Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The vice-chief has spoken about two things. He has spoken about the rangers and the role they could play in the defence of the north and the first alerts, but he's also talked about search and rescue capabilities based in northern Saskatchewan, with the ability to reach way up in

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I mean no ill will toward the territorial north whatsoever. The amount of money that goes into the northern provinces is much smaller than what's available in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, by a very dramatic scale. The northern territories have modern treaties a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The short thing is you need Canadians to really care about this. What happens is that Canada gets interested in the north when somebody threatens it, whether it's the Russians or the Americans. When somebody sort of raises their head, whether it's the Polar Sea or the Manhattan

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I did actually know this was happening. I think the government just announced what it called a modernization of NORAD, which I hope will involve addressing some of those kinds of issues, but we lag so far behind other nations. It's interesting to compare two places. One is nort

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Boy, have you ever touched on something really important. We have some creative solutions. Yukon University is doing some excellent community-based training and preparation. The minister can probably tell us way more about that than I know. My university, the University of Saska

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You're right to say they're very different. Canada has phenomenal unrealized potential, but it also has very formidable challenges. If we had colleagues with us at the table from Nunavut.... The dispersed population, the vast distances and the extreme cold are very different from

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I must tell you that I take enormous pride in hearing the question being asked in your language. It means an awful lot to me to hear you say that. Thank you for bringing that to the parliamentary process. Across Canada, if we look at the housing situation

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's a very important question. I guess I did come across as a bit cynical. As a historian, I see that we've gone down this path many times before. We've had a whole series of Arctic strategies over the years. Governments of different stripes have come forward and said, “Here

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I was just thanking you for letting me speak to you, and then I decided I should turn the microphone on. My comments are going to build very much on what the minister just had to say. This is not a new topic for Canada. In fact, one of the things I'm going to say at the end, jus