Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thomas Berger was brought in, I think in 2004 or 2005, as a conciliator because of the difficulty we were having, particularly with article 23. He did his report in 2006. That report was essentially ignored, which is part of the reason why we went to court.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When the agreement was signed, the federal government would not agree to a system of arbitration in which NTI could refer something to arbitration unless it agreed with the referral. Perhaps we could forward you more specific information relating to that process. I think there were something like 16 or 17 attempts on the part of NTI to arbitrate matters, which were turned down.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, the message, I guess, would be to identify in your report the problems we're speaking about.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  With the Government of Nunavut, the NNI contracting policy was developed early on. It has been adjusted a number of times and, in our view, has been meeting the objectives of article 24. On the federal side, the one bright light, I would say, is the Department of National Defence, which, for the cleanup of the DEW Line sites, did establish criteria by agreement—it negotiated an agreement with NTI—that set standards for Inuit benefits from contracting and employment benefits from contracting.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There have been different approaches by the federal government. With the Nunavut agreement, what happened was title to land: Inuit gave up the aboriginal title to land in exchange for ownership in fee simple and all the other things in the agreement. Other aboriginal rights that are not directly tied to ownership of the land are not affected by the agreement.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Often, it's problems of interpretation, and in that sense, I guess—how would say it?—there should be a federal policy that would guide interpretation, although in the general sense we would also say that there are objectives in our agreement, and they should guide the interpretation as well.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. The financial one is a problem. We know of cases where, for example, a certain amount of money has been put in an envelope for claims implementation, and it has become a question of which claimant group has enough pressure to get the money: if A gets it and B gets it, there's nothing left for C and D.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think most of them have something in there. My recollection is that the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement did not have something like that, but the Inuvialuit agreement was the next one that came along, and it did have the provision for binding arbitration. After that, the federal government tightened up and said that it wasn't going to do that again, that it had to be by mutual consent.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not sure of exactly the legal aspects, but there's a sort of general approach that was taken towards the interpretation of the Nunavut Agreement early on. When the Auditor General reviewed DIAND's implementation of it in 2003, he observed that the department tended to look not at the objectives of the agreement, but at the obligations, and in a rather narrow sense.

Human Resources committee  Thank you.

Human Resources committee  I'll answer the first part. Yes, some of the figures we gave you were a little dated; however, things like the disparity or the great difference in cost of living between Nunavut and other southern regions of Canada are just no less than that. Although we don't have the documented information to back this up, in terms of experience I don't believe it would be any different.

Human Resources committee  Yes. I think there are a number of features of the land claims agreement, but I will just give you one example with which we've encountered some difficulties. That is article 24, which relates to government contracting. Article 24 requires both the territorial government, that is, the Government of Nunavut, and the federal government to develop contracting procedures that would provide an opportunity for Inuit-owned companies to secure government contracts.

Human Resources committee  Yes. This is Alastair Campbell speaking to you now. I'm not a specialist in infrastructure and transportation, but it is certainly the case that there are not deep-sea port facilities here. There's sealift, which is not a very efficient way of providing materials needed for construction and goods for consumers.

Human Resources committee  Those are just some examples.

Human Resources committee  This is Alastair Campbell speaking. I can lead off.