Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the committee members for giving me the opportunity to appear.
Mr. Chair, your very helpful staff suggested that we keep our comments to five or ten minutes.
I had asked the chair if I played hockey with him way back in my teenage years in Manitoba. He said no, we probably didn't, but we should maybe talk later. I played for the Selkirk Steelers, and we were really lenient with him.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to appear here.
I am appearing here on behalf of Duane Smith, the president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada office, who sends his regrets from Inuvik, in the Beaufort Sea area. He would definitely be willing to respond to any questions that you may have shortly after this intervention on my behalf.
I'm an adviser to the ICC, not only here, but also in Greenland, Canada, and Russia. He asked me to stress the fact that the Inuit don't only live in Canada. Some of the concerns we're presenting here are also the concerns of the one people living across four countries, from Greenland right to Russia.
Let me begin by saying that ICC Canada welcomes the general intent of Bill C-3, which is to protect the Arctic environment. There will be several recommendations that you'll find embedded in my intervention. But as Mr. Adams said in one of his recommendations, it's important to involve the residents of the Arctic.
I would add that it's especially important to involve the Inuit, given the land claim settlements and obligations and the international commitments that the Canadian government has, not only in the implementation and in giving us the opportunity to speak here, but if the bill is passed, in analyzing it and monitoring it to see how it works in the future.
One year ago, as part of an Arctic Council project under the Arctic marine shipping assessment, ICC Canada interviewed Inuit hunters and elders from numerous communities across the Canadian Arctic. In a sense, for some of you who know of the 1970s land use and occupancy studies, these were comprehensive studies that were done across the then-called Northwest Territories and parts of Labrador, which laid the foundation for a lot of things, including the land claim settlements. There were a lot of interviews then. We and the ICC updated those interviews.
We found that despite the effects of climate change and changes that occurred in the Inuit communities within the past years, the Inuit continue to rely heavily on a traditional diet. Some call it “country food”. The diet in large part consists of sea mammals and fish, as you are well aware. This traditional diet is based on extensive travel over sea and ice in order to harvest the resources required for subsistence. We'd be happy to supply our report, which is entitled “The Sea Ice is Our Highway”, to those who want it.
Inuit continue to rely heavily on the subsistence economy because it is central to who they are as a people. As you know, the store-bought food that ends up in many parts of the Arctic has leap-frogged through airports along the way and a freeze-thaw cycle. The cash that's required and the nutritional value are often not that great when it gets there.
At its core, Inuit life in Canada and across the circumpolar Arctic is connected to what we still call the pristine Arctic ecosystem. As you know, it's perhaps the most fragile ecosystem on the planet. Therefore, any effort to protect the Arctic ecosystem, as this bill intends to do, is a step in the right direction.
As the committee considers this bill to enlarge the area defined as Arctic waters, at the same time, ICC urges you to strengthen the regulations that are enforced within Canada's Arctic waters. ICC Canada also urges the Government of Canada to apply more stringent pollution prevention standards prior to approving any further resource exploitation and development under the current national and international standards, which the Inuit consider to be highly inadequate.
As Mr. Adams said earlier, because there is currently no way to properly clean up pollution in the Arctic waters, the penalties for pollution must be high. There should also be a lot of cooperation with the local people on identifying spots where pollution may be especially problematic for the community. We also have to convince the exploration and development companies that they cannot afford to be careless or allow for any mistakes.
ICC Canada urges the Department of Transport, together with other departments responsible for environmental protection and economic development in the Arctic, to take a coordinated approach, and to do this in cooperation with Inuit in order to ensure the highest possible standards of environmental protection.
Finally, Mr. Chair, we also urge the government to look at all matters in the Arctic from a position of circumpolar and international cooperation, and this bill should do the same. ICC is itself a model in this regard, as Inuit got together in 1977 across what they sometimes look at as artificial boundaries back in Alaska, when they were facing the oil companies moving up and coming in without consultation. That's what happened. Again, I keep referring to Mr. Adams, but he talked about the Beaufort Sea project as well. It's important to include the federal government and the petroleum industry, but if you include the Inuit people, you will also have greater success.
I'd like to take that a step further, though, to make sure we look at the international cooperation that the Canadian government is part of. As all of you know, the Arctic Council is another model that doesn't only include Inuit, but also states. Then there are other international instruments that provide guidance in developing and monitoring this bill.
Arctic sovereignty is a hot topic these days. ICC Canada would caution that the focus on this bill should be on environmental protection, yet it should be located in the larger discussion of international cooperation, sovereignty talks, and the like, which are taking place beyond this bill. These include rights of free, prior, and informed consent of Inuit.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.