Dennis Bevington

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my fellow committee member here. However, in reality what we heard from Chief Roy Fabian was somewhat different. He participated in those hearings and said that he really got nothing from them. Interestingly enough, when the parliamentary secretary was talking about whether there should have been aboriginal representation on these committees—which is the case in the Yukon with its surface rights board where there is guaranteed aboriginal participation—the parliamentary secretary indicated that traditional knowledge would be part of it.

However, when we actually read the bill, we found that it was not an absolute. They could either be experienced in land and environment or traditional knowledge. Really what the parliamentary secretary said was a compromise to the aboriginal participation and, out of these sessions that were taking place on consultation, there really turned out to be nothing at all.

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the topic of participant funding was well understood by all the groups that spoke to us from Nunavut. They understand it was a good idea to include it in there. There was unanimity when we asked the different witnesses if they would support including participant funding in there. We are talking about a population diffused over 33 communities over 1.7 million square kilometres, a huge area. These people need resources to accomplish almost anything: the travel budgets, the need for consultants. The cost of these things goes up dramatically in the north.

We want small communities to respond correctly and appropriately because, if they do not, then confusion just reigns. Without participant funding, we are not going to see the certainty around the projects that we could with participant funding, so it is a very important part of what environmental assessment does.

We know the government is fiscally very conservative. However, was it simply the money that stopped the Conservatives from going along with the participant funding, or was it something else? They would not indicate to us by standing up and speaking to these amendments. There was silence on the other side.

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-47, An Act to enact the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and the Northwest Territories Surface Rights Board Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts. I will not use the wildly inaccurate short title the Conservatives have dreamed up for this bill, because this is a bill that speaks to more than simply job creation.

The bill affects two regions of the country that are moving toward more self-determination at all times, two regions of the country that are settling their land claims in a good fashion with the opportunities that come with settled land claims.

We have a situation in the Northwest Territories where aboriginal governments and public governments have to get along. We have to learn how to get along and how to work together.

In Nunavut there is a single government that represents all the inhabitants of Nunavut, one land claim. Its job is slighty less complex than that of the Northwest Territories, but both are working very hard to achieve unique and satisfactory arrangements between the constitutionally entrenched rights of first nations and Inuit and the rights of public government that are held by all of us.

Bill C-47 was shown in committee to be very flawed. The Conservative member for Mississauga South said about it at committee, “No one got exactly what they wanted from this legislation”. None of the people in the north who wanted to see the legislation go forward got what they wanted.

The bill is so flawed that the Conservative member for Palliser said, “None of the stakeholders involved in the development of the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act got everything they wanted in the bill”.

Why is that? This is a bill for those people. This is a bill for the people of Nunavut to deal with their rights going forward. Why did they not get what they wanted? What was the problem?

This is a bill so poorly executed that the Conservative member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River said, “Nobody, including industry, got everything they wanted in this legislation”.

The bill is going forward in a flawed fashion. It is an essential bill. It is a bill that is needed by Nunavut, especially, for its requirements for the legislation from this Parliament. It needs this. It has been waiting for this for a long time.

Committee witness after committee witness brought forward numerous mistakes Conservatives made in developing the bill, but they chose to ignore those. They chose not to address amendments. They simply voted them down, one after another.

As Chief Roy Fabian of the Kátl'odeeche First Nation in the Northwest Territories said of the process used to develop this legislation, “It is extremely frustrating to attend meetings and express concerns, provide recommendations to address the concerns, and then see that input ignored”. Who knows better what is good for the north than those who reside in the Conservative headquarters in Ottawa?

Because the bill was so badly drafted, the opposition put forward 50 amendments to fix these mistakes and 49 of those amendments were recommended by various stakeholders. The 50th, which was another one, was based on wording from the parliamentary secretary who attended meetings in Yellowknife, substituting the word “and” for “or” in the legislation when he talked about the use and the understanding of traditional knowledge by those who were to be appointed to the board. We wanted to clarify that, but the Conservatives would not accept that either.

Let us look at some of the amendments we have put forward.

There were two amendments that would ensure the Nunavut Planning Commission would hold public hearings as part of its review of an application. This amendment was requested by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated. It provided for transparency of process, which would make the commission more accountable. What is wrong with that?

There was an amendment making clear that projects approved under one land use plan would be grandfathered and would remain unaffected by changes or amendments to a land use plan. This amendment was requested by the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. People in the industry wanted assurance when they went forward with a project that they would not be blind-sided later on by changes to any land use planning. Why would the Conservatives turn this down?

