Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 11th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Good morning. I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 89 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

Let me go through my introductory comments.

We recognize that we are meeting on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples.

We're continuing to meet on clause-by-clause of Bill C-53, an act respecting the recognition of certain Métis governments in Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

We only have members online today. The members online know how this works. I'm not going to go through all of the interpretation and muting and things.

I'd like to welcome back our officials who are joining us on a lovely Monday morning. Thank you for being here.

For clause-by-clause, I think everybody knows how it goes now. With regard to the point that was raised last week, I'll make sure I give an opportunity for people to weigh in, if they want to weigh in on any given clause.

Where we left off was with debate on clause 8 and amendment CPC-3.2.

I'll ask, from the Conservatives, whether a member would like to move CPC-3.2.

Mr. Zimmer.

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

Mr. Chair, I'd actually like to make a notice of motion for the following:

That the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs report to the House that it:

a. recognizes that the newly elected premier of the Northwest Territories, R.J. Simpson, does not support the carbon tax and wants a complete exemption for the territory;

b. recognizes that the Liberal government's carbon tax has disproportionately impacted northern and indigenous communities;

c. agrees with the newly elected premier of the Northwest Territories that higher costs are not the solution;

d. recognizes that the territories, first nations, Inuit and Métis should be equally exempt from the carbon tax.

I'd like to put that on notice.

The Northwest Territories, as most in this room know, went through an election several weeks ago. They go through a process where they select the premier from the current allotment of MLAs, so he was just made premier this Thursday.

One of his first comments to the public, in an interview on CBC, was about his request for an exemption from the carbon tax for the Northwest Territories. This is from the premier directly:

“I mean, ideally, a complete exemption for the territory is what we would hope for,” said R.J. Simpson....

“The costs are [really] high—higher costs are not the solution up here.”

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Mr. Zimmer, I'm sorry, but I've been reminded that, when you're giving notice of a motion, we can't debate it. We get the notice made, and then I have a list to speak to it.

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

I just wanted to give some preamble for why I'm making the motion, so I'll get it done pretty quick here.

Most know that the Northwest Territories has set up their own carbon tax regime. They were given an option by the Prime Minister to either do it his way or to do it their own way, so they chose to go their own way. The reason was that they wanted to be able to provide their residents and citizens with rebates for the carbon tax. The Northwest Territories has some of the coldest temperatures in our country and they wanted some flexibility.

Sadly, this April, the Prime Minister said that they can't rebate their citizens and that wasn't what they had in mind when they said you have to come up with your own carbon tax, so there was a mandate that they had to get rid of those rebates.

Here we are again. We see the Prime Minister exempt certain areas of the country's home heating oil from being carbon-taxed, and this left out the Northwest Territories. To top it off, at the time that the Prime Minister made this announcement, they were going through a territorial election.

Here we are with an area that is the most impacted by the carbon tax, and it is still mandated that they have to have a carbon tax. Again, with regard to the first comments from this new premier, I'll use his own words:

“Here in the Northwest Territories, the cost of living is high. The cost of fuel, home heating, power—they've always been high. [If] high costs is what is going to get people to use green energy and green technology, we would have been doing that years ago,” he said Sunday.

But a lack of infrastructure, connection to southern power grids and other factors make it hard to implement those technologies....

He made a comment about heat pumps. Often, when the question comes up about the carbon tax, the Liberal answer in the House of Commons is always, heat pumps, heat pumps, heat pumps. It's even to give people free heat pumps. Heat pumps are very expensive. In the premier's own words, “Heat pumps don't work up here in this climate”.

I was recently—

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Mr. Zimmer, I'm sorry. I am going to cut you off here.

When you give a notice of motion, it's to put the motion on notice. The time to debate it will be in 48 hours, so during our next meeting, it will be in order for debate. I know that people had their hands up to also speak to it, but that's also not appropriate at this time.

We have the notice of motion now. It's there. The clock has started ticking to get it in order for debate, but at this point, I'm going to—

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll leave it there. We'll talk about it on Wednesday.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

That's perfect. That's greatly appreciated, Mr. Zimmer.

(On clause 8)

I do have the question of CPC-3.2 and whether the member wants to move it. That one is Mr. Viersen's amendment, so I'll ask that question first.

Mr. Vidal has a point of order.

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

Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak to some general things around clause 8 before we get to the amendments, if that's all right. I have some questions around the clause itself before we get into the amendments.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Can we get into...? Is it for the officials?

