Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's another area where there's a lack of consistency and strategic planning, as you're suggesting, should be put in place. That's what we'd like to work with them on. Their budget in our region has not increased in 14 years so they're dealing with dollars from way back then. H

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would say it's provided us with some security, but as they touched on earlier, the statistics are not moving up or improving to the degree that they could and should be.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, we have processes established for overlapping issues. As well, within the final agreement, we have an agreement with the Gwich'in of Old Crow. Under our land claim, the Porcupine caribou management process was created. We worked together to i

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I guess I'm the only region that it affected for this part of the—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's correct. We received notice about two hours beforehand that it was going to be announced, and that was the extent of the consultation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I also stated that we don't want to be used as the excuse for the federal government to meet its international obligations on an artificial quota, in my view, either on land-based or marine-based protection. Again, we'd rather work together on identifying potential sites and seei

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll start, I guess, since the light is still on. For the whole territory, I would think, there is no gas or oil development anymore. The price has dropped so much and the cost of conducting exploration or development within the north is so high.... Again, this territory is sitt

Natural Resources committee  I'll apologize in advance if I am going a little quickly, because I think I have more than 10 minutes in my presentation here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. First of all, my name is Duane Smith. You can just stick to the English name. I know my Inuvia

Natural Resources committee  Well, first of all, it's the remoteness, and the high cost of doing any type of business in that part of Canada, in the Arctic. Geographically, we're closer to Asia than to the rest of Canada, if you look at it. Again, it's the high cost of conducting business where we are, as

Natural Resources committee  —it allows this company to sit on what we call an SDL, a significant discovery licence, forever. The minister has the discretion to tell a company to develop, but that has never been exercised. We need to do that.

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for bringing it up. I didn't have it in my comments. Although the government doesn't call it a moratorium, that's what it is. It was imposed on us without recognizing our rights on the offshore. No, we were not consulted prior to it being imposed on us.

Natural Resources committee  For clarification right now, the territory doesn't have any jurisdiction in the offshore. It's all federal because we're territories.

Natural Resources committee  Secondly, yes, I agree. You've answered the question yourself. We should sit down together and work this out because it isn't giving any comfort to industry itself as well. They've all walked away from their investments to explore within their region. As I pointed out earlier, so

Natural Resources committee  As the second-oldest claim, we have an established process that's been in place for quite a number of years. As well, in terms of overlapping issues, when we were trying to develop the gas within our region we had proposed a pipeline from my area to Alberta. We created the Aborig

Canadian Heritage committee  Greetings. Ublaami. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. As the chair has mentioned, my name is Duane Ningagsiq Smith, and I am the chair and CEO of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. It's in the very far northwest portion of Canada but still in the country