There are amendments replacing the vague word “opinion” with the word “determined”. These changes would have strengthened the language of the act. The amendment was requested by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the land claims group that worked so hard to establish its homeland in Nunavut. Its ideas for the bill were turned down.

There was an amendment that would require the board to have a participant funding program. By providing participant funding, the review process would be more efficient and economical. This amendment was requested both by NTI and by the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

We all know that in the north, communities that want to talk about projects that are going forward on their land are separated by large distances. It is very expensive to travel. The ability to get expert witnesses in front of a board to deal with these issues is absolutely imperative for these communities so that they can deal with the difficult questions that come out of projects of the magnitude we have seen proposed in Nunavut. This amendment would have guaranteed participant funding for those groups. It was turned down as well.

Another amendment from the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines would require that the act be reviewed by a committee of Parliament five years after it came into force. This was pretty straightforward. If 50 amendments came forward to us on the precise nature of the changes required to make the act work better, and all of them were rejected, would one not think it would be appropriate to provide a review process after five years? I sat on the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board when it was first set up. It was quite clear within two or three years of being put into practice what changes to that legislation were required.

We have a situation such that we will not have a review. The review is not going to take place. This legislation is going to be stuck. The opportunity to bring it back to Parliament will require political support from whatever government is in power at the time. It will have to be put back on the agenda to get some changes made. That is really not very good.

There was the amendment restricting the NWT surface rights board's jurisdiction to lands outside municipal boundaries. It provided certainty to municipalities that have planned for land use inside their own communities. This amendment was requested by the NWT Association of Communities and also by the non-governmental organization Alternatives North. It was a simple amendment that would have allowed municipalities to deal with their land in an appropriate fashion without having the strange situation that can come up when there are mineral claims within municipal boundaries.

Finally, and this is not finally in terms of all the amendments made but is the final one I am going to talk about, there was an amendment giving authority to the NWT surface rights board to require financial security to ensure compliance with its orders. This amendment was requested, once again, by Alternatives North. This comes from the practices we have had over the years. We have seen the results if we do not insist on financial security on behalf of the companies that want to use the land. We do not have to be told that this is a bad idea. This is a good idea. This would give certainty to everyone involved in the process.

All of these amendments went down and continue to go down. Discussion by Conservatives on the committee was practically nil. They did not want to talk about it. They were not instructed to talk about it. It really is an unfortunate fact of this legislation.

I could go on and on about these amendments, but I will now move on to the bill itself.

Parts of the bill implement long-standing commitments Canada has made under land claims agreements, most of them signed in the 90s, some under the Mulroney government and some under the Liberal government. It should really have been the Liberals who developed the legislation as part of the land claims implementation process. However, like so many other things, the Liberals just did not get around to it. When they did produce drafts, as the minister has pointed out, they were not successful. Because of the Liberals' failure to complete their work in Nunavut, the land use planning process has been muddling on for 20 years.

Meanwhile, on the other side, in the Northwest Territories, the lack of a surface rights board has had absolutely no impact. In the absence of a surface rights board, an ad hoc system of arbitration panels was set up to deal with land access issues. In their 20-plus years of existence, only one application to resolve an access dispute has been filed, but it did not even proceed. In fact, even with this legislation in place, it would be unlikely that the board would be used. As the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs said to the committee: “[I]t probably won't be asked to do very much”.

To paraphrase Norman Snowshoe, vice-president of the Gwich'in Tribal Council, testifying at the committee on the bill, what is the rush? Where is the problem? In fact, Mr. Snowshoe went on to say that they could have said more about the bill, but they do not have the resources to do a proper job of analyzing what the government is up to. Most of the other land claims groups and the groups in unsettled areas simply do not have the time to put into the kind of consultation required to determine whether this is in their interests or not.

The government's response is that we need to get this done for devolution. Devolution is an important aspect of moving forward in the north. There is no doubt about that. Certain agreements have to be in place. However, we have time.

The Conservatives chose to lump these two bills together. The surface rights board act probably should have been brought forward at a later time, when more aspects of the devolution deal were fully understood by northerners.

There has been very little public input, to this day, about devolution. When we talk about a bill that has to be done before devolution, we are talking about something that actually impacts on how devolution is going to turn out. Why do we have this rush now to put this in before devolution? Really, it should be part of the devolution discussions. It could have been put into any of the other amendments that are going to be required for devolution at the time devolution comes forward. If the government is serious about devolution and is serious about moving it forward, as it has said, then certainly, the NWT surface rights board act could have been dealt with at that time. It could have been part of that package.

