Proceedings of the Special
Senate Committee on the Arctic
Issue No. 22 - Evidence - March 18, 2019 (morning meeting)
OTTAWA, Monday, March 18, 2019
The Special Committee on the Arctic met this day at 10:30 a.m. to consider the significant and rapid changes to the Arctic, and impacts on original inhabitants.
Senator Dennis Glen Patterson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Top of the morning. Welcome to this meeting of the Special Committee on the Arctic. I’m Dennis Patterson, a senator for Nunavut. I’m privileged to be the chair of this committee. I’d like to ask senators around the table to introduce themselves, beginning with our deputy chair.
Senator Bovey: Patricia Bovey, Manitoba.
Senator Eaton: Nicky Eaton, Ontario.
Senator Anderson: Dawn Anderson, Northwest Territories.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: Thank you.
Today, we continue our consideration of the significant and rapid changes to the Arctic, and impacts on original inhabitants. For our morning panel, I’m pleased to welcome, from the Kivalliq Inuit Association in central Nunavut, Mr. Luis Manzo, Director of Lands; and Ms. Brenda Osmond, Lands Administrator. We also have, from Hutchinson Environmental Sciences, Neil Hutchinson, President and Principal Scientist; and from the University of Manitoba, Mr. Jörg Stetefeld, Professor for Biochemistry Tier-1 CRC in Structural Biology and Biophysics.
Thank you all for joining us today. Please proceed with your opening statement, after which we’ll go to a question-and-answer session, beginning with Mr. Manzo.
Luis G. Manzo, Director of Lands, Kivalliq Inuit Association: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the committee. It’s a pleasure to be here. I have seven minutes for presenting. In our presentation, we will be skipping a few of the slides if I need to, and then we will be ready for questions.
I’m a professional engineer and an agrologist in Canada. I’ve been working in the Arctic for the last 22 years in the same position. Since then, to do our work, we require a lot of research that has not been done in the North. In my presentation, you will see why that is.
Over the years, we have developed what we called a cumulative assessment program that we called Inuu’tuti. Inuu’tuti means “source of life.” It’s a program to assess the cumulative effects, over time, of differing stressors that we have in the North today. The program was initially introduced in 2012 — that’s the history — but when we formalized the governance of this committee for cumulative effects, we introduced it into the community of Baker Lake in 2014, because of all the requirements of programming, funding and different policies developed by the federal government to access funding to do humanitarian work.
The name was selected by the people of Baker Lake in February 2016.
Since then, we have made substantial progress in this programming. We can finally say that this design monitoring program is completed. Like I said, we started in 2014. Now we are in 2019, with a full-monitoring program ready to go.
During the years, we have had support. Inuu’tuti is supporting the Canada’s Arctic Policy Frameback river basinwork themes: strong Arctic people in communities, Arctic science and Indigenous knowledge, and protecting the environment and conserving Arctic biodiversity. There are Canada’s Arctic Policy Framework objectives as well, such as conserving Arctic biodiversity through science-based decision-making, incorporating Arctic science and traditional knowledge into decision-making, building a sustainable Arctic economy, supporting strong Arctic communities.
That’s along with all the ITK and NTI policies and KIA internal bylaws.
This program is monitoring in central Baker Lake. We’re monitoring the basin of the Back river, the Quoich River, the Thelon River, the Baker Lake River, the Kazan River, and the Dubawnt River. It’s an extensive area where they will collect information. Right now they are only collecting the basic information in the last 10 years to take us to this design.
We also do a lot of research in the Baker Lake Basin. All of these basins, the depository of it is Baker Lake. I want to emphasize that Baker Lake, Mr. Chairman, is the drinking water supply for the Baker Lake community. All these rivers I mentioned here flow directly into the Baker Lake drinking water supply. It’s very important.
The stressors that we identified during these 10 years of research are warming climate, glacial rebound, rapid population growth, saline water from Hudson Bay, mine development and potential future mines in the region. We’re doing the research and monitoring.
The multiple stressors in the Baker Lake Basin today are not being analyzed properly. I will mention the problems when several institutions collect information. The data they collect for different groups is usually not coordinated. Those cover all areas of interest or generate continuous records. There is no consistent or routine interpretation. It does not consider Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit traditional knowledge. The result is we have a poor understanding of the current conditions of the Arctic, a poor baseline to understand future changes and inadequate input to environmental assessment and licensing processes.
