Evidence of meeting #44 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.
Mr. Anderson, go ahead, please, for five minutes.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to come back to the discussion Mr. Trost led into about opportunities. Really, I think the solution, and I think we've heard it time and again here, is having the economic opportunities that are being developed.
Small business is really the heart and soul of the Canadian economy. Can you tell me what your governments are doing to actually encourage the development of private businesses? It seems to me that in the communities, it starts off with some educational opportunities. You get some training. Some folks go to work for the big companies. Then out of that, you also see some other small things developing that give people pride of ownership from developing their own businesses. What are your governments doing to try to encourage that to develop?
If you have a comment as well, Dr. MacDonald, that would be great.
10:10 a.m.
Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, Government of Nunavut
Thank you very much.
Yes, within our department we have a fair number of programs to assist the start-up of small businesses and to assist existing small businesses through various programs within our department.
For development, mostly on Inuit-owned land in Nunavut, the development that's happening is—
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Can I ask you if it is management you're working on? Are you providing funding? What are the programs geared towards?
10:10 a.m.
Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, Government of Nunavut
It's both for assistance in management and to encourage the growth of small businesses.
With the development happening on Inuit-owned land, of course through our land claims there are negotiations with the proponent and the regional Inuit associations. There are the Inuit impact and benefits agreements. It's an obligation under the land claim that the entities and the proponent negotiate an agreeable impact and benefits agreement. It could include a number of things. As a government, we're not privy to that information.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Can you tell me how that works, then, specifically with small businesses? The companies are obligated to do what so that at the other end you have generated a number of local businesses? How does that process work?
10:10 a.m.
Minister of Economic Development and Transportation, Government of Nunavut
We have within our government a couple of corporations: the Nunavut Development Corporation and the Nunavut Business Credit Corporation. We work in conjunction with other lending agencies, such as the First Nations Bank and Atuqtuarvik Corporation, which was formed under the land claims agreement. One of the things we're trying to promote is more activity in these small businesses, and not only in the major centres. We're trying to focus, through our Nunavut Development Corporation, on the smaller communities. It's usually through arts and crafts industries. Just recently, within the last two years, we've been trying to get the end result, the outcome of all the funding we put out.
Again, our main focus on smaller businesses is for the smaller communities.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Okay.
Minister, the Northwest Territories is in a bit of a different situation in terms of development. Do you have any comments on that, on the development of small businesses in your territory?
10:10 a.m.
Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Similar to our colleagues from Nunavut, the government itself has funding programs, high-risk capital that they put on the table, and they work with people to do business plans. We have business development officers in the communities. We work on the arts and crafts side.
We also have the benefit of four settled claims that have significant amounts of money to invest with the Inuvialuit, Gwich'in, Sahtu, and Tlicho. As Dr. MacDonald could probably attest to, the Tlicho have had as well very good impact-benefit agreements with the diamond mines. They've had, I think, some very significant success in developing local businesses in conjunction with the mines as part of their relationship with the mines.
Across the board we have those available. We do try to focus opportunities as much as possible on the small communities, which have a limited economic base. Once again, as Dr. MacDonald pointed out, we are concerned about the out-migration, the migration out of communities.
That's where our focus lies.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
How much of your focus is on teaching management skills? That's a challenge for all of us who have small businesses.
10:15 a.m.
Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of the Northwest Territories
With regard to basic business skills, it is a challenge for not only businesses but in fact just for the running of communities. It's a challenge to find people with the administrative skills to do the work at the hamlet level, at the community level, to manage the money there. That, along with trying to support small business development in communities, is a challenge we work on with both the college and our departments of ITI and municipal and community affairs.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Ms. MacDonald, did you have anything to add to that?
10:15 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I have just one reflection, although I think it's been well said by my two colleagues.
The impact and benefit agreements have been absolutely fundamental to aboriginal business in the north. Those agreements in themselves require the secure unbundling of contracts so that things aren't so big that you can't possibly bid on them. There's access to capital through government programs. The guarantee, through the agreements, of contracts such as site services have been fundamental to businesses of the north, and have grown them.
It's because of those negotiated contractual agreements that northern businesses have been able to really break in. Now, for example, the Tlicho businesses have diversified to the south. You see business economy diversifying past the mining economy, which is absolutely central to a legacy, a good legacy, for business.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
I come from a small rural town with a cyclical economy, so I understand that as well.