We are really talking about a bill that is dealing with two regions of the country: NWT and Nunavut. If the bill was for these two regions of the country, why did the Conservatives consistently, and without any discussion, ignore all the recommendations for amendments that came forward from the legitimate groups that were witnesses in front of these committees? These were simple amendments. These people were not against the bill. They wanted to ensure that the bill would work correctly and would work for them and their interests. Surely, in this country, we can understand that.

Should the Conservative MPs not have been saying how the people of the north got what they wanted from the legislation rather than that no one got what they wanted? I learned a long time ago that if no one is happy with the job one has done, one has done a poor job. This legislation for Nunavut is required. It is part of what has to happen in Nunavut. The fact that so many of the amendments came from Nunavut says that people in Nunavut are not going to be satisfied in the end with the job the legislation does.

The NWT is close to a devolution agreement, according to press statements, but not according to any public process we have been able to identify that allows people in the Northwest Territories to understand what devolution actually is. However, Nunavut is still a long way from an agreement. Given these differences in where each territory is in the devolution process, why did we bundle the two acts together, implementing vastly different land claims requirements?

As Kevin O'Reilly, of Alternatives North, submitted at committee:

[W]e do not believe that placing several different implementation provisions in one bill is a proper approach. This makes amendments and meaningful debate difficult at best. We would have preferred for separate bills for each land claim area to allow for better consultation and opportunities for improvement.

That is precisely why the government bundled these two acts together. It does not want to hear from Canadians. The Conservatives have an assumption that they are right, that they are the ones in charge, and that their rightness is self-evident. Therefore, every act they have put forward in this new Parliament, with their shiny new majority, is perfect, and anyone who says otherwise is not really a good Canadian. As a northerner and a person who listened to the northerners, I would say that we did not get this bill completely right. We have not dealt with what the northerners want in it.

We have a requirement for this bill, and it will move forward. What gives me hope is that the other day, the Premier of the Northwest Territories indicated in a northern newspaper article that he was under the understanding that the surface rights board act would become NWT legislation after devolution. If that is the case, and it does become legislation that the Northwest Territories legislature can amend, then that act will only be imperfect for as long as the people of the north decide it is. That is a positive aspect. If the devolution agreement goes as the premier said, and the legislation will actually be transferred to the government of the Northwest Territories, then it will be our responsibility to make it work right. I have no doubt that we will do that.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Nunavut in the future. We have no devolution agreement in principle. It is my understanding that a negotiator has been appointed for devolution. That is a good sign. However, there was a negotiator appointed for devolution in the Northwest Territories probably a dozen years ago or more. That is not a hopeful sign for Nunavut. Nunavut needs its say over the legislation it uses in its territory. Let us hope that Nunavut can move forward with devolution as well so that it can make the choices it needs to make for itself.

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-47 impacts both the constituencies that I and the minister represent. One of the issues with the bill is the fact that these very different entities were not treated with respect and given separate bills for the purposes of carrying on this discussion and to ensure that the issues inherent in such complex bills were well established in Parliament.

Land use planning is a very important element in the bill and I agree with the minister that this is important in the Northwest Territories. In the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, we have had a section on land use planning since its creation. Unfortunately, no land use plans have yet been put in place through that process, so the land use planning is much retarded.

We heard presentations from the Nunavut Planning Commission, which indicated that when the bill was passed with the kind of single entry approach, with the resources now had available to it, it would likely be in contravention of the act going forward.

The government is not putting forward the dollars to do environmental assessments. We saw that the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board—

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have addressed my remarks to one particular section of the legislation that I find to be unacceptable, and I am sure many other people would look at it in that fashion.

Having met with the RCMP over many years here on different occasions, I feel very strongly the RCMP needs a union or an association that could protect the individual rights of the RCMP members. Until that happens, we will have the situation we have now. Thousands of grievances are backlogged, and RCMP officers are unhappy. There is no opportunity for people to deal with the kinds of situations in which they find themselves in the workplace and there is no intermediary on their side.

How can people work in that kind of environment? How can they do their jobs in the kind of risk-oriented work that police officers have to take on every day, with the stress and the strain they have to deal with, without some measure of support that is legitimate and is there for them when they have troubles or situations where they need to have someone on their side?

