Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Pat Marcel. I am a former chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. I am chair of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation elders' committee, and I am an elder.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak today. What I have to say is important. What I have to tell you is serious. After I speak, ask yourselves whether or not you think the lives of our seniors, our elders, are sustainable. Ask if you would want your parents living in the conditions described. Ask why these conditions exist amidst the prosperity of Canada's Athabasca oil sands, where, in Fort McMurray, the average annual salary is $91,000. The after-tax low-income cut-off—Statistics Canada's fancy words for the poverty line—says a person living alone in a rural setting and making less than $10,718 per year is living in poverty.
Mr. Chairman, the majority of our elders live in Fort Chipewyan, where a litre of milk costs 53% more than it does in Fort McMurray. A one-pound bag of apples costs 209% more. A head of lettuce costs 333% more. Overall, food in Fort Chipewyan costs 121% more than it does in Fort McMurray, where prices are already inflated. This all means that just to buy the basics, the elders are paying about $500 per month for food.
Mr. Chairman, on some winter nights in Fort Chipewyan, the temperature can dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. We heat our homes with heating oil. That oil costs about $190 per barrel. We use about four barrels of oil a month during the winter months, from October to April. There are rebates, thankfully, but even after rebates, our heating costs still consume a significant portion of our small income.
Up until now, elders were living rent-free because of our first nations housing policy. But due to the high cost of capital and maintenance, due to inadequate housing subsidies from Indian Affairs, due to the age of our homes and their poor condition, our chief and council are forced to charge rent to elders. A recent inspection found mould growing in the homes of some elders. The first nation says its 80 homes need $1 million worth of repairs.
Here is the problem, Mr. Chairman. The average elder's income is only $13,228 per year. On average, each elder is more than $4,000 in debt by the end of every year. And those are the lucky ones. Four of our elders have an annual income of less than $10,000. We are living well below the poverty line, Mr. Chairman. We are poor.
Eleven years ago, the average income for an aboriginal person in Canada was over $16,000. That was eleven years ago, Mr. Chairman, and we are nowhere near that meagre amount yet.
There will be some who whisper in your ear to ask us about the honorariums we get from oil companies for attending meetings about oil sands development. That great honorarium is $150 a meeting. Often that money goes to help out our families, to pay unexpected bills, or to buy a small Christmas present for our loved ones. That honorarium gives oil sands developers the proof that they have consulted with us about their never-ending projects and expansions. As one elder said, industry is here when they need something. They feed us. They give us small gifts. They talk about their own needs.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. That picture shows that near Canada's Athabasca oil sands, where purchases are measured in the billions and the average annual salary is approaching six figures, there is a group of people living as if they live not in Canada, but in a third-world country. To be clear, our elders are struggling to put food on the table while industry is getting their approvals and government is getting billions in royalties from our traditional lands. Why is this? Elders should not have to live this way. If we were your parents, would you tolerate these conditions? Is this way of life sustainable?
Mr. Chairman, maybe the most difficult part of all is that we were not always poor. Once, we lived off the land. We had plenty of meat, fish, and berries. Even our medicine came from the land. We were rich because of what that land gave us. Now we read the white man's consumption advisories that tell us we can only eat fish once a week. They tell us there is arsenic in the moose. We are afraid to eat the traditional foods that have sustained us for thousands of years.
We did not ask for our lives to be changed. We did not ask for the moose to disappear, for the fish to be poisoned, for the furs that we trap to become worthless and scarce. We did not ask for our cost of living to go up because Canada can sell its oil to the United States, India, and China. One of our elders said that we have been approving the old sands project since 2000, and we are as poor as we can be.
Finally, I have two last questions for the panel. What will Canada's legacy be with respect to the aboriginal elders who live in one of the most prosperous economies in Canada? What will each one of you tell your grandchildren when they ask you what your role was in forming that legacy?
Thank you very much, members of the committee and Mr. Chairman.