The response to that is Inuu’tuti, Baker Lake aquatic Cumulative Effects Monitoring Program. It took us 10 years to develop in coordination with different federal agencies and boards in Nunavut.
The second time Inuu’tuti is led by the Kivalliq Inuit Association as a community-based program, supported by the Nunavut General Monitoring Plan secretariat, Nunavut Water Board and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. We have agreements with all of them, including agreements with the community of Baker Lake. Those agreements we call “memorandums of agreements” and “memorandums of understandings.”
How will we implement that? We have a technical partnership, and the technical partnership is called the advisory committee of the governments, which include AREVA Resources, Agnico Eagle Mines, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and environmental scientists.
Scientific partnerships. We have Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, Canadian Cryospheric Information Network, Hutchinson Environmental Sciences and the University of Manitoba.
Community partnership: Hamlet of Baker Lake, local hunters and trappers organization, and community groups.
Over the years we successfully received funding from the following institutions: Polar Knowledge Canada, Nunavut General Monitoring Program, NGMP, with direct financial contributions. We also partnered with in-kind contributions by all parties involved.
The design of these programs select values of consistent components that we call VECs that are important to the community and will respond to multiple stressors that can inform a cumulative effect assessment over time, designate a program to measure what, when, where and how, and are reviewed by a technical advisory group to recommend to the secretariat.
The VECs we sample and assess in the monitoring program is the climate and meteorology, fish health, water quality, flow and quanity, and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.
The Baker Lake Basin estuary — as part of science in 2014 and 2015, we collected historical data from 1970 to 2014. We collected all the data that complied with the standards to create a baseline for the North, in this case central Baker Lake. We developed, at that point in time, a database system where we can hold the data to analyze and manipulate and have it organized in such a way that other institutions can use it.
Capacity building. We developed training over the last 10 years for all the staff of KIA and community members. Those were held in 2014 to 2015. We also trained with the CIRNAC staff and had ongoing reviews and quality assurance and control for the collection of data.
Expanding the memorandum of agreement and monitoring programs. We built a very strong memorandum of agreement with the INAC Regional Office in Iqaluit. That was signed in 2004 and extended until today. KIA also has a partnership with Environment Canada, a partnership with NRCan and industry, like management agreements and shared data information with Environment Canada and the DFO. We just signed another agreement with the Department of Fisheries for the Marine Protected Areas, and we’re working with them as we speak.
We reported all this information in 2016 to 2018 after we finished the following programs: One Voice was one of the strongest and most difficult research projects carried out in central Baker Lake or in this case Kivalliq Region. We hope this will be the voice of how to collect data from a scientist’s point of view and also incorporate the traditional knowledge. We developed a methodology to do that. We tabled a scientific paper, which is now recognized in the scientific community. We use it for the collection of water quality, water quantity, fish, and we are going to use it also this year in the collection of eDNA for biodiversity.
In the Baker Lake Basin, the drinking water supplies — there have been no scientific publications since 1964. We started a baseline quality and investigated the community concern, which was a salty and fishy taste.
That scientific document, which is also now an abstract to the scientific community, was carried out in 2015, 2016 and 2017 in partnership with Hutchinson Environmental Sciences.
In terms of community outreach, every year we do four community workshops and produce four newsletters. We do radio shows in the community. We visit the high schools four times a year. We also send our scientists who partnered with us on the Arctic Network in 2015, Canadian Ecotoxicity Workshop in 2016, Arctic Change Conference in 2017, Nunavut Mining Symposium in 2017, the Aqhaliat Report — two papers presented from this committee — in 2018, and the Assembly of First Nations Water Symposium and Tradeshow in 2019.
What comes next?
Inuu’tuti is a strong pilot program to analyze watershed as a regional level in Nunavut. The approach of this monitoring program today is also used by the Nunavut Water Board to develop the water management strategy for Nunavut — our methodology and background information to develop the mandate to the Nunavut Water Board.
We will apply for funds to fully implement Inuu’tuti over the next three years. We would set up 25 monitoring points for water quality, quantity and flow three times a year in many locations for eDNA — the addition of fish health and IQ or traditional knowledge.
We introduced DNA for biodiversity with the partnership we have with the University of Manitoba. We’ve been working with them for the last two years. In a different umbrella. We will extend this eDNA to the rest of the watershed, because there’s going to be — cost saving for Nunavut. They give you an expectation of the whole biodiversity if you do it right. With the support of the University of Manitoba, with the new technology they’ve implemented in the last two years, we’re hoping to get the biodiversity characteristics in the North.
We will do annual reports. We will refine the One Voice program. We’re going to increase the participation of Nunavummiut in the Baker Lake community. We will also partner with CIRNAC in developing a Treasury Board application to have long-term funding in the future.
The environmental eDNA monitoring — that’s for biodiversity but also for different characterizations. You will hear from the doctors when you ask your questions — the collection of eDNA of all the species in the lakes to characterize those species and be able to analyze them against any kind of activity that may happen in the watershed. You have a map that shows the location in red that we are sampling eDNA and the possible locations to be sampling in Baker Lake itself.
Inuu’tuti supports Canada’s Arctic Policy Framework themes as strong Arctic people and communities, Arctic science and Indigenous knowledge, and protecting the environmental and conserving Arctic biodiversity — Canada’s Arctic Policy Framework objectives: conserving Arctic biodiversity through science-based decision-making, incorporating Arctic science and traditional knowledge into decision-making, building a sustainable Arctic economy, and supporting a strong Arctic community — that this committee has the task to do.
In summary, the Inuu’tuti monitoring program design encompasses the goals and objectives of the Arctic Policy Framework in the following areas: knowledge and understanding of guidance in decision-making, protecting the environment and conserving biodiversity. Canadian Arctic and Northern ecosystems are healthy and resilient. Today, we seek at this committee the support of seeking funding for full implementation of Inuu’tuti for the next three years, support of our application to the Arctic Inspiration Prize and support for the preparation of a submission with Treasury Board for a long-term funding.
With that, I’ve finished my presentation to the committee. Thank you very much. Qujannamiik.
Senator Bovey: Thank you, Mr. Manzo. The partnerships you’ve put together are impressive. The work that’s underway is encouraging and much needed.
You’ve made a couple of comments that have me wanting to look forward to next steps. You mentioned that the data you’re getting is not yet being analyzed properly and that you were concerned about the coordination of that data analysis. Your research is obviously ongoing. I’m very encouraged that it’s a blend of scientific evidence and traditional Indigenous knowledge.
You also said that what needs to happen is to “increase the understanding of current conditions.” To me, the community outreach you’ve outlined is impressive, as are your partnerships. I’m interested in knowing what you think needs to be done to increase the understanding of the current conditions, because those conditions are obviously changing minute by minute, if I can be dramatic.
The other thing I’d really like you to talk about is more about is the One Voice project, which is exemplary, from what I’ve heard. Thank you.
Mr. Manzo: Thank you, senator. I appreciate your question. I will partially answer and will let Dr. Hutchinson jump in with an intervention, if you don’t mind.
Kivalliq Inuit Association started collecting water quality, quantity and flow data since 2002. By 2004 and 2007, we were required by the federal agencies to analyze that data and do a gap analysis to be able to have QA/QC, quality assurance and quality controls, rolled into this sampling monitoring location.
From 2014 until now, Hutchinson Environmental Sciences, which we subcontract to do that part of the work, has been analyzing and doing the quality control for the scientific aspects of it. We have a substantial amount of data at this point in time. On the other hand, we have programs that are dedicated to be very focused projects that collect data. The problem is those programs don’t have guidelines or requirements. When the funding is expended and then the reports come out, that data cannot be input into a database, because it doesn’t have the protocols required to be validated.
I will turn it to Mr. Hutchinson. I will come back.
Neil Hutchinson, Principal Scientist, Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd.: Thank you, Senator Bovey. The first question you asked was what needs to be done to better understand current and changing conditions, which you also touched on. What we see, not only in the Baker Lake region but across the Arctic, is a series of monitoring programs done for different purposes, or sometimes with no purpose other than to record changes in the environment. We see mining companies putting in EXO monitoring programs based on their impacts in one specific area. Environment Canada may be monitoring major rivers to get an understanding of what’s going on.
What we don’t see is a program designed to look at questions from the start, to say, “What are the questions? Why are we monitoring?” Once we know that, we know how often we have to do it, what methods we need to use, and such things as detection limits. We call that the data-mining project where we took all the data the Nunavut Water Board had since the 1970s. A lot of the data was useful at the time but now the detection limits are so much better that we are much better at detecting change. We understand better how to monitor the programs and it’s easier access to the North.