10:15 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
10:15 a.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thanks to our witnesses--great questions and answers so far.
My colleague Mr. Daniel touched on this in his line of questioning. It concerns the rhythm of development in the north.
Dr. MacDonald, do you think northern development is proceeding too quickly, not quickly enough, or just at the right pace?
10:15 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Thank you for the question.
We certainly can't meet the workforce needs of the north with northern labour.
A lot is forthcoming in the Northwest Territories if there's transportation, if a lot of other factors fall into place. But mines that are proposed and moving forward are setting very low targets for northern labour. If we want taxation to stay in the north and if we want.... The best thing for a family, as my colleague said, is to have a job where they have that income. It's absolutely essential to lots of different elements of a good life, and if they can't secure a job because there's simply not enough labour any more to support that, then we're not doing very well for the northern economy.
Lots of people are still unemployed in the north. There are very high levels of unemployment. We still haven't tackled the barriers to those people working. Criminal records and pardons are a big barrier in the north. People don't know they have access to pardons or are simply unable to get rid of the past, barriers of addictions, social traumas that are in place. We haven't tackled the issues associated with families well enough.
I want to mention one program of the Tlicho government I'm aware of, which I've been involved with for the last two years and that I think is absolutely innovative and fundamental and changing the way we can educate people so they can be in the workforce. It's called the Tlicho Imbe program.
The Tlicho government allocates $2.3 million now, and has done so for two years, for any student in the south getting educated in non-aboriginal ways of life: doctor, lawyer, whatever it is they're pursuing, engineering, undergraduate work, even some of them coming from high school. Those people are then hired by the Tlicho government to be on the land for the entire summer. Their job is to be in their community, learning from their elders, learning their culture, language, and way of life.
Last week they were in Behchoko for a full week of immersion. Not a word of English was spoken in the full week. No one was allowed to speak English, only Tlicho. And at the same time we've gone to all the CEOs of the mines and said come on in, teach us about water quality monitoring while these youngsters are in the community. So they're learning how to set net, how to harvest, how to be out on the land, but they're also learning about water quality monitoring. It's a great way for people to be strong like two people.
I think that's the way forward for training. Rather than trying to turn everybody into a miner, remember that Canada has very different ways of learning and that we need to honour, respect, and grow those so we're not forcing people into a one-mode economy.
10:20 a.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
There is no doubt that linguistic and cultural rights have been a recurring theme throughout testimony in this committee, so thank you for mentioning that point.
Let's move back to the experience with producing the IBA community tool kit. Could you name some factors that lead to success in negotiations, and what are some examples of negotiations that have gone well, in your opinion?
10:20 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Impact and benefit agreements are what lead to success, a strong unified community and strong unified regions where land claim authorities or aboriginal authorities are not battling to the lowest common denominator. So unity is a very important explanatory factor. If there is unity, there tend to be strong deals.
I think there also needs to be strong policy or government backup, and to date we have not seen this. So it's been a private contractual deal where the government's basically left out of it, which is a good thing, but there have been soft policy hammers through the years that have encouraged these things. Minister Irwin was fundamental during the Ekati years.
What kinds of great negotiations have we seen out there? They're negotiations that have led to agreements like the agreements in Voisey Bay, where the aboriginal authorities now have excellent agreements that provide untied revenues each year so they can pursue their aboriginal self-government goals.
10:20 a.m.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
I'll just stop you there so you can respond to my last question. What can the federal government be doing better to ensure the enforcement of these agreements and to better support aboriginal communities on their side?
10:20 a.m.
Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
There's very little to do with enforcement. The federal government has no role in their enforcement because they are private contractual agreements.
In terms of where the federal government is, in aboriginal governments we're trying to tie IBAs to environmental assessment. We try to build mitigations into impact and benefit agreements, and with the gutting of the environmental assessment I believe this will need to be critical for aboriginal governments to maintain any semblance of their rights.
I think they're going to need to push forward in these areas on the impact and benefit agreements, because the gutting of mitigation and the gutting of protective measures is about to move forward with Bill C-38, I think. I think there's going to be a role for these agreements to do things that governments don't even imagine they could do.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative