Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 1st, 2022

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses, namely, Mr. Louie, Mr. Buffalo and Ms. Rasmussen, for their presentations.

Mr. Louie, I have a potentially broad question for you. You made quite structured and specific remarks regarding five barriers. You also explained, in the last round of questions, several components of those five barriers. Since the barriers are so well known and since you proposed solutions, what would you recommend to the committee to ensure that these solutions are implemented?

What would you currently recommend? Are there any priorities for action? Of course, several things can be done at the same time.

Since everything is so clear and obvious, why can't solutions be found?

[Chief Robert Louie]

I would love to answer that question. I found my English button way too late. I apologize.

I desperately want to answer the question. I will have to have that question posed again. I have my interpretation button on now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Go ahead, Ms. Gill.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

We will give her the time from the top, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Yes, I've already decided that.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Louie, I said thank you to all the witnesses for their presentations and remarks.

I wanted to talk about your presentation because you listed five barriers that fall under land management and that you have solutions for. I heard your discussion with Mr. Powlowski about how this has already been done and has been requested before.

Would you like to make recommendations to the committee? If we know the barriers, if we already have the solutions, why can't we resolve these situations now?

I want to know your thoughts on this so that we can make recommendations that align with your wishes.

[Chief Robert Louie]

Thank you very much. This is very good.

Well, let me speak maybe to something as straightforward as additions to reserves, for example. Additions to reserves are preventing many communities from accessing economic development opportunities. In Manitoba, for example, the Kapyong Barracks process for those communities that want to pass their land codes and want to have the access to very valuable lands could create billions of dollars of possibilities.

One recommendation that I believe the committee could help us with is this: We need to have a first nation-led entity that leads these additions to reserves submissions so they can be heard by relevant ministers. First nations need to have capacity bolstered to replace the Indian services bureaucracy. There have to be statutory deadlines for settlement, stronger dispute resolutions to speed up the process, and different partnerships or arrangements with neighbouring provincial and municipal governments to better tackle joint planning. These are very significant issues. There could be standard agreements for the additions to reserves transition. We need first nation entities with the capacity and the funding to succeed.

These are some of the issues that I think bode very well for additions to reserves.

Now on enforcement, of course, again, we need to have a strong body of—

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Louie, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we have very little time.

I can see that you have a good grasp of the topic and that you know what solutions should be implemented to address the economic development challenges. However, I want to know your thoughts on why these solutions aren't being implemented.

You have everything that you need to resolve the situation, even though it may be challenging. However, why do you think that the situation isn't resolved yet, despite all these solutions?

[Chief Robert Louie]

Thank you.

I'll try to be even more specific.

Let's take enforcement. It's a big issue. As I've indicated, enforcement is not happening. We're not getting the full support. We believe a strong recommendation this committee could consider and recommend is that Canada needs to appoint a permanent special adviser to the federal Minister of Justice to help solve enforcement challenges. We would love to be involved in that process. We know where the enforcement is lacking and we know where partnerships fail. They're failing all over. That is one clear aspect.

With regard to the land registry issues, we're working on a new land registry. We're working with the Province of B.C. and their land registry system to develop a controlled and first nation-led entity. We're making advancements on that. We need a commitment of dollars. We have those discussions under way. We have some temporary funding, but this is a big issue because that's going to pave the way for a much better land registry system. That is a very significant matter.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Louie.

I also want to ask Ms. Rasmussen a question about businesses. She has a great deal of experience with the tribal council, of course, but also with organizations that help small businesses. We know the importance of small businesses in our communities. I'd like to hear more from her about this issue and about the challenges.

Of course, we're relatively familiar with the challenges faced by tribal councils. How do the difficulties encountered by small businesses differ from the challenges faced by tribal councils?

[Tina Rasmussen]

Thank you very much for the question.

