Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Nunatsiavut Government is an Inuit regional self-government established under the Labrador Inuit land claims agreement signed by Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Labrador Inuit Association in 2005.
Although Nunatsiavut remains part of Newfoundland and Labrador, the government has authority over many central governance areas, including health, education, culture and language, justice, and community matters. The Nunatsiavut Government is driven by a set of fundamental principles that arise from the Labrador Inuit constitution. These fundamental principles express our core beliefs in democracy and equality, the preservation of our culture and language, the pursuit of a healthy society, the pursuit of a sustainable economy, and the preservation of the land, waters, animals, and plants of our ancestral territory.
The Nunatsiavut Government operates at two distinct, but connected, levels: regional and community. Under the previous act, all waters navigable by canoe were protected by default. The changes brought in under the Budget Act, 2012 changed the approach to protecting waterways by only listing them on a schedule to the Navigation Protection Act. In Nunatsiavut, the Inuit homeland in northern Labrador, the act currently protects two water bodies: the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Melville. This was done without consultation with the Nunatsiavut Government, and it removed from protection approximately 15,000 lakes and 2,600 rivers. These waters are used by Nunatsiavummiut for transportation in both summer and winter, and they have been since time immemorial.
The protection under the previous act was a default protection, which is also an approach that closely aligns with traditional Inuit practices that say to protect all land and resources, take only what you need, and use all that you take. To determine that the only waterways worthy of protection by the Government of Canada are the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Melville is to fail to protect our land and waters.
The Labrador Inuit land claims agreement states that the precautionary principle will be used to make resource management decisions. Removing protection from 99.99% of our waters does not reflect the precautionary principle or responsible environmental management.
The Nunatsiavut Government asks that the Government of Canada restore all lost protections to waters in Canada, including navigable waters in Nunatsiavut, and that if any changes are proposed to that regime—the regime of 2005 under which our land claims agreement was signed—that the Government of Canada then consult with Inuit on those changes and accommodate the rights of Inuit.