What needs to be done to get better understanding, especially when things are changing quickly, is going into a program understanding what the stressors are. Are we worried about climate change, sewage treatment, mining or salt in Baker Lake? And then design programs specifically focused on those questions.
Coming through the eyes of the community, the questions are: Is the water good to drink and are the fish safe to eat?
Those are important questions to the community. We can design a program to look at that. Does that answer your question?
Senator Bovey: Yes. I think the University of Manitoba does as well.
Matthew McDougall, Center for Oil and Gas Research and Development, University of Manitoba: If I can respond to the question for One Voice. One Voice came along because we had temporary access in Nunavut. We started a long time ago, but the authority process started in 2004 for the development of a coal mine in the North.
By 2007 we finished the review for this project. When we went to that review, I picked up the proponents in other activities who have to present traditional knowledge information. This is a stand-alone document. My question to the proponent at the time is the same question you asked me is how do you use this knowledge to select your sites per se, or how do you use this knowledge to analyze changes? But fortunately, at that point in time, no one was doing the methodology and how you are actually going to do that. To answer your question, we did it, a scientific paper was done with the help of the University of Alberta and Dr. Hutchinson, and put together a set of criteria for each component in traditional knowledge. They speak to each other and also defer from each other, and by analyzing those, you can really identify what the needs of the community are; for instance, drinking water for tea. Are those lakes safe to drink water for tea? The test of fish and water in Baker Lake. Is it salty? All those things have been analyzed in two sets, that they have similar criteria, but also the knowledge that they would carry out. This program, we’re gathering the baseline for that particular One Voice which incorporates all the traditional knowledge and what we already have scientifically, to give a different analysis. It will serve for future developments to use those methodologies in the future.
The Chair: One Voice means the blend of traditional and scientific knowledge?
Mr. McDougall: Yes.
Jörg Stetefeld, Professor for Biochemistry Tier-1 CRC in Structural Biology and Biophysics, University of Manitoba: As members of the University of Manitoba, we stepped in a year or two years ago. My mandate at the university — I’m a professor of biochemistry — and we started in 2014, together with a colleague of mine, the Centre for Oil and Gas Research and Development, where we developed exciting new tools to monitor pollution in the environment. The centre started with this kind of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are found in oil and gas, but going out to the field and working with many industry partners, we realized there is much more to do.
Because I’m a biochemist, and I know what the DNA means and looks like, we started the environmental DNA metabarcoding. Technically it was a bit of an accident. They found a mammoth in the very North. We were part of a team looking for fancy stuff, and this is published in Nature Genetics. We soon realized the power of this technology.
You might have realized that I have a German tongue. Coming from Europe to Canada, I see things quite often from a different perspective. The power of a university is that we can train people. That’s why Brenda, Ashley and others came to the first eDNA workshop last month at my lab. We had a good time. We coached them how to do certain things in the North because we want to build a relationship that uses their traditional knowledge. They know much better what’s out there than I do. We can team up, supplement and understand mechanisms on a scientific ground.
The Chair: What does eDNA allow you to discover in water?
Mr. Stetefeld: The “e” stands for “environmental.” It is a technique which allows you to detect sources of life in any environment you’re looking for. Let’s say, we can go to lakes, we take samples, analyze and we extract the DNA, the molecules, and then with our sequencing technology we can tell you, first of all, the absence and presence of species. But, again, we ask first of the people who live in these environments to help us, what should we look for? Because there are not only fish in our environment, but we, at the moment, are focused on fish. The next step we envision is to look for diseases or certain things in caribou herds. You can do this with any living organism. It needs DNA to program our genetic code, and you can not only say it’s there or not there, the future will allow us, if we start to do livestock mapping, we have an inventory list, we can look for changes.
We can look for invasive species and diseases. There is much more to come. For me it’s nice, and I’m proud because for two years I’m a Canadian too. eDNA is a Canadian thing. It was developed in universities here, and Canada and the U.S. are leading to develop these non-invasive technologies.
The Chair: We don’t have to fish the lakes to find out what is in the lakes.
Mr. Stetefeld: That’s the hope.
Senator Eaton: I wanted to pursue this eDNA. It tells you what is in the water. Does it give you any indication — I guess you can subtract the numbers so you can say there must be 1,000 salmon in this water, looking at that, you can determine the numbers as well?
Mr. Stetefeld: Yes, people work in this direction, and we are also attempting this approach. I wouldn’t promise it right now. This is exactly the way to go — to quantify species of interest.