We can create any law we want. Without giving the police forces, our RCMP, the opportunity to have the same rights as other Canadians and other Canadian workers, this simply will not work.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on Bill C-42, the Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act.

We can see quite clearly, through the work that has been done by our side of the House in exposing it, how difficult it was to get any amendments to this bill and how difficult it was to deal with the real issues that witnesses in front of the committee brought forward. This is a pattern that the Conservative government in its majority has worked on pretty hard. It exists in almost every committee of this House.

While I support the need to modernize the workplace of the RCMP, this bill does not do enough to reach that objective. My colleagues on this side of the House have gone through the process and raised many valid issues and complaints.

As a person from the northern regions of Canada where the RCMP is the only police force, and having lived there all of my life, I see that there is really a requirement in small communities across the north for RCMP officers to have the opportunity to have a very direct relationship with others that they can get hold of in order to deal with the kinds of grievances that may arise in very small detachments. I just do not see that this bill is adequate to deal with that.

Having said that, I want to focus on two proposed new subsections of the act that maybe have not received much attention and that I think are very interesting subsections of the bill. We need to look at subsection 31(1.3) and subsection 31(1.4).

Section 31 of the act sets out when an RCMP member may make a grievance and sets out limitations to when an officer may not make a grievance.

Proposed subsection 31(1.3) reads:

A member is not entitled to present a grievance relating to any action taken under any instruction, direction or regulation given or made by or on behalf of the Government of Canada in the interest of the safety or security of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.

In other words, officers who refuse to carry out an unlawful order can be disciplined up to and including dismissal from the force, and they would not be able to complain that they are being punished for refusing to obey the law.

This section could also mean that RCMP officers who blow the whistle on illegal orders would also be subject to discipline, including dismissal, and would have no right to complain that they were being disciplined for revealing illegal activities inside the RCMP, even if they were under the instruction of the government—especially if they were under the instruction of the government.

Retired RCMP officer Rob Creasser, spokesperson for the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada, said:

It places RCMP members in an untenable situation when they are being directed...to break Canadian or international law.

Proposed new subsection 31(1.4) reads:

For the purposes of subsection (1.3), an order made by the Governor in Council is conclusive proof of the matters stated in the order in relation to the giving or making of an instruction, direction or regulation by or on behalf of the Government of Canada in the interest of the safety or security of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.

In other words, the cabinet, a small group of like-minded politicians meeting in secret, would determine which laws the RCMP would have to follow and which laws the RCMP would break, and what those mean.

Gail Davidson, executive director for Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, describes this clause as very dangerous, saying:

Police officers have special powers...to use force and to deprive people of their liberty, and the reason they have those powers is to keep the public peace.

Keeping the public peace means ensuring that the laws are upheld, and this is legitimate laws and the rule of law.

Some of the dangers in here are that these clauses could be used to condone torture and the use of information gathered through torture. Torture and the use of information gained through torture are against both Canadian law and international law. However, once enforced, this bill would negate these laws.

Upholding the law and the rule of law is something the Minister of Public Safety does not appreciate. With his directions to the RCMP, the Canadian Border Services and CSIS, he has instructed them to use information gained through torture.

Last November Surrey, B.C., RCMP Constable Lloyd Pinsent circulated a paper he wrote with the title, “The Terrorists Have Won. RCMP Ordered to Accept Torture-Tainted Information”.

In his paper, Constable Pinsent lays out how Bill C-42, combined with the Minister of Public Safety's direction that it is okay to use information gathered through torture, essentially ordered the RCMP to break the law.

Mr. Pinsent wrote:

While the direction from Minister Toews is in contravention of existing Canadian and international law, under [Bill C-42’s] section 31. (1.4) the order is to be viewed as conclusive proof and questions about the legitimacy of the order are not allowed either....

What we have here is a situation that can lead to abuse in the future. Why did the Conservative government decide to put this particular aspect into the accountability act, such as they call it? In other words, RCMP members are not accountable here, cannot be accountable and cannot stand up and speak the truth about what is happening to them or how they feel about the imposition of illegal practices upon them through an order of the Governor in Council. The Governor in Council can make that decision in secret, based on its desire to ensure what it considers to be the safety and security of Canada. This smacks of a police state, and I think everybody would agree to that.

In this country, we always have a need for people to deal with illegal behaviour. Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which states:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Therefore, with regard to the minister's attempt to justify torture and the use of information gained from torture, any such use or activities are illegitimate under Canada's international legal obligations. However, considering recent actions, the Conservative government has little respect for the rule of law.

