Evidence of meeting #25 for Public Accounts in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Sorry, Chair, it's straightforward. There are eight minutes from the first round, or seven, depending on what we had, and five minutes this time. That's twelve. So does the member not have twelve minutes? That was my understanding. I took the floor to make sure that it was clear.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joe Volpe
Mr. Christopherson, it's not a problem. I just want to give everybody a chance to ask their questions. He'll get the other five minutes. It's not a problem.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joe Volpe
Because I have a couple of other members who haven't asked yet, so I'd like them to go. Let's use the time fruitfully.
Go ahead, Mr. Bevington.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Well, the most fruitful way would be to allow him to run the whole thing together. He's the only member for the area. Give him the 12 minutes, Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joe Volpe
I have another one here, as well, from the area.
Go ahead, Mr. Bevington.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the effort this committee has made to help me work through a conflict of interest I had with another committee.
I'll just start off with the Auditor General. You say pretty clearly in your report that the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act is an adequate instrument for environmental assessment. Is that your broad overview?
Auditor General of Canada
We note that there are difficulties in the areas where there are not settled land claims. One of the major issues that comes up is consultation. When only that act applies there is not the same level of consultation in the co-management boards. We note in the report that there are projects that have actually begun and have then been halted at some later time because of inadequate consultation.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
True enough. I'll get to the unsettled claims areas. But as an instrument in the settled claims areas, you found that it was adequate for the conduct of environmental assessments as it pertains to the multi-claims areas within the rest of the Northwest Territories.
Auditor General of Canada
Yes. We don't do an evaluation per se of the effectiveness of legislation, but we didn't see any particular difficulties. And actually, through the audit, we note that the co-management boards have improved. We did an audit in 2005 in which we noted a number of problems, and we noted that there has been improvement since then, and it seems to be working quite well.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
In reality, if we could get the land use plans in place and get the community impact monitoring in place as outlined in the act, if the act is fulfilled, we would have a very good regulatory system in the Northwest Territories.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Now I just want to go to recommendation 4.51, where it talks about the need to develop land use plans for effective representation in the areas without settled claims.
The department's responses agree. But then they go on to say that they'll continue to work with willing partners to settle land claims agreements. They don't say that they agree and they will set up mechanisms that will allow--in the interim--for land use plans to proceed and for effective representation to be put on the board. So how do they agree with your recommendation here?
They said they agreed to it, and yet the response is not that way.
October 5th, 2010 / 12:30 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada
I think that's a question best asked to the department.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
There's no obstacle to the people being named to these various boards; that happens all the time. There are people nominated by the public government in the north, the aboriginal government in the north, and by the minister, and there are a lot of northerners on a lot of boards up north, as you know.
The issue about land use planning comes up in the chapter and in other places. You cannot have a fully enforceable and operational land use plan if you don't have a settlement.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
In other words, you don't agree with the recommendation. The recommendation is that you do settle these, you set up agreements to have land use plans in place prior to claims being settled. So you don't agree with that, or you do agree with that?
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
If I can put my own words in my own mouth, what you can have are conversations and discussions about the land use plan. We're doing that with the Dehcho, as you know. These help identify the important environmental areas, sacred cultural and archaeological sites, the priorities of the first nations community, the priorities of the elected public government in the north, and the priorities of the resource companies.
You can go a long way. The advice of Mr. McCrank was to have those conversations about land use planning early, so that when you move to implementation, you can move quickly. My only statement is that you really can't enforce those plans in the absence of a settlement.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I just want to move on to cumulative impact monitoring programs, because they do actually come down to the ground. I think it's very clear that's happened in the case of our caribou population in the Northwest Territories. That is a case where we've seen declines in the caribou population to a great extent, and the understanding of that decline is hampered because we don't have cumulative impact monitoring in place.
We don't understand the differentiation between the pressures of development in terms of the diamond mines. We don't have understanding of the pressures in terms of the climate change that's taking place in the regions. We don't understand the differentiation between commercial and residential hunting on those populations.
So we don't have an opportunity because we haven't done the work with cumulative impact monitoring. So what is playing out on the ground is that we are losing our caribou herds without understanding why that's taking place.
The federal government has a responsibility under the NWT act to either declare caribou endangered, moving to extinction, or not. So the federal government has a very, very strong responsibility in this regard to the caribou that they abrogated in the spring by saying no, they don't.
I'd just like you to comment on this, because this is a serious issue that's in front of the Northwest Territories right now. We need to expand the monitoring of these herds, because they are the basis of the biological system in the Northwest Territories.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
I appreciate the question, and I think we can perhaps pursue this in some written follow-up to the committee if it's of interest to you, Mr. Chair.
There is a fair degree of disagreement, as you know, Mr. Bevington, between the territorial government and some of the aboriginal groups about conservation versus hunting rights and who gets to take how many caribou and so on. Those are decisions for those governments to take.
What we can contribute--and that's why this is such an important chapter--is the baseline science about the state of the herds and what's sustainable, what should allowable takes be, and so on. That's why all of this monitoring work that Mr. Boothe alluded to is really important. You have to have science to make smart decisions. What we've done--
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I just want to correct one thing you said there, because in the NWT act it clearly says that the federal government is the only agency that can take away the right of aboriginal people to hunt, and they can only do that by declaring a species moving to extinction.
Deputy Minister, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Yes, and if I can just finish, a lot of the projects that were financed over the last few years through our tools had to do with monitoring of caribou. I can pick five off the list in front of me. I'd be happy to table that with you and with the committee. A lot of the important priority science in the north is specifically about caribou. We'd be happy to provide a list of the projects that have been financed or that we're considering.