Thank you.
Nevertheless, if you've managed to get your goods to one of these seaports, the cost of transport just outside of these communities remains in excess of $5,000 per tonne because staging logistics in air transport are difficult, uncertain, and expensive. Exacerbating the situation, the reliability and scheduling flexibility of the road system diminishes the farther afield one must go. Ice roads and sealift are available for only a few months a year. At the point where bush planes or helicopters are necessary, transportation is available only during daylight hours and when weather permits. These limitations impose serious restrictions, uncertainty, and additional costs on the mining company.
My thoughts on the situation are fairly straightforward. New roads would breathe life into the Canadian resource industries. Every 100 kilometres of new road would bring 20,000 square kilometres within the $1,000 per tonne area and push north the $5,000 per tonne line. The Manitoba-Kivalliq road is an example of such a project that is currently languishing and could be rejuvenated with decisive political support from the federal government. The Mackenzie Valley Highway is another.
I'll move on to my second point. The land claims process, whereby land is returned to the aboriginal peoples of northern Canada, is not complete—not yet. This is such a huge and complex topic. What I would like to do with my short few minutes is explore one idea, an incongruity that lies at the base of the misunderstanding between the first nations and Canada.
One fact that is not often observed in the context of land claims is that the aboriginal people of northern Canada did not practise agriculture; they were hunter-gatherers. This is important because the relationship between a hunter-gatherer and the land is profoundly different from the relationship a farmer has with his land. Both rely on land to earn a living, but the hunter moves over it from place to place collecting what the land offers. The farmer chooses a spot and then progressively improves the land, first by breaking the ground and eventually by creating fences, roads, and buildings. In order for the farmer to invest years of hard effort into his land there needed to be some assurance that he would be able to enjoy his investment, so property rights and legal systems evolved to meet this need.
The hunter has no need for such ideas since he makes little investment into lands, and due to very low population densities, interaction with neighbours is infrequent. In fact, the very idea of a single person owning land seems repugnant to the hunter, as it obviously belongs to all equally. Looking at it another way, the hunter owns a bit of land completely the moment he stands on it, and then it is returned to nature as he moves on.
In the industrial age, property rights and a dependable legal framework became increasingly important as capital investment and the means of production necessarily increased. The farmer adapted easily as the ideas and virtues required to farm transferred neatly to industrial production. The farmer became the industrialist. The hunter-gatherer became the trapper, an activity well suited to his skills and requiring little property. To this day the hunter-gatherer has no property; it's being held in trust.
I move from the abstract to the personal and specific. In the last decade the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline was proposed, studied, debated, and rejected. I watched the Dehcho land claim negotiations from my then home in Fort Simpson. I watched in frustration as opportunity passed the whole region. The land claim in the Dehcho was not settled, and as a result no consensus could be reached between the first nations, the federal government, and Imperial Oil. The pipeline was not built. I moved away.
The Dehcho First Nation was trying to apply the land ownership concept of the hunter-gatherer at a time and place where the industrialist was looking to invest billions. Rather than offer good counsel, the federal government made a lowball offer that seems to have been designed to take advantage of a lack of awareness on the part of the Dehcho First Nation of the value of resources under the ground. No agreement was reached. The time was not right.
If Canada is going to make best advantage of its resources, we need to align our interests with those of the first nations. This means completing the land claims in such a way that aboriginal people prosper as their lands produce.
The federal government should take a more generous tack rather than the hard-nosed adversarial attitude that has predominated. The first nations have not been right about everything either. Consensus management strategies and the hunter's concept of land ownership are anachronistic. The industrialist concept of land ownership must prevail, since it is industrial activities that the land is destined for.
My third point centres on the regulatory process that resource developers face. Resource extraction and even exploration are subject to laws that essentially make these activities illegal. The process is then to apply for licences, that is, government permission to engage in illegal activities. These illegal activities include using water, cutting trees, storing fuel, and operating machinery off road.
In these licensing processes, all of the obligations rest with the proponent and none with administrators. Due process can be used by the boards as a tool to stall an application. Public servants can and do use their office to promote personal agendas, such as an extreme environmentalist viewpoint, or as a platform to exert aboriginal rights.
Requests from resource developers to have access to land and water can take years to be approved or declined. Often these are just simple requests for a tent camp and a few drill holes. Clear standards do not always exist, and regulatory compliance is a moving target. The process is expensive as well as time consuming for the proponent.
One way to promote investment in exploration and reduce strain on the broken licensing process would be to raise thresholds for which licences are required. A lone prospector is free to come and go on crown lands, camp where he or she wishes, and break rocks with hand tools. Above the threshold of 400 person-days, licensing an exploration camp becomes a significant obstacle.
I once provided helicopter services to a junior exploration company that was using a very small drill to explore magnetic anomalies that they had identified by airborne survey methods. This small drill was being used because it fell under a weight limit, half a tonne, above which permitting would be necessary. Unfortunately, the small drill was not adequate to collect the needed data and the project was abandoned. I last heard that the company was exploring in northern Alberta. If larger equipment had been allowed onto lands without following a full licensing process, perhaps this project would have attracted more significant investment.
I have two suggestions for improvements. First, I would propose higher thresholds within the regulations before licences are required. For instance, that 400 person-day camp limit could be raised to 2,000 person-days, still a very small camp. There is a 4,000-litre limit for fuel storage. This could be raised to 10,000 or 20,000 litres.
My second suggestion would be standardized licensing for routine activities with lower environmental risk. Exploration drilling comes to mind. These camps all work in much the same way; they have similar facilities, follow similar schedules, and use the same chemical products. Standardizing the licence and conditions of licence would make the system faster, more responsive, and leave the boards free to think about larger projects with more serious and complex consequences.
Once again I thank you for this opportunity to appear here today.