In June 2012, the UN Committee Against Torture released a report on Canada's compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture. In this report, the committee raised serious concerns with the Conservative's laissez-faire attitude toward torture saying that it could result in violations of article 15 of the convention. However, Bill C-42 would give more authority for any government to act in a way that is improper and could lead to Canada's reputation being tarnished before the world. It could lead to great human rights abuses. It could lead to a number of other things, such as the need for illegal wiretaps and information collection, and all kinds of activities that could take place in the name of the security of this country. These are very serious issues.

In 2006, Justice Dennis O'Connor, in his report on the events relating to Maher Arar, recommended:

Policies should include specific directions aimed at eliminating any possible Canadian complicity in torture, avoiding the risk of other human rights abuses and ensuring accountability.

These sections in Bill C-42 would go against that recommendation. These sections would create a situation in which the government would have the ability to direct the police force in a way that is inappropriate. Here we have a proposed law that would essentially make it legal for the police to break the law, and if they choose not to break the law, they may be dismissed without the right to a grievance.

This is supposed to be legislation about modernizing the RCMP workplace. However, these clauses would take it backward in time and should not have been put into the legislation. It should have been debated in a different fashion. Perhaps the laws could have been amended to provide some security to Canadians. However, when it comes to viewing these clauses in the bill and the thought of the Conservative government overriding civil rights in the name of national security, we must ask these questions: Did the terrorists win? Has the Canadian state acquiesced?

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his great experience with this segment of our society, which makes his words even more powerful.

The Conservatives have a thing about amendments. With regard to Bill C-47, some 50 amendments were put forward. Most of them came from northerners, and the bill was on the north. Most of the amendments came from witnesses from across the north, who brought them forward in amendment form, and that made the body of the amendments that were put forward. None of them were voted for by the Conservatives, of course.

I want to clarify something with respect to these amendments that were brought forward. What was the position of many of the witnesses before the committee as to these amendments?

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are in the House of Commons. We are not shopkeepers. We are not counting our pennies and handing them out to people one by one. We are here to think for Canadians. We are here to provide an integrated plan for this country.

We are not here to simply be concerned about whether we took $2 from here and put it over there. We have to think about the future. If Parliament cannot live up to that, we should go home. We should not be here unless we care deeply about what the future means to this country.

It is not a question of making sure we get jobs this year. That is important, there is no doubt about it, but we have to have an idea of where this country needs to go in the future so that it works for Canadians. Without that, we are lost.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the infrastructure of the country is like the clothes we wear. It is like the shoes on our feet. If we wear cheap shoes, they wear out quickly and we end up with foot problems later in life. If we do not dress properly and conserve energy, we might find ourselves getting sick more often.

Everything we do in our lives is important. We are facing challenges now that go beyond the borders of Canada and apply to the whole world. Therefore, we have a responsibility not only to Canada to fix our infrastructure and to do a good job, but we also need to set examples and join the rest of the world in working very hard come to grips with what the proper infrastructure is and how we can live our lives in a better fashion so we will leave something for our grandchildren to work with.

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak to this tremendous resolution that has been brought forward by our member for Trinity—Spadina.

When we talk about infrastructure, most Canadians, depending on where they live, think of the needs of big cities. However, Canada's rural and remote municipalities have infrastructure needs just as great as, or greater than, those faced by cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, but are quite clearly without the same political leverage or resources needed to accomplish those things.

As a member from one of the most remote parts of Canada, a former long-term mayor and the president of the NWT Association of Communities, I know just how great the infrastructure challenge is to northern communities. It is composed of a number of different things.

Appearing before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in 2009, David Austin, representing the Association of Yukon Communities, stated:

...we need to recognize that it is not possible to construct infrastructure in Yukon at costs approximating those of southern centres. The shortness of the season and the lack of skilled trades people in some specific trades are factors. The distance from major markets...transportation costs for materials, and economies of scale are difficult to achieve in the Yukon's relatively small economy.

His comments can be applied to the rest of the north: to the northern territories, to the northern aboriginal communities across the country and to northern parts of all the provinces. Probably 300 communities across Canada could be called rural and remote.

Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, currently has a well-documented infrastructure deficit of approximately $67 million, meaning that there is this much infrastructure that is in dire need of replacement. We live in a very difficult environment where the costs are high and where replacement becomes necessary because of climate change and the nature of where we are living.

