Madam Speaker, in the spirit of co-operation, I too will try to be brief.
The NDP caucus understands that Bill C-33 is omnibus legislation regarding the Nunavut water board and the Nunavut surface rights tribunal and that these organizations are necessary under the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. The implementation of Bill C-33 is the fulfillment of the obligation to complete those requirements.
I agree with the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development when he said that the bill was an important step forward as we continued to meet our obligations to build capacity in the new territory of Nunavut. It is our hope that these institutions will guarantee that residents of Nunavut will have more say in decisions about the use of water resources, the deposition of wastes and access to lands throughout their territory.
We believe the roles of the Nunavut water board and the Nunavut surface rights tribunal should have the effect between balancing the interests of the many stakeholders, while ensuring protection of the fragile Arctic environment.
I think I speak for all members of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs when I say I look forward to the further input from northerners in this legislation process as the bill goes ahead to the standing committee and ultimately through the various stages of the House of Commons and the Senate.
This piece of legislation has been conveniently divided into two parts for us. We understand that part 1 of the enactment would implement provisions to the agreement related to the management of waters, a very timely and talkable theme and a necessary issue as we recognize the right to self-determination of the people of Nunavut.
We also recognize the right for them to control the use of their waters and the many all-encompassing issues that fall under that category, be it development issues, water use for domestic purposes, the deposition of waste and sewage treatment and, as was raised by previous speakers, the well-being of the marine passageways in the event of an oil spill or damage to marine life.
We further note that the new board would have the authority and the power to not only give permits and licences, but also to regulate and to impose fines, if there was a violation, and to order compensation, if compensation becomes necessary due to the misuse of water rights that may have an impact on those downstream.
I am very sensitive to this issue partly because I spent much of my formative years north of 60 working in Yukon. I can say from experience that the history of water use and land management in our north has been abominable. It has been lacking in many important ways. This is all the more reason why the people of Nunavut, in the rightly negotiating process that led up to the creation of the new territory, asked for, deserved and were adamant that they be in control of the water management and the land surface, land use management in their area.
I have seen firsthand some of the cavalier and irresponsible attitudes toward water use in the Yukon Territory. I will give a couple of examples of mistakes that we do not want to see repeated; a legacy of abuse.
My home near Dawson City was built up the Dempster Highway on the road to Inuvik in the heart of the Klondike goldfields. There is a lot of history about the Klondike. A lot of people had a romantic idea about the taking gold from the Klondike, but what they did was dredge the entire area. They were huge dredges as big as this Chamber. They worked their way down the creek beds, the Klondike and all the historic creeks like Bonanza Creek and Hunker Creek, chewing up the riverbeds. They absolutely gobbled it up at one end, processed it in a huge floating dredge and spit it out the back end.
These dredges worked their way up and down the waterways of Yukon relentlessly for 30 to 50 years. Salmon streams were chewed up in the pursuit of gold by those who did not have a vested interest. They are now long gone but the damage remains.
I will give an example from my home province of Manitoba. When it became necessary to divert the Churchill and the Nelson rivers into one massive river system for hydroelectric dam purposes they flooded South Indian Lake in a very cavalier way. There was not a great deal of thought that went into the fact that it was an existing functioning town with a fish marketing co-op.
People had their livelihoods there. They simply backfilled the whole valley and flooded out the town of South Indian Lake. They flooded the tree line 40 feet deep without recognition that when land like that is flooded arsenic, mercury and other toxic material leech from the soil as natural products that exist there.
It was another example of water rights and water management practices under our current system that were negligent and abusive.
Another example comes to mind. I had a job in Yukon going around the Richardson Mountains, the Ogilvie Range and the Tombstone Range picking up fuel depots the American military had left behind. It used to cache aviation gas in huge deposits all over the north. Forty years later many of the barrels had rusted through and all the aviation gas was flowing into the delicate tundra ecosphere.
It was an incredibly negligent and cavalier attitude toward water quality in the north. Due to the fact that the area is so massive it seemed that nothing we could do would ever damage it. Now we know different.
The last example deals with hydroelectric power. We have examples like Notigi diversion, Kettle Rapids dam, Jenpeg dam, Long Spruce, Waskahigan, Limestone, Conawapa, the James Bay Grande Baleine project and Site C at Fort St. John. All these hydroelectric projects were done with very little environmental impact studies and very little recognition of what occurs downstream.
I do not blame the people of Nunavut for being adamant that they wish to have more input into water rights and water use. That is more than we saw in Yukon when water rights were under federal jurisdiction. The Yukon territory did not have jurisdiction of its own water rights because it was operated from Ottawa, to no one's interest.
We are comfortable that Bill C-33 would do as it is intended, that is to finish the job of the creation of the territory of Nunavut along with the transfer of jurisdictions that goes along with it and the ultimate goal of bringing greater benefits to all communities in the north.
The NDP caucus recognizes that the south has benefited greatly from the resources harvested in the north. We welcome any opportunity to recognize that the northern communities and people who live there deserve the right to share in the great wealth and prosperity of the nation largely drawn from the resources in the north.
We will be recommending an amendment dealing with the water board's ability to grant licences for water use. The board would be able to renew or cancel licences as well as assign penalties in the case of abuse of water rights.
The maximum fine, as contemplated in Bill C-33, is $100,000. Given the ongoing mining boom in the Northwest Territories and in parts of Nunavut and the types of user group that might be affected by it, we find $100,000 to be a paltry amount of money. It is really pin money to a large mining interest that might be in the north. We know what a mining operation can do to the water quality in whatever area it is in.
There used to be a myth that we could do anything to a river as long as it ran for three kilometres and after three kilometres it would run clear again. We now know that was an absolute misconception, a myth that was created by the user groups that were polluting the rivers. It is just not true. We think that the $100,000 fine is paltry when it comes to any kind of a penalty. Even if it is coupled with the full compensation of those who may be affected downstream, or hunters or fishermen who may lose their livelihood as a result of the irresponsible action, we still think the $100,000 penalty is paltry.
There are a couple of other things we wish were in Bill C-33. We are going to be seeking to include them at committee stage, but I will register them here.
The one thing that comes to mind is that this bill, even though it transfers the rights to make these decisions to the newly founded territory of Nunavut, it does not specifically make any reference to the bulk sale of water. Given that this has become such a timely subject, and that by the minister's own admission the original bill that was introduced has been amended over 100 times to make it more timely and to plug little loopholes, we wish that the bill specifically barred whoever is in charge of water in Nunavut from the bulk sale of water because it contradicts what we in the House of Commons have already decided is in the best interests of Canada.
We also wish it were more specific on an issue that will become topical very soon, that is, the ownership of the icebergs which are created by the breaking up of the polar ice cap. I am not talking about the bulk sale of water, but this is something we need to contemplate soon. Are we going to allow foraging or salvaging rights like we do in our shipping lanes within the 200 kilometres Canadian limit? Will we allow people to come into our waters to harvest and salvage floating bulk water? These things need to be contemplated any time we talk about the bulk sale or the management of our precious freshwater resources.
To keep the speech brief, I will simply say that the NDP looks forward to Bill C-33 going to committee. We plan on being active participants at that stage. We look forward to further input from people who actually live in the north and the people of Nunavut. We wish them well as they take this next step toward true independence and charting their own destiny.