Evidence of meeting #141 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Toxicologist, As an Individual
No. I just thought that if I'm giving testimony, I have a recommendation.
Was that only to the leaders?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
He threw the question out. He ran out of time, though.
Could you submit it in writing? Perhaps one of the members can ask you a question on that.
Actually, I have chair's prerogative. I would very much like to hear what you have to say so we can have the analysts take it down.
Ms. Olsgard, the floor is yours.
Senior Toxicologist, As an Individual
As part of the delineation and the follow-up studies, apportion the sources of the contamination and determine what is locally caused by the TC wharf activities and what is caused cumulatively by oil sands development in the region since they have the same classes of contaminants. That specifically relates to the sediments in the surface water.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Ms. Olsgard.
I'll now turn the floor over to Mrs. Goodridge once again.
You have five minutes.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Thank you.
I've reviewed the 2017 document of that report, as well as the one from September 2024. I'm not a scientist, but I think they show pretty clearly that Transport Canada and some of its bureaucrats really dropped the ball. Do you think they should be held liable for the risk they have put to your community?
I'll start with President Cardinal and move down the line.
President, Board of Directors, Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation
Definitely. As I said before, we know the truth. We want to start collaborating. They need to be held reliable. Is it “reliable”?
President, Board of Directors, Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation
Yes, liable—sorry about that. They need to be held liable for what's been done.
Thank you for correcting me.
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
When you speak about them being held liable and accountable for their actions, it comes to this point: How are we going to address this issue when nobody is being honest at the department itself? We can't even hold them to account because nobody even wants to incarcerate them. Even though we find that funny—
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
—the department sent an email to us stating that if we do these things, the chief will be incarcerated. That's the account that Canada wants to hold.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
There's a double standard.
Go ahead, Councillor Tuccaro.
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
I definitely agree that they should be held liable. That comes back to my comment about adding funding for mental health support and addressing the anxiety that is tied to all of this.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
You all have made a more than 4,000-kilometre trip to come to Ottawa to have your voices heard. There are some very serious issues in your community as a direct result of the failure from Transport Canada.
Has the minister offered up any time to meet with you while you're here?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
No, she hasn't. All she did was address that she was going to look at it and that she was newly appointed to this thing because of former minister Pablo Rodriguez, who was too busy at the time thinking about the Quebec election and that he wanted to run provincially. He just sat back and said that this was too important for him, that he couldn't jeopardize his position and that he was just going to move on and let a different minister deal with this issue. That's the response we got from them.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
You've had minister after minister fail you. You have made this very long trip, so would you make time in your busy schedules—because I know you have very busy schedules—to meet with the minister if she somehow found the availability? I know there are some staff from the ministry office sitting back there. Maybe they're going to listen and can bring this forward to the minister. Would you make time if the minister could make time for you?
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
We would. My flight to go back home is scheduled for tomorrow morning, so it would have to be sometime this evening.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Do you think it's pretty disturbing that the minister isn't making time to meet with you despite saying this is so important? She sent a letter to one out of three organizations at the eleventh hour. You had been planning to come here for a while. It isn't like this is some surprise or some new thing.
What does this tell the community about how important Fort Chipewyan is to the Government of Canada and this Liberal government?
President, Board of Directors, Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation
I believe there's neglect of the importance, obviously. Hopefully, we don't get a resignation of another minister so that it keeps on going. Great leadership shows collaboration.
I have faith in Minister Anand to set the meeting, and I am here all week if any ministers would like to meet with us as three nations to work forward to make sure this is addressed.
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
I'm here until Friday. Minister Anand didn't reach out to us with regard to being part of the discussion, but we invite her to if she wants to have a discussion moving forward. Actually, I invite everybody to come to the discussion and to fix this problem because this problem is ongoing. It should have been rectified and remediated in 2017 if the study came out in 2016, or back in 1997. When do you want to take responsibility for all the inaction taking place? I don't want to be pointing fingers at anybody in this regard. All I want to do is go back to my community and tell the people of our community that it's safe to go swimming because we remediated the plan, but no plan has been put in place thus far.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Thank you.
Really quickly, it's been established that there is contamination in the community and that no signage was put up by the Government of Canada. Has the Government of Canada done anything to alert anyone in the community other than your three nations?
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
No, although it was brought to our attention that there were federal employees at the dock I think about a week....
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
Yes. It was after our meeting.
When we were on our phone call with her, we asked what these employees were doing there, because nobody would tell us. We did learn, though, that they were there for other reasons in relation to repairing the dock itself. We assumed that they were there in response to the contamination, but they were there to fix the dock.
Liberal