The majority of opportunities are held back by investment and access to financing. It's very difficult sometimes in first nations communities to be able to lever access to finance to do business expansion. For us in business development, all of our money is intended to go directly back to serve our first nations communities and benefit the first nations communities individually to support all of those social programs.

When we're trying to do business development, sometimes we're not on an even playing field with organizations. For those of us in the forest industry, the companies we go up against are often international companies with very large bankrolls and often many site locations in comparison to our mom-and-pop operation as a sawmiller. We're just not on the same playing field, basically. The opportunity is not there for us to access the same amount of financing, to go to the bank in the same way, to stockpile those reserves, or to make increases, advancements or changes. It's just not there.

We're not paying an individual family here. We're supporting entire communities through economic development.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Gill.

Ms. Idlout, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you.

First of all, I wish to welcome you all. Your presentations were very interesting.

I have to ask Mr. Buffalo a question. I take note of your comment that to support UNDRIP is to support indigenous communities, regardless of industry, including oil and gas. This is a critical issue of consent—the duty to consult and to ensure consent—which is so often overlooked.

With this in mind, how is free, prior and informed consent central to IRC's process and approvals for oil and gas projects?

Thank you.

[Stephen Buffalo]

Thank you for the question. I truly appreciate this discussion on UNDRIP. There are a lot of articles, such as article 3 and article 4, on communities determining their own rights and political will in terms of moving to sustain their culture and their heritage. We obviously support that.

We've found with a lot of these bills that have come forth from the federal government that they've always been one-sided. With regard to Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, a lot of the communities under the Indian Resource Council were not consulted, but yet the act passed. There was the tanker ban as well. A lot of the communities that did support the initiative were not consulted, but the act passed.

In free, prior and informed consent, it is definitely up to the community. I have even asked our good colleague here, Chief Robert Louie, for his opinion on it. It's something that needs to be further discussed as we move toward really having the United Nations declaration as the staple.

Some communities have the process of electing a leader through democracy. We're hearing in the House today how important democracy is. With communities that have their own hereditary leadership, it's up to them to figure that part out as to who decides for the community.

I hope the best for everyone, but at the end of the day, regardless of what happens, this tool of UNDRIP is definitely an opportunity for first nations to get out of poverty. As we all know, we want our own dependency. We want our own sovereignty. I call being under the Indian Act “soft communism”. It doesn't help being told how to spend money and what to do.

Despite some of the issues with regard to climate change and everything like that, trying to find a balance of economic development and protecting the environment is what we should be striving for to get ourselves, as I said, out of poverty. A lot of communities are very fortunate with their geographic location. They are very fortunate to be beside major infrastructure and be part of it. Their communities benefit. But a lot who aren't by a major centre struggle with getting to the hospital, struggle with having clean water and struggle with having proper health care and everything else.

We just hope that in utilizing this sector, in utilizing UNDRIP, we find that balance for not only first nations to benefit but all of Canada.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you.

I have another question. Your company is called the Indian Resource Council. If you were to consult with the community and they wanted the project to go ahead...but if they refused the project, how would you go about dealing with the communities that are not in favour of the project?

[Stephen Buffalo]

Of course, it's really up to the community to decide. We do not have any influence either way. At the end of the day, we want to present the opportunities themselves. We don't try to force any community to get into something they do not want to get into.

The current state we're in is that the alternative is to rely on the Indian Act, to rely on being told what to do. That's the current state. Again, I'm hoping some leaderships can find the unique ways of utilizing economic development to sustain themselves.

The communities have to decide themselves. Again, we do not try to persuade them or influence them either way. If they require information as to data, as to what's happening in the real world, then that's what we're there for. It's to provide that capacity support.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Ms. Idlout.

That brings this panel to a conclusion.

I want to thank Mr. Louie, Ms. Rasmussen and Mr. Buffalo for taking the time to come and speak to us and answer our questions. This will help us in our examination of the barriers to economic development. Your testimony is very important. Thank you very much.

If the second panel is ready, we will proceed in the interest of time.