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

I'm sorry. I think it's actually appropriate to have a conversation before the amendments, because there's some language in the clause that I want to have clarified by the officials before we get into proposing amendments around it.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We're on clause 8, so yes, please—

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

Is that fair?

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Yes, I'll give the floor to you, Mr. Vidal, and then we'll go back to Mr. Viersen to see if he wants to move his amendment.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do have a couple questions for the officials today around clause 8 that I think are very legitimate. I want to start by reading the part that I want to flesh out a little bit. The clause itself starts:

The Government of Canada recognizes that a Métis government set out in column 1 of the schedule is an Indigenous governing body that is authorized to act on behalf of the Métis collectivity set out in column 2 opposite that Métis government

If you go to the schedule, it's pretty obvious what that means. The question I have is around the use or definition of the term “Indigenous governing body”. There's no definition of “Indigenous governing body” in this piece of legislation.

Over the weekend, I did some digging and some research. To be honest with you, what triggered my digging on this was that I got the notice of the Senate amendments to Bill C-29. One of the amendments that the Senate proposed for Bill C-29—which I believe is going to be on the agenda sometime this week, but those are moving targets as well—is an amendment to include under “governments” the connection to “Indigenous governing bodies”. That caused me to look a little further for whether there is an accepted definition of that, what it means and how it expands what we're thinking about in clause 8 here. I went further to try to figure out what these definitions mean.

I went to the Métis National Council website, where it has an “Indigenous Governing Body” definition in reference to Bill C-92. That took me to Bill C-92, and there's a definition added in Bill C-92 that defines that—so there are so many other examples.

I said, “Okay, so where do we get the definition, and what do we accept as that definition for this bill?” I thought, “Okay, let's go back to the agreements,” because this legislation is driven by the February agreements with each of the three bodies. Interestingly enough, there is a definition of “Indigenous governing body” in two of those three agreements but not in the third. If we flesh out that definition that Bill....

By the way, these definitions across all these other places are identical. I think they're the same. I want to read one of those definitions. On the Métis National Council website, it says:

An Indigenous Governing Body, is defined in the federal Act, as

“A council, government or other entity that is authorized to act on behalf of an Indigenous group, community, or people that hold rights recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (section 1).”

I'm trying to understand why this term has been added in this clause when the schedule very clearly talks about Métis governments and the collectivities that they represent. Now we're saying that they're also an indigenous governing body, which is a much broader definition, if I read these definitions. It includes other groups. It includes people. It includes communities. It doesn't anywhere in the definition talk about collectivities. It talks about....

Could you clarify for me and this committee the purpose of adding “Indigenous governing body” in clause 8? I did a word search, and that's the only place in the legislation where that term is used. In fact, the word “Indigenous” is only used, I think, five times in the legislation. Two of the times are in the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations' title, and two of them are in the title of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The only other place in the legislation where “Indigenous” appears is in clause 8 in “Indigenous governing body”.

I would open it up to our experts here to try to explain to me why that term is there. Then, that'll probably lead me to try to flesh this out on my own a little bit, if you don't mind.

[Julia Redmond, Legal Counsel, Department of Justice]

To start with the number of references to “Indigenous governing body” in this bill, what is relevant in particular is that this is the operative provision when it comes to recognition. This is the one paragraph that is the most important when it comes to providing that recognition to the Métis governments that are putting forward or are part of this bill.

In terms of the number of references, that's the reason why you're not seeing it throughout. This is also partially a drafting technique. It's used where it's needed, and it's not used where it isn't. It's as simple as that.

As for the term itself, you referenced the definition of “Indigenous governing body” that comes from Bill C-92. That one, as you rightly noted, has a broad scope. It includes things like a council and a band. Here, we're not dealing with a council and we're not dealing with a band. We're dealing specifically with Métis governments.

Essentially, the content of that definition—an explanation of what an indigenous governing body is in this particular context—is spelled out in the provision itself. The important part of that is the notion that a Métis government is authorized to act on behalf of a collectivity. Essentially, it takes that broad definition that's used in very broad contexts—like Bill C-92, which is meant to apply to all manners of indigenous governments—and is applying it, simply, to the circumstances we have in the bill.

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

You're saying that the definition in Bill C-92 has a different purpose from the one it has here. Is that what I caught?

Maybe I didn't quite...but that's what I heard.

[Julia Redmond]

To clarify, Bill C-92 contemplates a broader set of possible indigenous governments than is covered in Bill C-53.

