Evidence of meeting #21 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agreements.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
In your presentation, Mr. Wernick, you state the following:
An evaluation of the impact of modern land claim agreements is underway, studying five communities, in both the Northwest Territories and Quebec.
What Quebec community are you referring to?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Claims and Indian Government, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Both the Cree and Inuit, I believe.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Claims and Indian Government, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The Inuit and the Naskapi.
Bloc
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Claims and Indian Government, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
No, because the North Shore Innu do not have a comprehensive claims agreement yet.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
To follow up on that discussion, Mr. Sewell, on this whole issue of untendered contracts and what's going on with respect to this particular contract, can you provide us with some correspondence—not copies but from yourself—as to just exactly what is going on?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
As it relates to untendered contracts?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Strictly untendered?
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Mr. Wernick, there are some questions about respectful disagreement with some elements of this report. Just to lead off, are there any specific elements, either in the recommendations or in the paragraphs of this report, that you respectfully disagree with, anything else we haven't identified today?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
No. The response that was tabled at the time of the report is our response.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
So you generally agree with all the comments--not just the recommendations, but all the paragraphs as well?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Yes, you could put it that way. We accept the recommendations, and the response was tabled at the time when the chapter was filed.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Looking on page 31, there are a couple of timelines in there, one referring to the recommendation to do with the reasonable share we've talked about today. It says here:
The Department will complete its work with Public Works, Treasury Board Secretariat, and the Canada School of Public Service on the development of a Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement training module for all federal procurement officers by March 2008.
We're there right now. Is there an update on that?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
It's not complete, because we have to get those parties around the table. We will have a working draft of it within the next few weeks, or a couple of months at the outside, and then be field-testing it with people to see whether it's useful. It will probably iterate several times through the course of the year.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I'm sorry; I think he's talking about the e-training.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Oh, the e-training; I'm sorry. I'm mixing that up.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The e-training being developed by Public Works and Government Services Canada is on track to be put in place at the Canada public service school by the end of this month.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
The recommendation in paragraph 3.30, to do with the exchange of lands, says:
With respect to Annex R lands, INAC will review the process for cleaning up and returning control of parcels of land identified in Annex R and will make changes to improve its efficacy by April 1, 2008.
That's coming up pretty quickly. How's that going?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I can report, if I may, Deputy, that we have developed a process, and we've in fact given it a test drive. In early February we were successful in removing an R designation on a parcel of INAC land. So we have used the process, and it worked: we have actually removed an R.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
That's one parcel out of 13, I think it was.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
It is one out of 21. The important thing to understand about the R designation is that these are parcels of land that federal departments are using—their Inuit-owned lands. There's a reserved designation because a federal department was using it at the time the land claim agreement was signed. If that federal department is still using it today, we would not remove the R designation. Not all 21 are waiting to be removed.