Yellowknife mayor Mark Heyck recently stated:

...I believe we need to invest more in maintaining our municipal infrastructure than we have in the past, and we need to carefully prioritize our capital projects to put more emphasis on critical infrastructure....

We are not talking about things that are just for the sake of esthetics or simple things like that, but things that are absolutely required to run a small city.

He went on to say:

We also need to be active in territorial and national lobbying efforts through the NWT Association of Communities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to ensure the territorial and federal governments are adequately assisting municipalities with the cost of addressing our infrastructure deficit.

Just as Yellowknife probably helps out the rest of the country with its great mining industry located there, with the value per capita of the gross domestic product so high, right across northern Canada we are expected to be shouldering the burden of the GDP in this country to a greater extent than any other part of the country. We need to have proper infrastructure to accomplish that.

The 2008-2012 business plan of the Northwest Territories Department of Public Works and Services is even more direct about the infrastructure needs in the territories. It stated:

The fiscal reality is that the GNWT's infrastructure needs exceed, by a wide margin, its financial ability to address them. Therefore, the GNWT is challenged to explore broad and innovative approaches to infrastructure planning, acquisition, usage and maintenance.

The only trouble is innovation can only go so far, meaning that we simply need to invest.

To meet the NWT's infrastructure need, the territorial government has had to borrow. Because of the borrowing limitations imposed by Ottawa, it ran into serious difficulties.

The NWT Minister of Finance stated in this year's territorial budget address a week or so ago:

...every dollar spent on infrastructure is borrowed money, bringing us closer to our borrowing limit and leaving no flexibility to respond to a potential economic downturn or make strategic investments to support economic development and grow our economy.

Therefore, the NWT is in a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation, and the future is not well taken care of.

In Nunavut, the infrastructure deficit is just as great. The Nunavut government estimates that it will require $6 billion over the next 20 years to meet its existing infrastructure needs.

It has a need for 3,600 more housing units. It needs a deepwater port at Iqaluit and other communities. We had a tremendous presentation this morning at the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on the incredible lack of transportation infrastructure in Nunavut.

Nunavut needs to find alternate sources of energy. It is currently using 33.4 million litres of diesel for electrical generation. That is unaffordable to that area and will continue to be unaffordable for the future.

Iqaluit, a city of 7,000 people, has a $160 million infrastructure deficit. They may be able to scrape together, as the mayor said, the $20 million for badly needed upgrades, but they cannot even come close to addressing the issues that are in front of them.

Earlier this month, the Premier of Nunavut was here in Ottawa lobbying for $500 million over five years for only two projects. That did not go very far.

Those are the kinds of situations our communities and our governments across northern Canada are in. We are expected to be the economic generators of the future, but the investment has to be made now.

It is unfortunate that politics comes into infrastructure investment. We need a clear strategy to move Canadian infrastructure into the 21st century. I served for five years on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' green municipal fund investment, and there was an opportunity across the country to identify good investments that made sense for the environment and made sense for the long-term costs to communities. That information is still available through this great organization, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. We can make a difference with our infrastructure, but we have to take the proper steps.

Improving infrastructure is more than just roads, more than ditches and dumps, more than those things. It is setting our communities up so that they can move to a green future. That is really important. When we invest in something that is not sustainable, that investment hangs around for 40 years making trouble, so we do need to be smart and clever and invest in the proper things.

Our municipalities across this country have taken the effort to understand how those investments are made and are likely to be the best ones to lead us forward in the future in making investments. It is incredibly important for the federal government to recognize the partnership that should be in place with the municipalities when it comes to investment in infrastructure.

I want to quote the former mayor of the City of Yellowknife, Gord Van Tighem, who spent many years in the position. He said, “In towns that have good water, affordable housing, power, and jobs, people can live healthy lifestyles.” Healthy lifestyles should be the goal for all Canadians.

The government could take real action on meeting Canada's infrastructure deficit if it would only take a strategic approach instead of funding projects politically to gain the most political advantage. We really have to move away from that. We have to move to a system that allows municipalities to make logical, rational choices about the future according to the best possible practices that have been identified for accomplishing our goals.

Sustainability is so important. We cannot leave our grandchildren with this infrastructure deficit. We cannot accept that our grandchildren will still be trying to go to work in situations that are not cleverly thought out by this generation. This generation has a responsibility to leave something better than we have to date. That should be our goal.

I hope the Conservatives will support this resolution and that we can work unanimously to build a better Canada.