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.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
How did you receive this letter from Minister Anand?
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
This morning it was forwarded to us from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. It wasn't even sent directly to the Mikisew Cree First Nation.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
President Cardinal, how did you receive this letter?
December 3rd, 2024 / 4:45 p.m.
President, Board of Directors, Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation
It was forwarded to us. Prior to me becoming a political leader, I had an old email address. It was sent there, so no time was really taken to do the homework to find out who I was.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Chief Adam, in your statement you commented that for quite a while, you guys had been asking Transport Canada to dredge. You finally decided enough was enough; you were going to dredge the water yourselves because you could see the emergency when it came to low water levels and the threat of fire. Their answer to you was that they could charge you. At that point, did they tell you why?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
No, they didn't tell me why they would charge me, other than that we were messing up and moving contaminants through the sediment.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Even at that point, they didn't let you know that there were any concerns around contamination.
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Nothing at all—they didn't say anything. They just said that if we put any machinery in there, we would likely be incarcerated.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Is that what reconciliation looks like to you?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
I don't talk about reconciliation with Canada because I think Canada itself continues to lie to first nations people. I won't bring up reconciliation until Canada stands up and says what they're going to do under the 94 calls to action that the late Murray Sinclair put into position. Reconciliation doesn't exist on Canada's part because they don't believe in it.
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Did they give you any kind of answer when you were bringing up concerns about emergency preparedness and being able to evacuate people under the threat of fire? Did they tell you what their plan was if the dock wasn't accessible and you couldn't fly planes in?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
No, nothing. They just basically said the community would be on its own because of the situation, and that if we had to evacuate, we would follow the same procedure done in 2022, when they had multiple aircraft coming to the community. However, many people in the community don't like flying whatsoever, and they use the transport of outboard motors from the big dock in the community. It was evident that this was well used when the fire threatened to burn our community in 2022.
We thought, because of 2023, that it was going to reoccur. We asked Transport Canada to fix the dock up and dredge it, and that's when this whole thing came into play.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Chief Adam.
Next we'll go to Ms. Koutrakis.
Ms. Koutrakis, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.
Liberal
Annie Koutrakis Liberal Vimy, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to all our witnesses today.
I am terribly sorry for what we're finding out and how it has impacted your communities. My hope is that through this study, we will together come up with the recommendations that are needed so badly to make sure we do better going forward.
I would ask President Cardinal, Chief Adams and Councillor Tuccaro to each chime in on this. How would you like the government to work with your community as they work to resolve this issue?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
That is a good question.
The first thing we would like to get done relates to the funding situation. Both first nations and the Métis have spent a lot funding in this area out of pocket. That has to be refunded to the respective communities, because we are doing the deed for Canada and we should never be doing it. Why are we out of pocket? Why am I spending so much money on consultants and my team in order to move forward? It is the same with the Mikisew Cree First Nation. It's the same with the Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation. We're spending money out of pocket, and we should be reimbursed immediately.
Then follow the plan of remediation, and maybe change the landscape of the big dock so we can fix it up to be usable again. Only once that's all done, because Transport Canada wants to hand the dock over to the community, will we accept the big dock. Transport Canada cannot decommission the big dock. They've been threatening to decommission it if the first nations don't want to take the big dock into their responsibility. If you decommission the big dock, our community will continue to be at the mercy of climate change. We're asking for an all-weather road, if that's the case. That's another issue that Transport Canada should talk about because of safe transportation when it comes to an emergency or crisis.
Liberal
Annie Koutrakis Liberal Vimy, QC
Chief Adam, you say that Transport Canada refuses. Is this a refusal that happened recently, or are we talking about a refusal that happened in the past?
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Transport Canada refused to do anything just recently, as of 2024, when we requested that the big dock be dredged out because of an emergency fire situation. They said, no, it cannot be done. Then we went there and said we were going to do the dredging ourselves. We were notified that if we did, I would be incarcerated as the leader of the nation.
President, Board of Directors, Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation
I just wanted to add that we speak the truth and we would just like the dock to be fixed.
Councillor, Mikisew Cree First Nation
As Chief Allan was saying, for the remediation aspect of things, we would like to be the ones in control and handling this, not TC. We don't know what other analysis and things like that are involved. If we did an independent study and remediation, I think we would feel better as a community being in charge of those things.
Liberal
Annie Koutrakis Liberal Vimy, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Olsgard, in your testimony, you mentioned some pretty alarming issues vis-à-vis how the assessment was done at the time. I'm sure my colleagues on the committee will agree with me.
Can you explain to us what was done and how it should have been done? In your opinion, how could we have done better, through either Transport Canada, which hired this assessment, or the government?
I'm just trying to better understand that, because it appears that there are a lot of gaps in the assessment. In your expert and professional opinion, how should these assessments have been done versus how they were done?
Senior Toxicologist, As an Individual
First of all, engage the people who live in the area. They know how they use the dock and what the exposure pathways are. That is what I referred to. If the consultants or the government had notified the community and engaged it, the risk assessment would have looked fundamentally different.
Health Canada publishes the guidance for how we do health risk assessments in Canada. That guidance specifically states that you have to engage indigenous communities because their land use is different from that of the general Canadian public. They have different ways of life that could expose them to higher concentrations of contamination. It recognizes that they often live in different and lower socio-economic conditions than the general public of Canada and have a different health status. All of that is in the guidance. There's also a supplemental guidance for human health risk assessment for country foods, which is what we call traditional foods and medicine. The guidance was all there.
In the oil sands area in northern Alberta and a bit across Canada—but in Alberta specifically—there are a lot of consultancies with risk assessors who practise with and work for developments and proponents. We don't have a governing body for risk practitioners. We all practise under different professional organizations. I'm a professional biologist. There's APEGA, which would be for engineers. You don't go to school to become a risk assessor. It's based on who you trained under and how you learned.
If you have a system that is, as I'll refer to it, risking away liability to try to save money so you don't have to clean up contamination and this becomes the industry best practice or standard, that's how we get risk assessments like this. Designating a community use area with a lot of human contact as a commercial site wouldn't have happened if you had talked to anyone in this room or engaged anyone. It would have looked fundamentally different.
I'm not saying a different consultant needed to do it, but if direction had been provided and people had been engaged, the consultant wouldn't have been able to go out on their own. I don't have any indication of what Transport Canada guidance was given to the consultant, but again, it's shocking to me that a federal department wouldn't have understood the use of big dock in Fort Chipewyan.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you, Ms. Koutrakis.
Thank you, Ms. Olsgard.
Next on the list is Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.
Before I turn the floor over to him, I would like to point out something.
I just wanted to inform all of our witnesses that Mr. Barsalou-Duval will be speaking in French. If you are unable to understand French, we have simultaneous interpretation, so I would invite you to use the earpieces. Within 10 to 15 seconds, if you haven't received simultaneous interpretation, please advise me and I'll ensure it's working for you.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to the witnesses.
Your being here in Ottawa today is essential so that we can hear in person what you've experienced. It must have been not only frustrating, but also extremely worrisome. If I had swum in contaminated water or my children had, I would certainly react the same way.
Someone said that Transport Canada did not notify your nations that the site was contaminated, but was the municipality of Wood Buffalo notified?