Our second “panel” today consists of Marie‑Christine Tremblay from the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Economic Development Commission.

We also have Ms. Gladu, principal of Mokwateh, and Chief Gregory Desjarlais from Frog Lake First Nation.

Ms. Tremblay, you have five minutes.

[Marie-Christine Tremblay, Strategic Advisor, First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Economic Development Commission]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to your committee.

I'll use this platform to address four topics, if I have enough time, of course. Five minutes is quite short.

The first topic is postage rates, which adversely affect the first nations of Quebec and Canada.

The first nations businesses and members in some communities pay much higher rates to ship packages than residents of neighbouring cities and towns. The situation is partly the result of how the major shipping companies determine their pricing policies. This creates an additional barrier to economic development in first nations communities, particularly given the rise in popularity of online commerce.

The postal code system established by Canada Post is composed of two sequences of letters and numbers. The first sequence, called the prefix, corresponds to the forward sortation area. The second sequence, called the suffix, refers to a specific geographic location. In Quebec, postal codes all begin with the letters G, H or J and are followed by a number between 0 and 9. Rural and remote areas are automatically assigned a 0 in the second position of their prefix. As we know, indigenous communities were voluntarily established by the Government of Canada in rural and remote areas. As a result, they have postal codes with a 0 in the second position of their prefix.

However, with population growth, communities once categorized as rural have become urban. These include Wendake and Kahnawake, two Quebec communities with many businesses. Nevertheless, the postal codes of the communities have never changed.

In Canada, major shipping companies such as Purolator, UPS and Fedex determine their pricing policies based on six criteria. Three of these criteria take into account only the shipper's postal code prefix. These criteria are distance from the place of origin to the destination, distance from a sorting facility and population density. The criteria don't take into account the entire postal code. For a postal code that includes a 0 in its prefix, the delivery and shipping costs are automatically higher, even if the community is actually located in an urban area.

For example, it costs $14.77 to ship a package from Wendake to Sherbrooke. If you want to send a package from Quebec City—a city that surrounds the Huron‑Wendat community— to Sherbrooke, you must pay $12.02. This constitutes a price difference of 23%. I'll give another example. To ship a package from Wendake to Wendake, within the community's own territory, it costs $14.06. It costs $9.41 to ship a package from Quebec City to Quebec City. This amounts to a fairly substantial difference of 49%.

A package sent from Wendake to Wendake costs more than a package sent from Quebec City to Baie‑Comeau, which must travel 400 kilometres and take a ferry to reach its destination. This comparison is quite significant.

For a business that runs primarily online and that must ship several packages a day, this extra charge can add up to several thousand dollars a year. This situation also affects individuals who pay higher delivery rates for their everyday purchases. The financial losses associated with this inherent racism in shipping company pricing policies can amount to millions of dollars for first nations businesses and members.

To ensure that indigenous businesses are on a level playing field with businesses located outside the communities, this situation must be addressed. In our opinion, there are two possible solutions. The first solution is to change the postal codes of indigenous communities identified as rural when, in reality, these communities are urban. At first glance, this solution is quite complicated to implement, since it requires different levels of government to work together with band councils, businesses and individuals. This process would be time consuming and complicated. However, in the end, it would solve the problem once and for all.

The other solution is somewhat simpler. It could be implemented alongside the first. The government could require shipping companies to take into account the full postal code, meaning the prefix and suffix, when establishing pricing policies.

As I said earlier, given the increasing popularity of online commerce at this time, this situation must be addressed. It's important to ensure that indigenous businesses can be as competitive as non‑indigenous businesses, and that a dollar earned in one community can be worth as much as a dollar earned one town over.

If I have time, I'll speak about my second topic—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Actually, you have gone over the five minutes, Ms. Tremblay. If you can finish in 30 seconds, I encourage you to do so. If not, there will be questions later. You may have a chance to add to your remarks while answering them.

[Marie-Christine Tremblay]

Okay. No problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Tremblay.

Mr. Gladu, let me apologize for calling you Ms. Gladu. You are evidently not Ms. Gladu.

Please, you have five minutes.

Maybe I'll give you an extra 15 seconds, considering my faux pas.

[Jean Paul Gladu, Principal, Mokwateh, As an Individual]

Wonderful.

Thank you for having me, honourable members of the committee.

My name is Mr. JP Gladu. I'm calling in from Sand Point First Nation, which is actually just northeast of Thunder Bay.

I want to give you a little bit more of what I'm doing so you'll understand more where my comments are coming from.

I'm also on the board of Suncor and a couple of mining companies; chair of Boreal Leadership Champions, an environmental group; and chair of the Energy Futures Lab around the future transition of energies, as well as Canada's Forest Trust, an organization to meet the two-billion-trees commitment. The reason I tell you this is that I'm around a lot of our indigenous issues.

I'm incredibly grateful to the government. I'm going to go back to the time when I was the CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and Mark Little from Suncor and I came to the Hill to express the success that Suncor was having in our procurement work with indigenous communities.

Today we're encroaching on a billion-dollar spend with local indigenous businesses. It was great to see the government commit to a 5% target, and I encourage the government to keep on this track. When talking to my colleagues, I know there are plenty of challenges ahead. We have to drive that down the supply chain. As communities get access to business activity, you build the experience, and experience is a great teacher. That's how we actually build our economies. Without access to those business opportunities, it's very difficult to be on economic par with the rest of the country; it's incredibly important.

It's also incredibly important that Canadians understand that the success of our country is closely tied to the relationship with indigenous communities. When we start to comprehend this more, we'll see there's a big education piece. There is ignorance that still exists in Canada, and we have to get over the ignorance that still exists. In my last point, when I come back to this, you'll understand why.

Capital pools have been spoken about a number of times, I'm sure. The fact that the Canada Infrastructure Bank has the billion-dollar fund is amazing. Don't stop there. There is a $35-billion deficit in our communities alone, never mind this net-zero energy transition that our country is talking about. If we're going to get there in a successful way, we need to deepen and widen the capital pools so that our communities can be equitable members in any activity in our traditional territories.

With UNDRIP unpacking, if we don't get the relationships right.... As I mentioned, Canada's success is closely tied to our indigenous communities. I can point to countless numbers where, due to the poor relationships, we've lost opportunities because we're such a naturally richly endowed country.

I want to see more backstops or loans for communities to access to be able to participate. It was brought up in the previous panel, so I won't go too deep there. I'd love to see stronger relationships with provincial governments, with availability payments to support infrastructure projects so communities can rely on cash flow as they develop their relationships and partnerships in all sorts of infrastructure projects that are going to continue to go on in our country.

The last thing I want to address is that we need an overall strategy on the indigenous economy. There are lots of great ideas and there are incredible indigenous leaders at the table giving you ideas, but until you have a strategy that you can rely on, you're going to be all over the map. Work with organizations like the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business or the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association to help develop those strategies and [Technical difficulty—Editor] nations to do it alongside you.

I'm a big fan of Minister Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development—I have to find shorter organizations; it's going to take me half my time to get through it—and it was great to see the economic development support for the BlackNorth Initiative. That's fantastic. There's north of $20 million being committed to a number of Black organizations. That is not happening in our indigenous community. We need to care, we need to believe, and we need to do.

I think the government cares. As an example—and I'm going to leave it here—when I was at the helm of CCAB, the government cared enough to ask us to submit a proposal for the budget to support indigenous entrepreneurs. We submitted it. The budget came out in 2019 and not only did we not get it in the budget, and that happens, but the government committed $3 million to Futurpreneur Canada to actually support indigenous entrepreneurs. That's not the belief that I expect from our country to believe in indigenous people. That is not the way we're going to build relationships. You need to empower indigenous organizations that have proven track records to support our own people. Why do we have to go back to the non-indigenous organizations to beg for resources to support our own people, when we have that capacity?

