Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 6th, 2010

[Scott Vaughan]

As the Auditor General said at the beginning, we looked at the regulatory systems per se. An important part of that is the overall cumulative environmental assessment. One of the difficulties with assessing cumulative effects is trying to understand past impacts, current impacts, and future impacts, meaning what will be future investments and what would be the cumulative effects of any given project, whether it's oil and gas or whether it's mining or any other development.

What we had presented to Parliament in November was a review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and some key findings within how that is proceeding and some problems with it. We are also in the process of preparing for the fall a specific report on cumulative environmental assessment under the legal obligations of the act. Within that, we'll probably be looking at the oil and gas sector, including the oil sands.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

When you are looking at it in the north, some of it is going to be more complicated because some of the pollution will come from other countries. So you need to have interaction with.... For instance, the oil drilling in Greenland will spill into our waters.

[Sheila Fraser]

If I could just add, Mr. Chair, I think the commissioner has a report coming on pollution at sea.

[Scott Vaughan]

Just on that, first, we noted in a chapter that one of the key challenges in the north in terms of environmental quality is long-range transport of pollutants. One example of that is mercury emissions. Most of Canada's mercury emissions, including those landing in the north, don't originate from Canadian sources; they are coming from other sources, such as China, Asia, and elsewhere. Canada has now entered into legal negotiations under the UN to control mercury emissions. That's one example. There are other examples, such as PCBs and others that are found in the north.

We are also preparing for the fall a report on pollution at sea and Canada's readiness: are they ready for major spills, particularly oil spills? One of the areas we will be looking at is Canada's readiness in the north.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Bagnell.

Mr. Dreeshen, if you want to go for the question after this you'll have some time. I'll give you three minutes to start, but you can do the next one if you wish, unless one of your colleagues wants to.

Please go ahead.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am happy to see you folks here again.

I'm also on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and we've already gone through this particular chapter there, so I know a number of different aspects of this are important.

I'd like to talk about CanNor. A lot of different things that seem to be coming up are perhaps now going to be covered through this particular agency. I'm wondering if you would comment on how you feel this is going to be able to manage some of these points that we've presented.

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you.

CanNor was created at the very end of our audit, so the programs we audited were actually programs of INAC, but now the responsibility to address the issues and to deal with the commitments that are made will be CanNor's responsibility.

This is more of a personal comment, because we haven't really looked at CanNor, but having an agency that's focused on this, rather than being part of a much broader department with many competing challenges, I would think would be a good thing. There have been discussions between the team and the head of CanNor to discuss the action plans. We will be following up, obviously, on what CanNor does, but there certainly is commitment to address the issues we have raised in the report.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

In the report, 4.82, you spoke about INAC's economic development program in the Northwest Territories based on a strategy that was released in 1989. Basically, you didn't have an opportunity, or perhaps there hadn't been an opportunity, to assess how aboriginal communities were able to fit into this. I wonder if you could talk about what you found as you evaluated this, and if you saw any gaps in programming that we should be considering.

[Sheila Fraser]

I'll ask Mr. Barrett to respond.

[Frank Barrett]

Basically, in looking at the economic development programs, we saw that in fact they weren't set up such that they could be evaluated. When we tried to assess what progress had been done, there'd been some money spent, some activities have happened, but in terms of assessing progress and what's been achieved.... We have a couple of examples in 4.80 where one of the objectives is “more investment to communities”, or “more larger and stronger community business”. In essence, it doesn't lend itself to knowing if you really had a strong impact.

I think that was really our point here, that we weren't seeing these programs showing evidence, or it being obvious that they achieved significant impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. We can come back to you, Mr. Dreeshen, if you want, after this next question.

Monsieur Lévesque.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada ratified contribution agreements within the context of the self-government negotiations. The idea was to allow these groups to obtain legal advice, to hire staff. In your report, you state that, in many cases, the funding arrived just before the negotiations' deadline. This resulted in legal fees for the various groups.

To what extent do the funding agreements fit in with the program objectives and the policy outcomes that are traditionally supported in the Northwest Territories? Do you have an approximate idea of the costs that these delays brought about for the various communities?

