Thank you very kindly for having us in on this obviously very important topic to our country, but also to our neighbouring countries in the circumpolar north.
And a hello to my colleague from Alaska, where I did my Fulbright. Folks in Alaska really treated me well, so I have a very fond affection for Alaska.
One of the things I know a lot of folks are thinking about when we're thinking about large energy projects is oil. It's a hot topic, as you might expect, in my home province, Saskatchewan. But I want to focus a little bit on what will be, in the long term, the bigger infrastructure energy projects that are coming down the line, which will be in electrical energy. I'm happy to talk about anything, but I want to focus on this one, especially as it relates to indigenous peoples in Canada.
When we think about this global energy transition, in my view it offers us the most important opportunity in the 21st century to renew indigenous relations through renewable energy. This will happen only if it's done right. If done badly, the transition to greener energy would be just another area of unnecessary, preventable conflict and lost opportunity for sustainable wealth generation in indigenous communities. It would truncate progress, in my view, with regard to the largest single environmental challenge of our times, which of course is climate change.
If we think about the national railway of the 19th century as the key infrastructure project that helped to build Canada from sea to sea, I would suggest that the global energy transition offers Canada the same opportunity in the 21st century, which can bind Canada together from sea to sea to sea.
I think nation building through energy could address two important dimensions, and I say this is with my prairie-Saskatchewan hat on. I think it provides us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do better on our promise to one another that we are all treaty peoples. The energy transition can be a nation-building project that includes all founding peoples and contributes to our journey of reconciliation, through steel in the ground.
Being independent power producers, for first nations and Métis communities, offers real opportunities for indigenous equity ownership positions, in whole or in part. They provide sustainable revenue streams, employment and new business ventures.
Second, I think energy transition provides critical foundations for completing nation building, especially as it relates to the territorial and the provincial north. Energy access and energy security are everyday issues in almost all remote and rural communities in the territorial and provincial north. The high cost of energy often contributes to grinding poverty and the “heat or eat” dilemma in many communities. The lack of stable power is a deterrent to business development and business investment.
These are issues the vast majority of Canadians don't ever think about. They aren't on our horizon. But if we're truly going to complete nation building in this country, I think the energy sector is one thing, in terms of infrastructure, through which we can build Canada east, west and north. And it will enhance equality of opportunity, especially for first nations, Métis and Inuit Canadians, because their lack of equality of opportunity is largely grounded with energy. The energy transition we have in front of us provides that large-scale nation-building project.
There are four lessons.
As for my own background, I've done a lot of work in Siberia over the last 30 years. I've done 30 field trips. I read, write and speak Russian. I've done a lot of work more recently in Scandinavia, particularly in Norway and Sweden, and more recently now in Alaska. I could give you about 20 or 40 lessons, but I'll stick with four.
One is to pay attention to social impact, not just physical and environmental impacts, in doing assessments. I think that's deadly important. A place that you wouldn't expect Canada could learn some lessons from is the Sakha Republic—Yakutia—in eastern Siberia. They had a delegation—some of them are our colleagues, in fact—looking at environmental assessment processes in Canada, which have tended historically to focus on the physical and environmental impacts. To their neglect, we don't have a robust process around social, cultural and economic impacts for indigenous communities.
They thought our process had something wanting. When they went back, they actually built in—yes, they have the standard physical and environmental ones in their EIA processes—and created a process to look at social and cultural impacts, and they have deployed it. They have deployed it on two railway projects in southwestern Yakutia and on a hydroelectric development project. The reports back are that it was largely successful. Yes, remuneration or compensation is not anything like we would expect in Canada, but the point is, there's a lesson that these things can be done.
The other lesson I want to draw on—I'm glad our Norwegian colleagues set the stage—is about the decentralization of electrical power. It's coming and it's going more global, but it also provides opportunities for democratization in decision-making at the local level. I think what's going on in Norway is instructive, especially in Finnmark county, the largest county in northern Norway. It has the largest indigenous population. At one point, 90% of the land was actually owned by the state, the national state, which was not typical for every other county in Norway. There was the Finnmark Estate, which allowed co-governance, or co-management, as it were—we might use that lingo in Canada—in which there were equal appointments by the county and the Sami Parliament.
That context is I think really important when you look at that kind of decentralization of electrical power. By Canadian standards, it's a small region. By Norwegian standards, it's large. By Canadian standards, there's a fairly good population, and by Norwegian standards it's quite sparse. There are seven or eight local utilities, including everything from private to municipal to co-operative, and they've all worked together under a single one, Finnmark Kraft. One of the interesting things is that there was supposed to be some national large-scale wind development. These things are still under debate, but the fact that the Finnmark Estate is there and the fact that Finnmark Kraft is operating has actually slowed this down to where there now is an opportunity to offer local decision-making about wind power development in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. That's another lesson that I think Canada can take away to think about in our context.
The third lesson is that indigenous peoples can own and operate energy utilities. I'll tell you this. In terms of the other hat I wear, I'm a negotiator for SaskPower, so I'm on the industry side of the table and have been setting out in the last eight years the negotiating of a global settlement on a hydro facility in northern Saskatchewan. When you work across the electrical utilities, I think one of the mythologies in Canada is that indigenous peoples don't have the capability or capacity to own and operate electrical utilities, but you can look at the State of Alaska and at things like the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, AVEC, which was founded in 1967. We're only 50 years behind Alaska, but we will catch up one day. It started with a handful of communities and now has 57 native Alaskan communities owning and operating it and making investments. It is the largest electricity co-operative in the world by territory. There are lessons for Canada. We can do that.
One thing I'm working on and negotiating with SaskPower is to found the first generation and distribution utility that would be owned by first nations in Canada. There are nearly 200 projects of electrical ownership, but not in terms of utilities. That's not uncommon in the United States.
The last point I want to mention is the power of international co-operation in indigenous-led energy development. Again, I hearken back to the state of Alaska, our neighbour. The Alaska Centre for Energy and Power at UAF, with our friends in Iceland and funded as well by the Canadian government and the United States government, put together the Arctic Remote Energy Network Academy. It brought together energy champions from indigenous communities, from everywhere from Greenland to Canada to Alaska, to work on energy projects and build capacity together.
We worked in Saskatchewan with AVEC and Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation on the design of a locally owned utility and an assessment of what kind of renewable energy system could work and how it could be operated in a fiscally sustainable manner. We've taken those things, including from the Fulbright arctic initiative, and built a UArtic thematic network to sustain this kind of initiative into the future.
Here's one last thought I want to leave with you about the opportunity. I think it is profound. Sometimes Canada, and I have to say this about our country, I love this country, and no offence to my Alaskan colleague, but I think we live in the best country in the world—