Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 15th, 2023

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

After reading the report, I also get the impression that the two departments are putting out fires and spending more, while also reducing their staff. Would you agree that aligning human resources with planned budgets could improve the overall management of both departments? Would that help them better achieve their objectives?

[Yves Giroux]

That's a good point as well. I believe that the additional investments and expenditures made over the years, that is to say the additional funding allocated to the two departments, have made it difficult to plan their human resources. For example, if they anticipate at the beginning of a year that the funding will be a relatively stable amount of a few billion dollars over the next few years, but then a budget or an announcement provides them with additional funding, that completely or significantly changes their staffing plans.

Additional funding over the years has made it harder to plan, because departments have probably focused their efforts on recruitment, not only to replace people who have left their jobs, but also to fulfill their mandates as they receive additional funds through budgets, fall economic updates or other one-time announcements. Departments are therefore constantly looking for additional resources to fulfill their mandate.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Was it worse in previous years?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have two and a half minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My friends, unfortunately this is my last round. They're bringing in the big guns—the honourable member from Nunavut has returned—so I'll have to depart after this.

Before I do, to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, I do want to clarify my point on the important difference between what your report says and what the indigenous services ministry or Crown-Indigenous Relations is doing.

I want to be clear that although significant investments have been made, those targets within the ministry itself have not been allocated—we just previously talked about that—to all of the areas from which indigenous people would actually derive benefit. We've talked about emergency management and the $12 million. Even though there's a bunch of money elsewhere, there is $12 million to tackle climate change for indigenous communities. They're critically underfunded.

After reinforcing that point, I do now want to move to the issue you just mentioned, which is the immense lack of human resources. It's no secret that this work is difficult. It's no secret that in the age of reconciliation, as was mentioned by our Conservative colleagues, truth is a big part of that. It's the human resource emergency that is facing Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations that is having a disproportionate impact, a direct impact, on the lived experiences of indigenous people. Whether it's housing, whether it was COVID, which was mentioned, or whether it's the existing lack of funding for prevention and for climate change mitigation, there are issues that are critical to the socio-economic outcomes that we're still seeing in indigenous communities.

In your recommendation, in some ways beyond human resource issues, is it fair to say that when it comes to the process of the government requesting finances, they actually make those requests in light of the human resources need? For example, you mentioned that they did the parliamentary budget cycle fine and they went to the ministry. The ministry reported what they needed but it was unable to actually deliver those things.

In your review of those documents, did they cite the actual human resource need in a way that recognized the actual immense emergency in terms of human resource challenges in the ministries?

[Yves Giroux]

We use publicly available data. HR was not explicitly mentioned in this publicly available data.

When we released a report last year, I'm not aware that the departments reached out to us and specifically mentioned that HR was the number one issue they were faced with. It is one of the issues they're faced with, but they didn't berate us for not mentioning HR or flag that as inaccurate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Desjarlais.

We will go to Mr. Zimmer for five minutes.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Giroux, thank you once again for attending INAN.

My questions are going to be about Arctic sovereignty.

I spoke to you earlier about your report on the 2%. I have it here in front me. It's called, “Canada's Military Expenditure and the NATO 2% Spending Target.” That's what I'll be referring to.

For context, I'm going to read an article. I've spoken with a lot of people from the territories and Nunavut who are very concerned about the Arctic threat of Putin and other nations that see the Arctic as an area to possibly challenge Canada and its sovereignty.

This is from a Reuters article on January 27, 2023, entitled “Putin discusses Russia's claim to giant chunk of Arctic Ocean seabed.” It states:

President Vladimir Putin held talks on Friday with top security officials about the status of Russia's efforts to legally expand the outer boundaries of its continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean....

Moscow said at the time it wanted much more Arctic seabed, a move that has implications for Canada and Denmark who [also] have their own claims.

Russia's neighbours in the Arctic have become increasingly concerned about Moscow's ambitions in the strategically important region since it sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February last year.

It goes without saying that Russia is currently on the move. Where they're going to go next is I think the next question.

In your testimony today—you talked about it already and we've heard it from various members here—the outcomes for this government are a problem. We see it as money thrown at things, but it doesn't necessarily land. Outcomes aren't measured. As we just spoke about, there isn't even a dartboard to throw the dart at. There's no target to even hit.

It brings up a leak that came out of the Pentagon—I was at the Pentagon a few weeks ago—that the Prime Minister said he's never going to meet the target.

This is from the Washington Post: “Trudeau told NATO that Canada will never meet [its] spending goal”. It says, “Germany is concerned” and “Turkey is 'disappointed'”.

Well, it appears from your report that this promise to never meet the goal is in plain sight too. I'm just concerned about how much lower it is than even this threshold.

Your report, on page 4, says, “military expenditure as a percentage of GDP”. In 2022-23, it's 1.33%. Next year it's 1.46%. The next year it's 1.51%. The next year it's 1.54%. The next year it's 1.59%.

The problem is that's the promise. I'll refer you to the estimates. Again, one thing that the northern communities are concerned about is NORAD. The NORAD modernization promise is big, with a lot of fanfare. It's $4.9 billion. This is what was in the estimates. The promise of funding for North American Aerospace Defence Command modernization and Canadian Armed Forces communications capabilities was for $4.9 billion. The actual expenditure is $45,357,526.