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In fact, the agreements and the funding are on an annual basis. Obviously, before a request is made and all of the process launched..., the money arrives very late in the year, as late as the last months of the year. Obviously, the Aboriginal communities may have to finance this through loans or other instruments, and this involves costs as well as uncertainty. Indeed, as long as they do not have the money, they have no guarantees that they will receive it.

For us, the solution to all of this consists in multi-year agreements, because we know full well that the land claims negotiation process is not a matter of a few months, but of years. That is our recommendation 4.28.

The department said it was in agreement: it recognizes the need for such mechanisms; it is going to put in place a new transfer payment policy allowing for such mechanisms; and this should be in place within one year, approximately. Given that the department said it was in agreement, we have high hopes that this will resolve the problems, that a multi-year funding agreement will be negotiated, providing them with greater certainty throughout the negotiation process.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I have a question for you relating to CanNor, the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, but based on what I have heard, you have not looked at this. I thank you for your presence here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

Since there are no questions from the conservatives, Mr. Bevington, you now have the floor.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to page 28, which says, “Indian and Northern Affairs Canada does not track and monitor benefits plans”.

You talk about the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act. Quite clearly, in the Northwest Territories the major industry is mining. INAC is in charge of mineral development, and many of these plans and benefits agreements are tied to employment and business opportunities. Those are time-sensitive activities: if the mine lasts longer, the benefits continue.

The Diavik mine has mined its ore at double the tonnage rate that it agreed to in its development plan. Would you not say that's something that should be monitored by government, that if they're responsible for mineral development, they should actually look at the agreements that are struck by mining companies when they're engaged in activities there that are influenced by the development agreements? The benefits agreements are impacted by the rate of development, the rate of extraction.

[Sheila Fraser]

Absolutely, we would agree with the member. I think the only reason we made reference to this act is because there is a requirement under there to develop the plans, and we were specifically looking at programs to provide training and economic development. So that was our link to the legal obligation.

But certainly if there are conditions that are placed on companies doing any kind of development, you would expect that there would be monitoring to ensure that they are respecting those commitments and the legal obligations. I think this might go back, actually, to part of the commissioner's work in the environmental assessments where there wasn't that kind of rigorous follow-up, even on some of the requirements that were put in place of various companies more broadly, to see whether they were actually respecting the commitments that they had made.

We did not look at that specifically in here. This was much more narrow, looking at employment training programs of INAC and HRSDC.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You mentioned that the department had not tracked whether industry carried out its plans. So I was wondering whether you got into the mineral development, because in the Northwest Territories—

[Sheila Fraser]

Maybe Mr. Barrett could explain.

[Frank Barrett]

Yes. Just to clarify a little bit, we observed that in fact there are these impact benefit agreements in the mining area as well, but as the Auditor General has mentioned, there aren't specific criteria as to what INAC is legally obligated to do with those. There's no program. There were no clear criteria that we were able to hang on to and ask whether INAC had done this or that, whereas under the oil and gas act, for those agreements, it was clearly laid out what INAC was obligated to do.

So from an audit perspective, it was a criteria question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Bevington.

We'll have just one last short question from Mr. Bagnell. Don't go anywhere, though. We have one little motion that we have to deal with here as well.

Go ahead, Mr. Bagnell.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Just on your future study on the oil spills, it's great that you're doing that. I've raised that at committee a couple of times. You might be interested in looking at the evidence from the Beaufort project, which was set up in the 1970s to study that.

My understanding is that in Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill, I was told that in part 20 they took the environmental assessment responsibilities from CEAA and put it in NEB, which is not an environmental assessment organization. So hopefully you'll be looking into that when you do that study.

[Scott Vaughan]

We're aware of the change that was made in the budget bill, and that is something we will set out, what those changes are from the pre-budget announcement.

NEB has been involved in project-related environmental assessments. They do this in consultation and coordination with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

But thank you for the reference on the Beaufort Sea, as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay.

Mr. Duncan has one last item.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Just on the same subject, we did have the CEAA people here, and NEB, and there was common agreement, if you'll recall, Mr. Bagnell—