Environment committee  Thank you, David. As Trevor said earlier, we approach our work with a community-first approach. We know that in the long term, conservation will only be sustainable in the Arctic if it's community driven and community supported and provides benefits to those communities. We hav

Environment committee  Thank you. On the MERAs, we are just reflecting that Parks Canada itself has also recommended that this policy be updated. Regarding oil and gas, we submit that marine protected areas should exclude all oil and gas development, including seismic activity. It's just not compati

Environment committee  Yes. Our view is that the whole of the regulatory regime for oil and gas in the Arctic needs to be reviewed. It is dated. It dates back to the late 1970s, when there was only one value put forward, and that was to encourage exploration. In the interim, we know that other values

Environment committee  No. I would disagree with that.

Environment committee  The Inuit do not hold rights to the subsea; therefore, the benefits they would receive from that are certainly not clear. They are currently wrapped up in what would be—at this point, under legislation—secret negotiations held by the Government of Canada with the company for bene

Environment committee  I can answer quickly. Because of all the risk being borne by the Inuit, I think it would be a fairly quick discussion. I give the example of the community of Clyde River, which is going to be in the Supreme Court of Canada contesting the seismic program that they believe was go

Environment committee  I've worked internationally—

Environment committee  The bottom line is yes. I would flip it even further, though: I think there's a role for Inuit to manage these areas for Canada, rather than having Canada manage them.

Environment committee  The experience I have from working in the north and from talking with communities and individuals is that they want to protect their heritage as marine people who have hunted these waters, whether on ice or on water. I can't speak for them, but I can repeat what I've heard, which

Environment committee  I'd go a little further. Under the Nunavut land claim, for instance, it should be representative of the population, and that is the requirement. Since 85% of the population is Inuit, why aim for 50% when you should be representative?

Environment committee  Again, we have to be very cognizant that it's with the Inuit that Inuit impact and benefit agreements will be negotiated. We'd really be in awkward position to say, “This is how much you should be allocating to that.” However, I will say that the perspective needs to be long term

Environment committee  The four Inuit land claims were settled over 30 years or so. There's quite a bit of different content in the rights secured in the first ones versus in the latest ones, and I think it's important to kind of ratchet up to the best available that we have. In this case, the Nunatsia

Environment committee  I think there's an issue of the relationship and Ottawa not always knowing best. The best managers of these areas are going to be the ones who know it the best, and they're up north, so it's flipping the relationship that is really important.

Environment committee  There are some obvious jobs that come with a protected area. There are the wardens, the guardians, or whatever you want to call them, and that kind of employment. There's the research, and then there's community-based monitoring. These are best monitored. There are all the associ

Environment committee  I think the most important thing is to do this transparently. What are the economic benefits? What is the baseline management that can be handed over to communities? Have that up front right away and across the board, being fair and not renegotiating from one space to the next, f