Thank you.
I'd like to acknowledge the aboriginal custodians and owners of the land where we speak today.
Thank you for asking me to present to you today. I am honoured to do so.
In looking at this question that the committee is facing on resource extraction, the question I ask is, how can we extract minerals and metals in a way that supports a strong and independent north? In thinking about socio-economic issues, which is the topic you asked us to reflect on, I've reflected on what it takes to use the extractive economy to retain, build, and in some cases rebuild resilient northern families, communities, and culture groups.
I am going to tell you a little bit about myself so you have some context for my comments. My background is in mining engineering. I have a PhD in mining engineering, but my background is in social sciences. I have a master's degree and an undergraduate degree in social science, and I work for aboriginal governments.
I generally work in the north, and I generally work across and around the table with senior and junior mining companies, such as De Beers, Rio Tinto, and BHP Billiton. I've worked and lived in northern communities. My PhD is from working in the diamond mines in the Northwest Territories. I work primarily for one aboriginal government, the Tlicho government, which governs an area that is about the size of New Brunswick.
On the question of how we can extract metals and minerals in a way that supports a strong and independent north—in other words, how can natural resources be harnessed to northern social, economic, and rural well-being—I have five themes I want to reflect on this morning.
The first two themes are captured by the phrase of the late Dene chief Jimmy Bruneau, who said that Tlicho people need to be strong like two people. Let me tell you what I mean by that. First of all, it's rewarding the loyal northern workforce and allowing them to become who they might be—a miner, for example, and strong, like the non-aboriginal person.
The national AFN chief, Shawn Atleo, recently said that the government cannot afford to alienate a major source of labour who live on top of Canada's ample natural resources. The northern aboriginal population, and the aboriginal population in particular, could fill as many as 400,000 of the one million jobs that are expected to be vacant in Canada by 2025.
In the north we see higher incomes and lower levels of income support due to the extractive economy, mining in particular. No one questions the benefits that have been accrued; they're well celebrated in the north.
We also see high levels of income inequality that come with the higher incomes. The higher incomes are not necessarily shared in the same way that we see country foods being shared, for example. We see increased debt loads and problems in money management in the north. The downsides associated with income creation and the gaps between haves and have-nots rarely have the level of examination that the incomes themselves do.
The aboriginal workforce in the north is filling up to 30% of the jobs in mining. The value of this workforce in the north is that they are loyal. Aboriginal workers are not going to move to other areas. They're not moving to other countries. They're born and bred in the north, and once they're educated they return to the north.
I argue that these people need to be rewarded with education in the areas they want to be educated in, not just haul-truck drivers. They need to be rewarded with training so they can be the apprentices, the journeymen in their communities after the mines are gone. They need to be rewarded with higher recruitment and retention, and with advancement. That's something we haven't seen in the aboriginal population, in the north in particular. We also need to see aboriginal workers being rewarded with workplaces that celebrate their cultural traditions and support their families and communities. It's about loss prevention and stabilizing remote communities.
My second theme is about the other economy that coexists with the resource economy. I argue that we need to maintain treaty obligations by protecting water and animals so that families can continue to eat a renewable resource, which is the country food, and protect their right to be strong like two people, both aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people.
Let me tell you what I mean by this. In the treaties across the country, aboriginal people were promised that they could continue to pursue their way of life. In the north this means that the caribou, as one example, cannot have their habitat degraded to the point that they are unable to persist in the area. Therefore mining and the impacts it can come with, and the associated developments such as roads, cannot impact on the habitat of this key country food species.
Consider that in many parts of the north, up to 70% of households get more than half the food they eat from the land. So they're dependent on caribou, on fish, and on country foods. It's a renewable food source, and it's been there since time immemorial.
Country foods are shared widely in northern indigenous families. They protect elders and vulnerable people from poverty, and they reinforce culture. When people are out there on the land practising their way of life, they're also speaking their language. They have a strong identity, which protects them from all sorts of social ills.
In a nutshell, what I'm talking about is people being able to stay who they are—harvesters connected to the land. At the same time, they're able to be what they might be—miners, income providers, and strong and capable tradespeople. In a nutshell, they become strong like two people, as they're both hunters and miners, aboriginal and non-aboriginal.
The loss of country foods in the north presents a real cost to governments. When communities turn to store-bought food in remote northern communities, there are rarely affordable nutritious options. This often means that people turn to cheap and high-calorie diets, which has led us to our current epidemic of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other health impacts.
