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.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Reporting progress on...or annual reports?
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
In 1988, before this committee, there was an obligation put on your department to provide yearly progress reports. For the last three years we haven't received any. Why?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
The annual report process is a joint process that involves the four parties to the land claim agreement. Each party plays a role in providing their component's information. Then there's a lengthy process of preparation, including editing and all of those elements, and we--
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So you've once again put together a methodology that creates a bureaucracy and a situation where we don't get reports that mean a lot and in a timely fashion.
The obligation obligated your department. You've just described a process involving various governments, etc., and it was just your department. I would almost assume that it's a checklist to see how you're proceeding.
When can we expect these three reports to be ready? And can we receive those three reports in this committee?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I'll just check my schedule, if I may....
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
While Mr. Sewell is checking his binder, Mr. Wernick, you've had this report for a while. It's not a glowing report by any measure.
Have you ever visited any of these six communities?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
No.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I meet regularly in Inuvik, yes; once a year in Inuvik and once a year in Edmonton.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
You were flipping through your binder there. Have you managed to find the information?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Yes, I have.
Our target to complete the 2004-05 annual report is the spring of 2008, and then we would target doing a combined two-year report, 2005-07, for the late summer of 2008.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So it takes three years to do a report that should be a pretty straightforward checklist on progress.
Once you have this report, what happens with it? How long does it take to put together an action plan? Do you involve all these four departments once again, and create a whole bureaucratic process around it?
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I'm not sure about the action plan, but the annual report is a look back on activities and things undertaken by the various bodies under—
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So there's a disconnect. Those reports are a report card on your actions to date, and that would seem to indicate—
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
It's a report by all of the parties, including the Inuvialuit and the Government of the Northwest Territories, and yes, it is a long process to get their sign-off. I cannot commit to table those reports without the sign-off of the other parties. We can make best efforts to get them unplugged and tabled here, or we can table a federal progress report on what the federal government has done, but for better or for worse, we've locked ourselves into a structure where all of the parties are reporting.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Let me add as well that one of the interesting wrinkles of doing annual reports is that given the procurement elements of the land claim agreement, we try to find businesses within the settlement area to contract with to prepare the annual reports. In the case of the Inuvialuit, we spent a year tracking down various potential businesses that might undertake it, only to find at the end of the day that there was no business able to take it on. We got the Inuvialuit approval to engage an aboriginal firm here in Ottawa to meet the dates that I've outlined for you.
So it's an interesting challenge. We were talking earlier about the procurement provisions. Here we want to try to use the procurement provisions to accomplish another step in the process and it ends up presenting challenges, given the limitations of businesses in these remote locations.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I'm under no illusions, Mr. Wernick. Being the head of this department and managing it is not a slam-dunk by any stretch. There are lots of challenges. In the not too distant future, I would like to see a report from the Auditor General that says we're making real progress on the education file, that shows we're not only meeting expectations but exceeding them. That's an aside from what we're talking about today, but I think it's a report that a lot of Canadians would like to see. We'd be improving long-term living standards of first nations people, and we'd be making progress on this file.
I have a lot of trouble seeing how you can create real wealth without a concept of private property embedded in the system. I'm just wondering, under the agreement that now exists, is there sufficient room to allow for respect for private property rights? I think that's a foundation for economic development. If you have comments, I'd appreciate it. Even the Chinese now recognize that they can't have real economic development without private property rights.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I will defer to Mr. Sewell on the details, but you have 91,000 square kilometres of land held collectively by the Inuvialuit through a land corporation, together with various forms of private tenure in the communities and various mixes of the two.
Director General, Implementation Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Our land claim agreements always respect third party interests. They don't overlay existing third party interests in land.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
When a claim is under negotiation, there's no expropriation of private property interests. You work around them. You need a willing buyer and a willing seller. But generally, third party interests are protected.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Mr. Wernick, there's just one other item I wanted to ask you about. It's on page 26 of the Auditor General's report in paragraph 3.81, and it's also mentioned in paragraph 3.49. It's an economic framework. The text says that it took four years to develop, yet the evaluation and framework was never used.
This is a committee of accountability. If large resources are committed to a framework that's never used, we need to know why. Could you tell me why this wasn't used and what resources were spent on it? Are we planning to use it at some future time?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I'll defer to Mr. Sewell on the past efforts.
We've agreed with the Inuvialuit, on a going-forward basis, to the approach we described earlier—looking at the six communities' strengths and weaknesses in the context of the resource boom in the north to see what opportunities are there.
As to what happened in the past, I'd have to defer to somebody with a longer memory than mine.