You talk about an outcome not being realized. There are billions needed and millions are being spent.

To analyze the situation, this is my question for you: Does the PM's record on military spending give you confidence that spending on Arctic sovereignty and security is on track?

[Yves Giroux]

We did that report after Russia invaded Ukraine. There were lots of questions about the NATO target of hitting 2% of GDP allocated to national defence.

We looked at the plans that were known at that time for military expenditures. We found that there was a gap of between $13 billion and $18 billion per year for Canada to meet the 2% NATO target.

I can't comment specifically on one area of spending because I'm not a military expert. However, there is a gap between the spending plan and the 2% target.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you for that.

I have 30 seconds left.

I'll refer to the Auditor General's report on Arctic water surveillance. In the conclusion it said, “We concluded that the federal organizations we audited”—and it goes through them—“had not taken the action required to build the maritime domain awareness they collectively needed to respond to safety and security risks associated with increasing vessel traffic in Arctic waters.”

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

I'm trying to understand. This is fascinating, but I call a question on relevance to the hearing that we're doing today.

We've invited the Parliamentary Budget Officer here specifically, as the notice of meeting says, “on the Research and Comparative Analysis on the Estimates of the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs and the Department of Indigenous Services”. We're not here to talk about the Prime Minister's spending on defence and other things. There's Arctic sovereignty, if it's framed within the context of the study, but I'm not seeing any relevance.

I'm wondering if you could give us a ruling on this.

I know there's not a lot of time left, but—

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Hopefully, I still have a little bit of time left after that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

You have about five seconds of your time, but you can reply to that if you'd like.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I was in the midst of making a comment. I had 15 seconds left on my clock when I was asked.

The relevance is there. I asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer when I came in if I could refer to his report on 2% NATO spending. My role in the indigenous and northern affairs committee is Northern affairs, Arctic sovereignty and northern economic development, which are very relevant to the people of the north and very relevant even to the Parliamentary Budget Officer sitting at the end of the table.

I think it is relevant.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Fair enough.

I'll give you your 15 seconds.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll just finish with this:

Furthermore, the existing satellite services and infrastructure did not provide the capacity that the federal organizations needed to perform surveillance of Arctic waters. Delays in the renewal of satellites, ships, and aircraft risks compromising the presence of these organizations in Arctic waters.

I think this is, again, one of those outcomes that we need to see realized for our own sovereignty and security.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jenica Atwin]

Thank you, Mr. Zimmer.

We'll now move on to Mr. McLeod for five minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the the PBO for appearing and talking to us today.

I'm trying to follow how the report includes the north. I'm the member for the Northwest Territories and I'd like to know how you put your report together. What information is it based on? What information do you gather from the north? Do you include the indigenous communities in the north? That's my first question.

[Yves Giroux]

Thank you.

I'll ask Mark to respond to your question because he was much more closely involved in the drafting of the report.

[Mark Mahabir]

Thank you for the question.

We used two sources of information for the report. The first source was the government's open government data source, which is online. The second source was the departmental plans of the two departments. Those were the two sources we used.

We looked at the core responsibility for each department, so we did actually look at programs specifically for those in the north. We were looking at the high-level core responsibility for the quantitative, and for the qualitative we looked at the DRIs.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Let me just interrupt you.

Is it possible that your information does not include the north? We have three territories. Almost every territory is majority indigenous but we don't fit in the clear definition that the department has historically used. It's only been since the Liberal government was elected that the north has been getting attention through Indigenous Services and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.

Is it possible that the north is left out in your information?

[Yves Giroux]

The only scenario under which the north would have been left out of our report would be if both departments did not include anything related to the north, which would be very surprising given that it's an important part of their mandate.

If they did not include anything related to the north, then our report would not include the north, but my understanding is that the information they provided did include the north.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

It would be interesting to see the information, because we have indigenous communities but they're not reserves; they're public communities. We do have two reserves, and we have settled claims and unsettled claims. We have Métis, and then we have Dene and then we have Inuvialuit.

My second question is regarding the delivery of services. In 2014, the Conservative government of the day cut a significant amount of funding to indigenous people. That included band councils and tribal councils, but it also included the Department of Indian Affairs, which was just one department at that time. I'm finding, as a person who's indigenous first of all but who has strong relationships with indigenous governments, that they never really recovered and the department never really recovered and so delivery of programs is really challenging because they don't have the resources. Even in negotiating land claims and self-governance, we have negotiators handling many, many, many files and being able to allot only a day and a half of negotiations per month per file. We have 15 claims in the Northwest Territories.

Are you finding that some of the challenges with respect to delivery are coming from the department being under-resourced? I know the finance committee made recommendations because they found in their studies that Indian Affairs wasn't resourced adequately to be able to deliver the programs to even meet some of the challenges in terms of bridging the gaps.

[Yves Giroux]

We looked at the departmental funding and human resources at an aggregate level, so I cannot speak to whether they are properly resourced in specific areas such as self-government—

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

You're saying they're under-delivering, so you should be able to see what some of the causes are of some challenges they're facing.