Science and Research Committee on Nov. 29th, 2023

[K_ii'iljuus Barbara Wilson]

I think it's building trust, and Bruce brought it up. It's very important to be transparent, that the people involved know what your intentions are, and that you hear what they're saying. Asking first and building on their concerns, on the things they see out on the land, is very important, because they're the ones who suffer first when we make decisions that aren't fine.

I feel that listening and building on the strengths of the knowledge that people hold is very important. This goes back to ways of governance and building policies that look at what the laws of the land were prior to their being submerged in government policies, etc.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Barbara Wilson, I have a question for you around the area of consultation.

This is obviously a significant part of government policy, I would argue, and a big obligation of business, if they have a project. I've always been curious about how business or government should go about integrating indigenous traditional knowledge in the area of consultation.

If they're looking at traditional knowledge and everything else, is it when every member of the community is fully knowledgeable about a proposed project, or is that too difficult to define?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We're over time. Please be very brief.

[K_ii'iljuus Barbara Wilson]

I don't think it's difficult to define.

If you look at our structure, our hereditary leaders sit together and get the first level of information. Their responsibility is to take that out to their families regarding the areas they are responsible for via inheritance.

We could do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry to be the timekeeper for these conversations, but we're trying to be fair to all members and witnesses at the same time.

It's over to Mr. Turnbull for six minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

I'm very grateful to have all of you here with us today and to have your testimony and expertise. I want to thank you for your work.

I want to thank Mr. Cannings for putting this study forward as well, because I think it's very beneficial for all of us to do this important work.

I'll start with Mr. Maclean.

We've heard, in the previous testimony that is part of this study, how complementary indigenous traditional knowledge can be to western science, and vice versa. They truly are different ways of knowing that can be combined in some way to enhance our understanding about the impacts of climate change, for example.

I know your work involves Fort Chipewyan and three indigenous communities that are working together on water monitoring in the Peace-Athabasca delta. Could you highlight how the complementarity of those two different ways of knowing has led to a better understanding of the impacts of climate change on that important watershed?

[Bruce Maclean]

Yes. Thanks a lot, Mr. Turnbull. It's a great question. I'm happy to share this very succinctly.

There is pressure from climate change, hydro development and oil sands development, along with the ongoing spills you're likely aware of. We like to go out on the land with elders who have identified areas that are of concern. Whitefish is one of those concerns. We brought in scientists who know whitefish and fish health and put them on the land with elders who have always fished whitefish in the same area.

We put them together with no preconceived ideas about what the research would look like. We asked the question, “How do we know things are changing?” The elders tell you things are changing, and we complement that with science and start testing hypotheses together. It really is two experts and two knowledges—science and indigenous knowledge holders—put together as equals. The work that unfolded from there has been the foundation of everything else we've done.

Without getting too much into it, you need to take a chance on treating those knowledge holders as equals. Sometimes they say the same things and sometimes they don't.

I'll stop there. I think the elders in the room probably have a lot to add to that as well.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes, and I want to use that as a starting point to ask Ms. Wilson and Ms. Salomon a question.

I think we've heard this metaphor brought up—I'm calling it a metaphor—as the concept of braiding these two ways of knowing together. It seems really important to me that many people who specialize in this area are using that term or metaphor for understanding.

Can someone unpack that for me? Why is that so significant?

Ms. Wilson, maybe you could tell us about why braiding is the way to understand this. I think it's pretty significant. Maybe you can unpack that.

[K_ii'iljuus Barbara Wilson]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] governance, when you look at the way we govern or [Technical difficulty—Editor] to be responsible for the upkeep of all aspects of our land, it's quite different from your governance, and at times it's very difficult to integrate the two.

However, my learning has told me that Canadian laws should lean to us and look at how our laws are put together and modify.... Let's say we look at conservation. Look at SARA, for instance, and the issues it causes when people are not able to go out and harvest the foods they require. There is no braiding there; it's a separation, a division of ideas that can't match, so it's a necessity to change the laws. Our laws have been ignored for a few hundred years and submerged quite often, so we need to take those out and look at them and use them and see what they're made of.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that.

Maybe I could just follow that with a quick question. I realize I am short on time.

How does the policy development process actually change when you start integrating ITK? This relates to Mr. Lobb's question. I think we can envision it as perhaps very linear in the normal western paradigm, but I think that indigenous traditional knowledge may actually highlight how the policy development process may need to change altogether.

I don't know who to frame that to, but maybe Ms. Salomon or Mr. Jones would like to comment on that.

Mr. Jones, I don't think you've had a chance—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about 20 seconds, Mr. Jones.

[Chief Nang Jingwas Russ Jones]

Maybe I'll just give an example of the work we did with herring. Why did herring require rebuilding? They were in a really low state. What was the explanation?

We spent three years looking at how we should manage herring, but also at what the cause of the decline was. There was no clear answer or reason why. There are limitations in science, and science was unable to explain the high abundance of herring we saw in the fifties in Haida Gwaii. Also, traditional knowledge talked about a higher abundance back in the thirties and forties, before DFO started keeping records of herring.

Both those things informed what a reasonable policy would be, moving forward, to rebuild herring.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. That was well done in a short time.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you have six minutes, please.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses who are with us today for this study.

Ms. Salomon, how can we manage to divide traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge when it comes time to make decisions in the development of public policy?

[Anne Salomon]

I'd like to answer you in French, but it would be too difficult for me, so I'll answer you in English instead.

