Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 5th, 2011

[Glen Sibbeston]

Thank you very much.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

You talk a lot about transportation costs and the need for more highways, I believe. Your figures seem very precise. You say that, when you are less than 300 km from a highway, the cost goes from $1,000 to $500 per tonne, and so forth. Do you have you studies that support those figures?

[Glen Sibbeston]

I don't have any studies. You have to understand that some slides were not included in this presentation, and I believe you'll receive them in a couple of days.

That's based on experience in helping clients achieve their transportation goals over about the last 12 years. We're normally talking about smaller companies, not the big industrial concerns. Most of them understand the situation quite well and are prepared. They'll hire a large airplane if that is the most efficient thing to do. They'll hire a bush plane if that's what they really need. After the bush plane drops them and their gear, I show up with a helicopter and carry them to their final destination, along with all of their things, one load at a time.

I've developed a pretty good sense of how much it costs, and that's the foundation for it.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

So the figures are based on your clients' experience, on your clients' assessment of their experience. They are not from a study possibly done by an organization in the Yukon, for example.

[Glen Sibbeston]

It's not a formal study.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

You make a strong case for building roads that would allow transportation costs to drop to 10 ¢ per tonne, but your own company can charge $20 per tonne. That is very commendable of you. I was very impressed by your sense of community. At first sight, that kind of development does not do your company any good. I continue to be impressed.

Be that as it may, we are talking about serious money being invested here, because we are going up to the 60 ^th parallel and beyond. How do you see those investments? Are they mostly private or public?

[Glen Sibbeston]

I expect that in the past partnerships pushed the roads out past the last boundary between an industrial concern and government—sometimes more than one level of government. That's how it normally happens.

I'm not suggesting that the federal government should build a road to nowhere or anything like that. But if the federal government had policies and created an environment that assisted industry in pushing the frontiers of the road north, the investment would be paid back many times in the future.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

In practical terms, how could the federal government support the implementation if not by investing money?

[Glen Sibbeston]

In some cases it's with a percentage. There are a lot of different mechanisms that could work—tax considerations....

[Bradley Gemmer]

Churchill was a very successful port for wheat until a few years ago. It was intended to be a major seaport. It has been there for hundreds of years—I don't know how many hundreds—since the English built a fort there. From northern Manitoba to Churchill there is a short railroad, and anything you want to send to Churchill has to stop at Thompson, be loaded onto a rail car, tied down, and then sent for only a couple of hundred miles by road.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

And that has not yet been done, though it should be?

[Bradley Gemmer]

No. There is a railroad but no road.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I understand. Now I would like to move to a second point in your order of priorities, Mr. Sibbeston.

There was quite a strong statement about agreements that have been impossible to reach with the Dehcho First Nation. You say:

“take advantage of a lack of awareness” and “hard-nosed adversarial attitudes”.

That is a pretty strong statement. What actually happened during the negotiations that caused such a harsh judgment? Was the behaviour of the government justified? What could be done to prevent the same thing happening again?

[Glen Sibbeston]

I really think that attitude existed. It certainly wasn't policy, but that was the undercurrent. There was an adversarial atmosphere between the two sides. I think it really stemmed from the lack of understanding of some fundamental cultural differences between....

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

How was…

lack of awareness

… of the First Nation demonstrated? What happened? Was the offer a ridiculous one?

[Glen Sibbeston]

The offer made to the Dehcho First Nation proposed chunks of land in the Dehcho region that were smaller per capita than neighbouring areas had been awarded. They had schemes, like surrounding the communities with large chunks of land. They had a couple of alternatives, but they certainly didn't centre the land offerings on areas that were known to have good mineral and energy potential.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Lapointe.

Your time is up.

Mr. McGuinty, go ahead, for up to seven minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Sibbeston, I really appreciated your two practical suggestions for improvement. It's exactly the kind of thing we're looking to hear more about.

Can I go back and explore a couple of comments made by both of you, just to get more clarity?

In your brief, Mr. Sibbeston, you talked about costs, the costs of shipping, the comparative costs of shipping, which were very helpful for us to understand. In this week's Hill Times there's another ad by a company out of Montreal, Discovery Air Innovations, who are now talking about remote shipping. They're claiming they're using 67% less fuel than traditional heavy-lift aircraft, without disturbing fragile permafrost, watersheds, or wildlife.

Can you give us an understanding, and Canadians an understanding, of how advanced this new industry, this new technology, is, and how feasible it is?

[Glen Sibbeston]

I used to work for Discovery Air, the company championing that project. I also was in the military with some of the people involved in that. Having said that, I don't know the intricate details of how it works. But if they're able to build a working, reliable, practical aircraft based on that concept, that will bring the cost of accessing the north down considerably. It won't bring it down to the extent that a road would.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

But it would help.

[Glen Sibbeston]

It would certainly help. It will. That would be a very useful tool in developing and exploring the Arctic.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It might be something a federal government might well want to consider supporting, in terms of its research, its design, its improvement, and so on over time, as we seek to open the north in more remote areas.

Just hold your thought on that one. I appreciate your insight.

I'd like to go to another comment you made about due process. You say in your brief:

Due process can be used by the boards as a tool to stall an application. Public servants...

—“public servants”, you say—

...can, and do, use their office to promote personal agendas—such as an extreme environmentalist viewpoint, or as a platform to exert aboriginal rights.

Now, we had another witness come here several meetings ago, Mr. Donald Bubar, from Avalon Rare Metals. Mr. Bubar made similar comments, except he said that in his view, there was a very strong bias against developers, in the Northwest Territories context—very anti-development. I didn't have a chance to ask him whether he wanted the panel to be pro-development, and I'm assuming that's not what he was suggesting. Do you have any evidence, practical cases, when you claim that public servants are promoting personal agendas, such as “extreme environmentalist viewpoints” or “a platform to exert aboriginal rights”?

This is a very serious claim to make. It would be very helpful for us to know if that's case, as we struggle with this question of regulatory reform.

[Glen Sibbeston]

I don't have anything that would be considered reliable evidence in the context of a court or at that level.

The Northwest Territories is very small. Over a lifetime, you get to know a lot of people, perhaps a good fraction of the people who are living in the jurisdiction. You get to know people well enough to characterize them, and then you see or hear things coming from another direction.... It's more like the way the wind is blowing than specific concrete examples of.... You have to understand, I've never been a proponent seeking a licence in any way. I work for them. I share the frustrations, because I just want to do some work.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Fair enough.

Can I go to the third theme? This is on the issue, again quoting from your brief, that “if Canada is going to make best advantage of its resources, we need to align our interests with those of the First Nations”. You talk about completing the land claims, which is an important issue, in such a way that aboriginal people “prosper as their lands produce”.

This is another question I have put to other witnesses. I'm trying to get an indication of just how mature our relationships are with first nations. Would you agree that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to progress in the minds of first nations leaders is not just land claims but actual full-equity participation in these projects as owners—not employees or subcontracted small business people but as owners—of these projects? Do you think that is the next logical step that has to be taken to be able to deal with first nations as full partners?

[Glen Sibbeston]

Equity is a concept that is a long way up the industrialists' concept of property ownership. Mr. Gemmer mentioned having a hard time even with a regimented work day. I think there are, of course, individuals who are fully capable of holding or directing equity. I think that in the population—let me speak specifically of the Dehcho—there is a lot of learning yet to be done if people are to participate fully in the market economy. To have enough discipline to hold a trade is something that only a fraction of the people in the Dehcho have attained. To go on to own a business requires more discipline still.

Have I been clear?