Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the invitation to be with you today and the opportunity to speak on a topic that is very meaningful.
I respectfully acknowledge that I am joining you and that we're able to have this dialogue on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada recognizes that indigenous-led research and indigenous knowledge are essential to inform broad-scale science and policy-making in Canada. In the department, we have demonstrated experience that integration of indigenous traditional knowledge into policy-making makes for more impactful policy, with meaningful and durable results.
Integrating indigenous knowledge is fundamental to how CIRNAC operates and how effectively the department can deliver on its mandate. Essentially, it relates to the principles of governance and processes that are built upon partnership and collaboration. When we are able to build co-development and co-management approaches into our processes, we know from experience that the results are more durable and also more likely to contribute to self-determination objectives of indigenous partners.
Across the department there are several examples of working in partnership with indigenous peoples through co-development and co-management processes to integrate traditional knowledge with scientific research. For example, the co-developed Arctic and northern policy framework is clear that Arctic and northern peoples want knowledge gaps filled, but they also want changes to the way knowledge is gathered, created and shared. As such, this framework approach to Arctic and northern research features stronger regional and indigenous involvement in the research process, including in setting priorities, in undertaking research itself and in enhanced community-based observation. The Arctic and northern policy framework is also clear that indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge will be equally considered in decision-making.
In regard to co-management, the northern resource co-management structure intentionally integrates traditional and scientific knowledge by virtue of the regimes created by legislation. This legislation implements commitments from modern treaties that require the integration of traditional and scientific knowledge into policies, processes, and decisions or recommendations. It also establishes resource co-management boards whose membership includes representatives from regional indigenous communities that have experience in understanding, analyzing and incorporating traditional knowledge.
These are the bodies responsible for decision-making around environmental assessment and resource management across the north. Shared decision-making models and co-management arrangements provide a practical mechanism for integrating indigenous traditional knowledge into government decision-making and management processes for natural resources.
Further to the practices that we have employed in the north, CIRNAC is negotiating chapters in some British Columbia treaties that would commit federal departments to respond to requests from treaty first nations to explore a co-management and shared decision-making arrangement. This provides one potential mechanism through which indigenous knowledge can be integrated with federal decision-making processes on environmental and resource management. It is proposed that the chapter be included in a number of treaties being currently negotiated in British Columbia.
Further, we operate a program, the northern contaminants program. It is one of Canada's longest-running research programs and has some three decades of experience of bringing together western scientific methods and indigenous knowledge, perspectives and approaches to better understand and address the issue of contaminants from distant sources that make their way into northern and Arctic environments and build up in the fish, birds and wildlife that serve as important food sources for Inuit, first nations and Métis peoples.
The northern contaminants program itself generally refers to an approach as a partnership approach, by which government at federal and territorial levels, indigenous organizations and governments, academia and local communities all have a say in the research, the monitoring and the supporting outreach activities that are undertaken—how they are done, by whom, and how the results will be communicated. The program recognizes that indigenous peoples, their representative organizations, and their knowledge and input in direction are necessary at all stages of the research process.
CIRNAC will continue to work in partnership with indigenous peoples to develop new, collaborative ways to integrate indigenous traditional knowledge.
I look forward to the results of this committee's study, which will help inform those discussions into the future.
