Evidence of meeting #18 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was satellite.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
It's not just the Inuit, then, but aboriginal peoples in general.
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Senior Policy Analyst, Inuit Circumpolar Council (Canada)
Yes. Canada should be proud; Canada, through CIDA and through the Inuit Circumpolar Council of Canada office, helped not only the Russian indigenous peoples during the process of moving from the Soviet era into the more modern era, but also helped Moscow's equivalent of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to set up. They had no idea of how to deal with the Arctic.
There have been a lot of advances, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North is incredibly well organized and strong now, whereas earlier they were like a very young little baby sister to ICC. There have been advances, but as you know, because of the resources in the Arctic and other reasons, there's a lot to go. There's a lot of hunger and a lot of poverty in the Russian Arctic still.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Okay, I'll try to make it really quick.
Mr. Reimer, I wanted to follow up on a comment you made in terms of the migration that the Inuit noticed prior to our talking about climate change. In your discussions with them, have they talked about previous migration patterns in many years gone by? Have those also changed, or is this just a one-time thing?
4:55 p.m.
Senior Policy Analyst, Inuit Circumpolar Council (Canada)
I was referring to animal migration.
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Senior Policy Analyst, Inuit Circumpolar Council (Canada)
Yes. I think my point was that Inuit, because of their traditional knowledge that has been verbally passed on from generation to generation, know that weather changes. Weather changed in the past. They know that animal migration patterns changed. Through their knowledge and through their way of addressing this, they saw it.
They said something was different two decades ago. There was a much bigger shift. We're seeing new species. We're seeing others disappear, and nobody listened at first.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier
Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.
I want to thank all our witnesses. Mr. Keating, Mr. Coates, and Mr. Reimer, thank you for your collaboration with our committee.
Members, don't forget that tomorrow we have a hot meal with our delegation from Pakistan. It will be in this room from 11 to 12. The meal will be served at around 11:30.
Thank you very much.
The meeting is adjourned.