Mining, therefore, and the development that comes with it, cannot impact on the habitat of key country food species.
My third theme is building and repairing housing for these families so that people can be harvesters and miners at the same time. Workers need housing that's reliable, adequate, affordable, and healthy. Right now, in one region where I work, more than 50% of the houses are in need of repair, and 37% of these are reported to need major repairs. More than 50% of these northern homes have more than six people living in them, which means that there are multiple generations housed under one roof. And more than 51% of them are living with mould and mildew.
Housing is tightly linked to health status. Where you have these kinds of conditions, you also have chronic respiratory infections and other debilitating health outcomes.
Almost every mine in the north has a two-on, two-off schedule. That means that people are in the mine for two weeks, away from their families, and back at home for a two-week work shift. It's a great shift for harvesters, because they can be on the land for two weeks. But workers need to be able to leave their families knowing that the plumbing, the lighting, and the heating is all going to work while they're away and that their children are not going to be unsafe while they're away.
In homes where there are addictions issues and where there are multiple generations living under the same roof, people are not always guaranteed the safety of their children when they're away. They cannot have peace of mind at work, and they need it. People ought not to be choosing between a good job and a strong family. A healthy and productive northern workforce is based on families that are well housed there.
Fourth, I've spoken to you about the two economies of the north that coexist: the bush economy, or the harvest economy, and the mining economy. The bush economy is a recognized and strong economy. It's dependent on a strong and able regulatory system, which is currently under attack, in large part due to an obsession with timelines.
The regulatory system in authority in the north has been shown in audits, in peer views, and in internal reviews to be functional and strong. Agency boards and tribunals are put in place there for a good reason. In their absence, there's usually a lawsuit.
Industry itself has created the spectre of timing, and it largely has itself to blame. Many companies are using the public regulatory system to raise funds on the stock market. They boost their stocks by issuing press releases about what moment of the environmental assessment or what stage of regulatory approval they are in. Their appetite is for good news. We notice this particularly for small, junior mining companies. This often sends them into the regulatory system years before they're ready to properly present their projects. They waste our time, and then they complain that they feel held up in the legitimate process that has been designed to promote the public interest.
I'm aware of at least one junior mining company that has been in front of you complaining about aboriginal governments that are incapable of governing themselves. They have been saying that these aboriginal governments are at fault for what they perceive as their being too long in the regulatory system.
I think these companies are equally or more to blame for their cavalier and self-centred abuse of a properly constituted and hard-fought-for environmental assessment system. We spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of public funds to review fictional mines that often, during the assessments themselves, have no concrete proposals for roads or power to bring metals and minerals to the south.
I recommend that you consider this thought in itself: that companies submit proper and adequate descriptions of projects with proper sequencing, so that mines do not precede infrastructure and waste the time of aboriginal governments and regulatory authorities, or worse, lead to the type of ill-planned developments that have pockmarked the north with contaminated sites whose financial legacies fall on the shoulders of all Canadians and whose environmental and socio-cultural legacies fall on the shoulders of the indigenous people whose lands and waters have been contaminated.
My final theme, on what does it take to promote socio-economic development with the extraction of mineral resources, is give northern institutions the time to finish their growth. In reviewing the minutes of previous sessions I see a theme from developers, in particular on the topic of governance. Developers want certainty of land tenure. They need settled claims in the north.
Where there are settled land claims there are also strong and independent governments emerging. Their governance is often unrecognizable to developers because it doesn't look like anything they're used to from the south. In the absence of something they recognize, developers come to Ottawa and label what they see, unkindly, as lack of capacity, lack of sophistication, or lack of acumen. It is anything but.
There are strong and independent forms of governance emerging in the north based in co-management models so that the land and water boards and the renewable resource boards there are growing technical competence and an ability of a generation of young indigenous scientists and young non-aboriginal scientists who are strong like two people. Governments are managing million-dollar budgets with strong technical competence. There are lands departments and evolving land use plans. There are strong indigenous governments passing laws and enacting legislation.
If anything, the north is currently in a state of unfinished governance where the institutions are emergent so we need to carry on with the vision that has been established in the comprehensive land claim agreements, the creation of an integrated system of regulation and management, building systems that are by the north, in the north, and for the north.
I want to thank you and I want to acknowledge my colleagues who are going to be presenting this morning as well, as they are all from these strong independent northern governments.
Thank you for your time.