Bill C-53 concerns only Métis governments. We're talking about a particular category. It's a subset of indigenous governments. Because Bill C-92 is broader, the definition of “Indigenous governing body” makes sense in that it would capture a broader set of indigenous governments.

They're trying to do two different things.

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

Would you make the same argument about what the Senate is proposing on Bill C-29? Should what it's coming back to us with in this definition be included? That would be broader than the intent in this piece of legislation.

[Julia Redmond]

With all of these, it just comes down to the scope of the bill.

Here, we're talking about Métis governments, so the operative provision on recognition deals specifically with Métis governments.

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

I'm sorry. Why add the term, then? It already says “Métis government”. Why add the term? Why add the addition that it's an...?

My sense is that there's no definition in the bill, or there's nothing in the definitions section—I think that's in clause 2 of the bill, which has the definitions that we're going to talk about later—that defines “Indigenous governing body” differently from what I would accept.

In fact, the exact same definition that you talk about in Bill C-92 or Bill C-29, which is intended to have a broader purpose, is the same definition that is in the February 2023 agreements for both MNA and MN-S, although it's not in the agreement for MNO.

Why include the term in the first place?

Where I'm going with this is.... We've heard concerns from people from all three provinces—very much less so in Saskatchewan, I must admit—that they're being included in something without their choice. We talked about the definition of communities, peoples and collectivities. Further down that road, in the agreements, there are definitions of citizenship, for example. Maybe if we use citizenship as a definition in some of these things, we could alleviate some of....

My concern is that, with this broader definition, by adding the words “Indigenous governing body”, we're broadening the definition of Métis government to include groups of people who don't necessarily want to....

There was discussion with Mr. Viersen and some of the witnesses who were here about both the Métis communities and the locals within the provinces. They feel they're being included in this without their consent, knowledge or willingness. Is this why they're feeling that? Is it because of this broader definition?

I don't get how you can argue that it's a narrower definition here, when it's exactly the same term and there is no definition that differentiates that.

Does that make sense? Maybe somewhere along the way, we should add a definition that then clarifies that.

[Michael Schintz, Federal Negotiations Manager, Negotiations - Central, Treaties and Aboriginal Government, Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs]

Your question makes sense. I want to make sure I get all of the questions, because—

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

Yes. I should probably shorten the pieces up a bit for you.

[Michael Schintz]

One of the points I want to touch on.... You referred to the 2023 agreements. If you were to do a word search in that agreement, you would note the only reference to an indigenous governing body is in the section dealing with Bill C-92. That's the singular reference.

In this instance, one of the challenges in the drafting is that there's an accepted definition of an indigenous governing body as our counsel has noted. That definition is somewhat broader, because it contemplates, for example, that there is an indigenous governing body that might represent a band. In this instance, we're not speaking about bands; we're speaking about these Métis governments. To include a definition, one of the challenges would be that there would be a reluctance to want to depart from the accepted definition found in Bill C-92.

What we're looking to suggest with clause 8 here is that these are indigenous governments. They've been authorized to represent rights holders, those who hold section 35 rights. Those are the two key components of the definition of an indigenous governing body as found in Bill C-92. I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with Bill C-29 offhand.

I'm trying to answer your question, Mr. Vidal. I don't know if that does or doesn't. Please let me know.

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

Yes. I'm sorry, but I'm not trying to beat something. Why couldn't the terminology just be that it's a Métis government that is authorized to act on behalf of a Métis collectivity? Why do we have to specifically add that terminology? Why are we not just taking that out? If there's no accepted definition, if there's no understanding of what that means, and it's only a definition that applies to Bill C-92 or Bill C-29, or even in the February agreements.... There's a definition in the agreements, and you're saying the only reason it needs to be defined there is that there are references to Bill C-92 in the agreements.

Why are we including this in clause 8? I don't think I've heard an answer to that question.

[Michael Schintz]

To be fair, I am trying, Mr. Vidal.

There are a few reasons. One is that this legislation is codeveloped with our partners. This term, in part.... I don't know whether you're taking issue with the fact that these are indigenous governments that represent people who hold section 35 rights. There's a long history in Canada regarding the denial of Métis rights and challenges to the legitimacy, authenticity and authorization of these governments by Canada and other governments in this country.

Really, what I think this term has intended to signal, or make clear and explicit, is that these are indigenous governments. They've been authorized by people who hold section 35 rights. That's also why it makes reference to the schedule, the governments and the collectivities.

I hope you think that's an answer to your question. I'm happy to take a more specific question. I don't know if anyone else at this table wants to add anything.