues tornado alerts anywhere in the country. Most public safety jurisdiction falls to the provinces and the territories, which is why we have contracts and accounts with the provinces and territories, and they decide who can and cannot issue alerts within those jurisdictions, and for what. There is a mix of ways in which those are administered. Saskatchewan has many issuers. In Ontario, the OPP issues Amber Alerts and active shooter or dangerous person alerts on behalf of other police agencies, and then everything else is through the provincial EMO. It varies from province to province, for a number of reasons.

On a jurisdictional basis, we can't give an account to a police agency, because if you were an emergency management organization for a province and all of a sudden a police agency started issuing alerts and you didn't know, obviously they would be jumping over that jurisdiction.

What we are here to discuss today is something we have been discussing internally and with some of our colleagues and those we work with: It's the concept of Pelmorex taking on administration of accounts for first nations that want them, for which we would get direction from the federal or provincial governments or some combination of the two. This is where we're uncertain.

We understand that first nations do have an amount of sole jurisdiction. First nations and indigenous affairs fall largely under the federal government; right now public safety on first nations falls largely under the provincial government. That's something we wanted to start talking about to see how we could do that. We would be taking on greater responsibility for administering accounts and helping folks get up and running on the system.

The alert system is very customizable, so any issuer can have permissions set for them. Those might say that they could issue alerts for only, say, forest fires and floods and that police agencies would handle other types of alerts, or something like that. There is a lot of customization available. Definitely one thing to keep in mind is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution in any account across the country. We see a variety of approaches used and we help to facilitate those.

This is something I'm really looking forward to speaking with the committee members about.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Eby.

We'll now go to the questions in the first round, starting with the Conservatives.

Mr. Shields, you have six minutes.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

I appreciate all the witnesses being here today.

I think that final comment made by Mr. Eby—“no one size fits all”—is what we're really hearing in the variety of witnesses we have here today when we're talking about emergency management and communication.

It's great to have you witnesses here.

As Reeve Harris mentioned in terms of his area just to the north of him, while people remember the flooding that happened in 2013 in Calgary, what they obviously don't know or remember is that the flood water went past Calgary and hugely affected the Siksika Nation and the Eastern Irrigation District. They got together afterwards and built an emergency dam to take care of flood water in that area, and that has now been completed.

Mr. Harris, you're an agriculture producer, right?

[Merrill Harris]

Yes, that's correct, Martin.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You understand this in the sense of a producer as well as in the sense of a person in municipal government. As you organized, I know that you were involved in emergency management. There are two pieces to my question.

First, how did emergency management work and how did it resolve the issue at the time? Then, once you built the plan, in working with the other groups that weren't directly on the land, such as Kainai Nation to the west of the Blackfoot Confederacy, there was consultation that followed up with them as well.

Could you do those two parts?

[Merrill Harris]

As a result of the flooding in 2010 and 2011, the council—I wasn't on council at the time—brought together the Municipal District of Taber and the counties of Lethbridge, Warner, Forty Mile and Cypress, because we were all affected one way or the other by this overland flooding. As I said, this committee has worked tirelessly in the past eight to 10 years to get this project off the ground, and we're finally there.

As far as the indigenous part of it goes, we have consulted with numerous first nations to get their approval and their blessing on doing this project, and they've given their blessing to it. They are interested in being part of the construction part of it, if that's possible, probably in the subtrades. We have been keeping them in mind throughout this whole process.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

The process you're referring to, in a sense, is returning the water to its natural watercourse, which is the Oldman River. One of the things that people may not understand—and that you probably do, from living in that area—is that returning water or flood waters being in a river basin actually keeps the river environment healthier.

From your experience, is that something that you could relate to from what you know?

[Merrill Harris]

Yes. The St. Mary River main canal kind of acts as a dam through southern Alberta. It blocks somewhat the natural flows of water back to the river basin. By doing this project, in flood years we're returning water back to the natural river basin that is held up as a result of the St. Mary River main canal as it goes across the land. It kind of impedes the natural drainage flows, and most farmers don't like their land being flooded, especially when there's a crop on it, so the idea is to get that water off the land and fields as quickly as possible. This emergency spillway helps get the water back more quickly to where the water would naturally flow.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You mentioned a bit about agriculture. From my understanding, 4% of the land in Alberta produces upwards of 20% of the agriculture GDP. This is a critical aspect when we're talking about food security in this country. This is a critical project.

[Merrill Harris]

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, there are lots of potatoes grown in this area, and sugar beets, seed canola, timothy and all those kinds of high-value crops. A potato crop or a sugar beet crop, for example, doesn't take long to die or to become unmarketable when it's under water.

We were doing a harvest the other day for potatoes. When the potatoes are on the side of those pivot track ruts, they're often very soft and gooey. One of the jobs of the graders is to pull those kinds of potatoes out of the line, because they're unmarketable. If your whole field is under water, your potato crop becomes unmarketable pretty quickly when it's under water like that.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

As the only area left in Canada that's actually growing sugar beets and has a sugar factory, this is the only place left where that sugar can actually be refined.

[Merrill Harris]

That's correct. Taber has the only beet sugar refining plant left in all of Canada. The other growing areas have all shut down over the years. We produce between 8% and 10% of the Canadian sugar market demands, and most of it is marketed here in western Canada. Some of it gets down into the U.S. in TRQs, but most of it is here for the market in western Canada, and it's the only place left in Canada that produces domestically grown sugar.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you for explaining your emergency management. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Reeve.

[Merrill Harris]

You bet. Thank you, MP Shields.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Shields.

We'll go to Mrs. Atwin for six minutes.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today, and to our committee members for joining.

I have a few questions that might be a little all over the place, so I'll try to direct them to each of you individually. Maybe I'll start with Mr. Eby.

You mentioned that there are customization options for these kinds of alerts. Has there been a request at all to have indigenous languages incorporated to ensure that everyone is able to access these alerts?

[Kurt Eby]

I can't remember a request for it. The NAAD system has supported four indigenous languages since it was built in 2010, those being Cree, Dene, Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut. I believe the Inuktitut feature has been used for some of the test alerts in Nunavut, but the others have not been used in a live alert.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harris, you mentioned consultations with indigenous communities when you're preparing, developing and rolling out projects. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more of an explanation about what that looks like and if you have advice for other municipalities on how to have a successful engagement to include indigenous voices.

[Merrill Harris]

As I said earlier, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, which we have to work with, required.... We consulted with the following Treaty 6 nations: the Samson Cree Nation, the Louis Bull nation, Montana First Nation and the Ermineskin Cree Nation. We also consulted with, from Treaty 7, the Stoney-Nakoda Nations, the Tsuut'ina, the Siksika and the Piikani nations, the Foothills Ojibway First Nation and the Métis Nation of Alberta. They were all given the information on what we were doing and were invited to come down here. Three of them actually visited the site and gave their blessing to what was happening here.

As I said, some of the ones who were here who provided letters of response indicated they'd be interested in participating on the construction side of things if that was ever possible, so once the tender is awarded, they'll be notified of who got the general contract, and then they can see if they can work with the general contractor to provide labour, skills and resources in the construction process.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Excellent. Thank you.

Are you seeing the same level of preparation in neighbouring municipalities? How can the Government of Canada best support you in these efforts?