Environment committee  Good afternoon, committee members. It is a pleasure to appear before you today. I'm representing the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, which I will refer to as the NWMB, or the board, in my comments today. It's an institution of public government, established by the terms of

Environment committee  Merci, Monsieur Bigras. First of all, the protocol I think you're referring to is a memorandum of understanding. It was signed a couple of years ago. Actually, both government and the NWMB would say that it has been very successful. It actually flows into your other question abo

Environment committee  First of all, the discussions for the development of the memorandum of understanding were between the NWMB, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Environment Canada. Included in our discussions was the Government of Nunavut and the main Inuit party to our land claims agreem

Environment committee  The NWMB is actually an administrative tribunal. It's a regulatory agency, like the National Energy Board or the CRTC, or all those administrative boards that we're all familiar with. So it is not an aboriginal organization, but it's established under a land claims agreement and

Environment committee  Yes, that's correct. We got that information from the 2008 status report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to the House of Commons.

Environment committee  Yes, I can say a couple of things about that. First of all, though, you mentioned it's a scientific question. It is a scientific question, but it's a question you want to put to aboriginal peoples. And I expect my colleague will say you want to put it to organizations and indiv

Environment committee  No. Move on.

Environment committee  First of all, I think it is necessary to prioritize your resources. From the perspective of the NWMB and the land claim under which we operate, it talks in terms of social, economic, and cultural needs of Inuit. So we tend to look at that. But actually in terms of determining wh

Environment committee  Yes, it's very much the case within Nunavut. It's an oral tradition.

Environment committee  Yes. There's a research centre in Igloolik, on Baffin Island, that has been, for many, many years, collecting traditional knowledge, known among Inuit as Qaujimajatuqangit. There are lots of individual efforts at collecting traditional knowledge right across the country, and cert

Environment committee  That kind of echoes the recommendation for this aboriginal traditional knowledge institute we are calling for. However, the nature of traditional knowledge is that it's often local. So yes, there should be coordination. There should certainly be standards for collecting tradition

Environment committee  First of all, I can tell you that the NWMB, an administrative tribunal whose public is for the most part aboriginal people, sympathizes with the kinds of concerns you are laying out in terms of consultation and in terms of being able to react quickly and so on. I think an underl

Environment committee  Thank you for the questions. On the consultation process the government follows, if you don't have a copy of this MOU we've talked about today between the NWMB and government, the committee should probably get a copy of it, because it is actually a good-news story under SARA. W

Environment committee  I didn't catch where that's being applied, but those aren't Nunavut's statistics you're giving me.

Environment committee  I do think it is. I think you have to make aboriginal people more aware of it. You may have to look at increasing the budget for it. And I should also tell you that only about $550,000 of that per year goes to basically all of the west and NWT and Nunavut. So very little finds it