You have to care, you have to believe, and you have to do it by supporting our indigenous organizations, or we're going to be backspinning our wheels.

Thank you for your time, honourable committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Gladu.

We now have Chief Gregory Desjarlais.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have five minutes.

[Chief Gregory Desjarlais, Frog Lake First Nation]

Greetings, everybody. I'm thankful for this opportunity. I want to say I'm grateful to the Creator, first and foremost.

What I want to talk about and what I want to share is economic sovereignty, first and foremost, with indigenous people.

I looked at Alberta and I did some research. I looked at the NRTA that was transferred from the federal government to the Province of Alberta. First nations don't benefit from natural resources. It's almost been a hundred years; it's time for us to get it right.

How do we, as first nations, assist Canada in becoming good treaty partners? We have to remember that handshake back in 1876. First nations are part of the solution. First nations were never part of the problem. We have to remember that, my friends.

I look at the economic support that first nations require and that industry has benefited from over the years and decades. That's the kind of involvement in capital that first nations need. If you want to help first nations become sustainable and remove poverty, you have to offer them that seed capital that has been beneficial to industry over the years.

With first nations-led projects, look at these pipelines. Look at these refineries in the heartland of Alberta. Look at the power of the heartland community. Frog Lake and Kehewin have the only first nations-led proposal for carbon sequestration. It's like David and Goliath, but we have no choice but to get involved with the parade, instead of watching it go by.

The participation of first nations allows environmental oversight on these projects. I am a businessman as a chief, but I'm also a sun dance person who picks medicines and who goes to ceremonies. I had to find a balance because ceremony won't sustain my people. Business will, but how do I build homes on an outdated CFA? I have to get involved in economics. That's what we need to do as first nations people.

Look at these projects. An example again is the Trans Mountain pipeline. Look at indigenous ownership. If you involve the first nations, you allow them to build homes. You allow them to send kids to school. You allow them to send people to treatment. You allow them to deliver water to these homes. You allow them to remove mould. That's problem-solving. That's a takeaway, instead of all the money leaving Canada and still having poorer first nations living on CFAs and begging for handouts.

We need to look at what is happening across the world. With our friends in Ukraine, it's about world power. It shouldn't be about power. Our children are learning these things. We need to have economic reconciliation with the first nations, and we have to be involved in these major projects. I'm offering solutions.

Look at what was given here just recently, the SRP, the site rehabilitation program of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Many companies went through our nations and made millions of dollars, but left their liability behind. I am thankful for this program. It put people to work. We almost went bust, even during COVID, with this negative oil price. At the peak, Frog Lake was at 10,000 barrels, but today, we are at 400 barrels a day.

We are trying, like many first nations, to be oilmen and businessmen. We're trying different things. We created a concrete company out of nothing on the reserve here, and many first nations are doing this. It depends on your geography, where you are in Canada, how close you are to cities and what you're able to grow in your backyard.

I think that needs to be in the minds of our leaders as well.

We're asking in Alberta, also for that program, for an extension. I wanted to get that out there, because it's needed for all sectors to strive and to do this program properly. We're able to put these leases back to the natural grass state, or as close as possible, where we can grow medicines again.

I wanted to share some of these highlights that we need, as first nations people, because we cannot live in this poverty. It's 2022, and many nations don't even have fresh water.

Some of the barriers are the seed capital, the investment side that we don't have. If you're a CFA band just living on your CFA, your contribution funding agreement, how can you be involved, first and foremost? That's part of the picture I want to paint. If you don't have a willing partner or the natural resources beneath you, how can you be involved?

The solutions that Canada has to realize are ownership and revenue sharing of major projects across Canada. Keep the money in Canada, help the first nations stand on their feet, and have economic reconciliation.

Look what's happening across—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I'll have to ask you to wrap it up, Chief Desjarlais.