Oh, oh!
Evidence of meeting #127 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was norway.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #127 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was norway.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:10 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
You know what—
5:10 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
Well, it's a work-in-progress, okay? I'll call it—
5:10 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
No, it's a work-in-progress. There are some critical goals in there. The pieces around what you could call the social and cultural pieces need to be embedded. A lot of it is pretty loosely defined. We don't know where that's going to end up. That's our challenge. If we stay only on the physical and environmental pieces and we don't have a mechanism for that, we're going to be banging our heads into the wall. We have to find a constructive way to get there that's reasonable.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thanks to both of you for being with us today.
I'm going to start again with Professor Poelzer. I was so intrigued by the last statement in your presentation about what's possible globally or in nation building. Could you just expand on that and how it links to indigenous communities and what this government should be doing?
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
Absolutely. I'll go back to one thing.
One of the biggest indicators of entrepreneurship is business start-ups. First nations peoples' business start-ups are 500% greater than the mainstream ones. TD Waterhouse did a study not too long ago in terms of economic development in first nations communities. Notwithstanding the stereotype of over 8% growth in China, India and so on, first nations businesses have been growing over the last decade at 8.2%. Their growth is outstripping what OECD countries are doing.
My argument is that if you want to invest in the most entrepreneurial class in Canada, invest in first nations. If you look at where the growth future is, you look at green energy and renewable energy, which is doing a global transition. There's a massive market. Does somebody in Nepal or Samoa want to talk to somebody in New York? No. They want to talk to somebody in Alaska or northern Canada, and Alaskans are doing that now. If we were to do some investments in helping to facilitate and nurture that opportunity, working with Alaska across Canada.... We've already demonstrated—like the ICC—that we can work together. I think that's the enormous opportunity, in my view: to market that know-how around the world and build that electrical future that's indigenous and northern led.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
It's more a case of linking minds rather than electricity.
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
Exactly, yes.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Okay. That's sort of what I was trying to get at, in terms of whether you had some vision of big polar power lines or something.
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
No, no.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Okay.
I'll turn to you again, Professor Dorough. You ran through that coverage of UNDRIP and FPIC pretty quickly. I just wondered if you could comment on how in Canada the government has expressed a desire to include UNDRIP in its laws and the way it operates.
My colleague Romeo Saganash had his private member's bill, Bill C-262, passed in the House of Commons. It asked the government to include those provisions in the laws of this land. I'm just wondering if you could comment on that process, on where we are and maybe on where other countries might be that have also signed on to UNDRIP and what we could learn from that.
5:15 p.m.
Senior Scholar, University of Alaska Anchorage, As an Individual
I think the efforts in Canada and this political enterprise to integrate the UN declaration standards into national law, legislation and policy are, to a large extent, the answer to some of the questions that have been posed to Professor Poelzer, in terms of natural resource use. The bottom line is that it is a matter of respecting indigenous peoples, recognizing their rights and moving forward in a fashion that takes all of them into account.
As an outside observer to the political arena in Canada and this objective of implementing the UN declaration, I think it would be extremely beneficial to not only the government but also all other interests in Canada to put the standards in place in a fashion that allows for the dialogue to move forward, whether it's in relation to health care or natural resources and major energy projects, and whether it relates to housing or education, so that the standards affirmed in the UN declaration can be instructive and useful guidelines in every matter of concern to Canadians, and more importantly to the indigenous peoples across Canada—first nations, Métis and Inuit.
I think that for many of the questions your colleague posed about energy and alternatives, there are real opportunities to perform outreach with the use of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for dialogue. It could be significant.
In contrast to other regions across the globe...unfortunately we have certainly not seen this kind of political commitment made and the efforts to push it home, and I'm hoping that between now and June, or now and November, something concrete is resolved in this regard. Unfortunately we've seen by other governments in other parts of the world more rights ritualism than concrete action to respect and recognize the rights affirmed in the UN declaration. When I say rights ritualism, I mean governments and UN member states taking action and making glowing reports about their wonderful human rights record in relation to indigenous peoples but not doing anything concrete in follow-up.
Thank you.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Quickly, just to come down to a very specific example, the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative has been mentioned.
I'm just wondering if there are any lessons that Canada could learn from that.
5:20 p.m.
Senior Scholar, University of Alaska Anchorage, As an Individual
When Professor Poelzer was speaking, I was thinking of Buckminster Fuller and his redesign of a global energy grid, when in fact I think for AVEC and its early initiatives, we were really talking about small energy grids within communities.
With technology today, I think there's an opportunity to revisit what's going on in our small rural remote Arctic communities, which are scattered across the whole of the circumpolar Arctic, and look at the alternatives to enhance these small energy grids that were originally put in place by institutions like AVEC.
I think there's extraordinary opportunity, and the public-private partnership that Professor Poelzer also spoke of is one of the essential keys. When we say public-private partnership, it also means the indigenous peoples, not solely as groups or communities but as rights holders who have the right to self-determination.
February 7th, 2019 / 5:20 p.m.
David de Burgh Graham Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Our last witnesses were from Norway, which is a really interesting country.
As you're no doubt aware, Norway has a heritage fund of about two and a half times their GDP, of about $1 trillion.
Have we ever done anything like that in Canada? Have we ever put the revenue from our resources aside to build something like the energy infrastructure you're talking about as the next railway?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
Well, there's the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, which started well under then premier Lougheed, of course, and then was basically pillaged after.
In Saskatchewan, the Blakeney government started one, but it was really a run-through account. Currently there is one in the Northwest Territories.
I've actually written a paper on this particular topic. It's one we ought to be doing, frankly, in every province that's producing resources. We're selling the house furniture and not reinvesting. We're selling assets. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
The argument against doing the fund is, “We need to invest in other things right now.” Trust the people. It was the same in Norway. Politicians were afraid of that then, but people are supportive.
The example I use is the Heritage Savings Trust Fund. A sovereign wealth fund is like your RRSP. Then you have a mortgage, which is like the debt. People say that you have to pay off the debt first, before you can start. Well, does anyone say, “I'm going pay off my mortgage, and 25 years from now, I'll start saving for my pension”? No, you do both. People do that all the time. We can, and we ought to.
5:20 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Do other countries do it in an effective way that we know about?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Greg Poelzer
Well, Norway does, and Alaska's not that bad, actually.