You asked me and gave me time again to talk about western science and indigenous knowledge and how they can be brought together to inform policy. I think you heard some great examples from Russ Jones, Barbara Wilson and Bruce.

I'm going to give you another example of something magical and innovative. Some of you have maybe heard of ancestral clam gardens. These are intertidal rock-walled terraces built by people 4,000 years ago, which we've shown, by bringing western science and indigenous knowledge together, can double to quadruple the number of clams produced for food in one place. They're truly outstanding. These are not only things to marvel at as technologies, but they can be used well into the future. I was thinking about extreme climatic events.

By bringing our knowledge systems together, we've figured out how these things work. One way they work is by keeping beaches cool, because they change the slopes of beaches and they stay wetter for longer. Sea-water has a high heat capacity, so these clams can grow twice as fast. When you get these extreme climatic events like heat domes, for example, which we experienced in the Pacific Northwest several summers ago, or extreme heat waves through the warming of the ocean itself, these things can cool down the clams and allow them to grow and not get diseased with bacteria.

These are some technologies bring information together with these two ways of understanding a system—two lenses—almost like at different scales of understanding. We can bring in genetics and we can bring in stable isotopes, based on hypotheses given to us by our indigenous collaborators. We can see how these work. It has real policy implications for how we manage the foreshore and make them resilient to future climatic disturbances, for example.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Salomon.

Thank you for giving us a conclusive example. It's true that you're a professor of applied marine ecology and social-ecological system science.

I'm trying to understand something to do with traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge. When developing public policy, how do you disentangle belief from scientific knowledge?

[Anne Salomon]

Could you repeat the question in French? I'll listen to the interpretation this time.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

How do you distinguish scientific knowledge and belief, which is traditional knowledge?

[Anne Salomon]

Okay. I understand the question.

Thank you. That is a fantastic question. It's one answer to one of our previous questions about some of the differences between indigenous knowledge and Eurocentric or western science. Eurocentric or western science tends to consider itself devoid of values, beliefs and spirituality. Indigenous knowledge captures that all together. It's inclusive of values and spirituality. That is one of the very big differences.

Western science or Eurocentric science has also been criticized. Often many of the biases and beliefs that western scientists have, although we say they're objective, are influenced by our lens of looking at things. That speaks to what Bruce was saying earlier, and what Russ was identifying too. When you bring these knowledge systems together and identify the different values that people hold, I think that's where some of the opportunity space is for policy development.

Policies certainly are and should be informed by evidence and science, but they're also, whether we are explicit about it or not, guided by values. As K_ii'iljuus mentioned, many of our policies do not explicitly address that, like the Species at Risk Act. They're definitely driven typically by Eurocentric values. That influences western science and Eurocentric science in the questions we ask, the data we use and what we actually deem as legitimate. The more we recognize that and are very transparent [Technical difficulty—Editor] for policy.

I hope that was clear. Did I answer your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Could you repeat that last sentence? It froze up a bit.

I'll also give Mr. Blanchette-Joncas a few more seconds because of the translation problems earlier.

[Anne Salomon]

The last sentence was kind of off the cuff, but what I believe I was trying to say was.... I'll just summarize.

Western science, Eurocentric science, the science Simon Fraser University and this institution has protocols to and subscribes to, considers much of our evidence-based processes and the generation of knowledge as being devoid of values, yet it's often not, because values influence the kinds of questions we ask, the kind of data we consider legitimate and the data we collect.

One beautiful experience that I've had working with indigenous knowledge holders like K_ii'iljuus is being very explicit about the values that we have and how that influences the questions we ask. That has policy implications.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

We will go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for being here. It's a very interesting discussion.

I think I'll start with Mr. Snook because of my past experience. I sat on the COSEWIC board. It was mentioned by Mr. Maclean, I think. That's the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. You're actually here in Ottawa with COSEWIC right now. You pulled yourself out of that meeting.

We've heard mention of SARA in here, where we have western science values, western science structures, trying to come up with whether a species is endangered or threatened.

Over the years, COSEWIC has been working on the indigenous traditional knowledge part of that. When I sat on it 20 years ago, that was in its infancy, and it was a very rough, difficult process at times.

Can you comment on where that has come after 20 years of work on it? It is a long process, as we've heard today. Can you give me an idea of where you think we are here in Canada with this kind of policy?

[Jamie Snook]

With that committee in particular, there's no doubt there have been challenges, but there have also been some successes. I know this week there were two different species that were assessed that did have indigenous knowledge included in their assessment. One was the killer whale. An immense amount of knowledge was available to the committee from British Columbia, for example, and the different first nations there. The second species was the ivory gull, and a lot of knowledge about that was known among Inuit communities.

I could give another example: 10 years ago, the Torngat Mountains caribou in Labrador were considered data deficient in the language of COSEWIC. Ten years later, with the documentation of Inuit knowledge in Labrador and Quebec, that species is now recognized by COSEWIC as its own designatable unit and is now considered endangered. There's a lot of care and monitoring now happening by the co-management system that's in place. There is certainly progress happening.

I'd like to take this opportunity and this question to highlight a bright spot within the Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada and acknowledge Anishinabe academic Dr. Myrle Ballard for her contributions to date in establishing a new indigenous science division within the department.

I think that's really innovative and needed. I'm really hopeful for where her work is going to go within that department.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

One thing we've heard a couple of times, both today and previously, is that one of the valuable additions that indigenous knowledge can make when considered alongside western science or settler science is just the long time scale that's involved when you're considering what the trajectory of a species' status might be. It seems to me very essential to know what things were like in the past. That is something that indigenous knowledge can really provide.