Senator Eaton: It seems to me, from listening to you, that you’re starting something that has not been done in other areas in Canada. I’m thinking about the environmental concerns around the pipelines, which is sort of incorporating traditional knowledge with hard science. Do you think that’s true? Is this something very new that you’re starting here — coordinating traditional knowledge with science?
Mr. Stetefeld: No, the eDNA technology, this kind of “metabarcoding” has been done, and we did this in mine sites.
Senator Eaton: Is this quite prevalent all over the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Nunavik?
Mr. Stetefeld: I think what Luis Manzo and Neil Hutchinson initiated is unique.
Mr. Hutchinson: I think the One Voice program as we’re attempting it here is rare. Many people are looking much more closely at traditional knowledge from all Aboriginal cultures right now, but we’re trying to bring the western science perspective into that.
Senator Eaton: Is there an example you could give me of taking traditional knowledge and how it’s married into hard science and vice versa? This is kind of the future, isn’t it?
Mr. Hutchinson: Scientists are good at collecting lots of numbers that will tell us the average condition and range of those conditions, but we only know that for the time we’ve been collecting numbers on the ground. Traditional knowledge is good at identifying extremes or how things might have changed when we weren’t there to measure the numbers. That helps us focus on where we should be looking, what we should be looking for and when we should be looking for it.
We have traditional knowledge expressed in terms of memory of caribou herd size that we might be able to quantify with DNA at some point, or how fish populations have changed.
Part of the impetus for this study came out of 20 years of sitting around environmental assessment tables in the North and hearing proponents say, “We’ve talked to the elders, and our traditional knowledge tells us that caribou and fish are important.” We think we knew that already, to tell you the truth. We wanted to dig deeper and ask how can we go deeper with that knowledge, use it to ask better questions and bring that perspective into the decisions.
The decisions of the environmental assessment process and the water licensing process are still 90 per cent made by western science interpretation, and that’s maybe not right for the people who live there and may have a different perspective. We’re not there yet. Much like the environmental DNA, we’re taking our first steps towards it but we see great promise in following through on that.
Senator Eaton: When this committee was in theexo monitor Arctic in the fall, we spent a night at Agnico Eagle mines, which was very interesting.
Mr. Manzo, I see they’re partners in several initiatives. Do you see that as an important source in the future related to resource development, other mines helping you or being part of your study, or is it an adversarial position?
Mr. Manzo: No, the way I can say it is once you start a mine you will continue exploring and the process will continue to pop up, especially in a burgeoning geological fracture or belt.
We are not opposed to it. We are very much trying to use the breakouts in our principle now, before those opposed come into the economy. Then you have a strong position to make the decision of, “We want this mine here,” or maybe we don’t.
Because of the principle used by Innu’tuti, it is very important. Without a baseline, I found we made decisions in the past without having strong environmental data where we can say, “yes, we can allow them to mine in this area or not,” depending on the sensitivity of it.
As an example, if you go to wildlife information, we did a density analysis. During this 10 years of research, I personally went into the GIS to get us 10 years ESRI valley wildlife management board by the hunters and trappers. They were collecting the location where caribou was hunted during the four seasons of the year.
I did that density analysis to encompass in which area we have more concentration for hunting and then compare this with time, telling us they are declining or in decline. For years, Inuit have been hunting in this same area. We knew everyone hunts here, so that area is special because they will continue to hunt in these areas. They will continue to go back to those areas.
At that point you have to give an environmental warning. This is a hunting area. They go there all the time. If the proponent knows that, they can create management plans accordingly and be able to do their work and the Inuit can continue to hunt. That’s truly the intent of monitoring over the long term. This is a long-term goal, and it’s the first time it has been tried.
As Dr. Hutchinson said very well, we’re breaking ground with the research we’re doing in the North and are hoping to continue to do it.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much for your presentation and for the work that all of you are doing. It’s fascinating, and obviously absolutely imperative.
The innovations that you have spoken about in both the marriage between the Indigenous knowledge, community-based knowledge and scientific knowledge is something of great interest as well as this new frontier work with environmental DNA. That’s something I had not heard of until this point, and something I imagine we’re going to hear a lot more about.
In your presentation you mentioned a variety of stressors on this particular basin, which is quite huge area as I understand it. We were in Baker Lake, we were at the Meadowbank mine and flew over the vastness of the territory. We have a sense of it.
You mentioned a couple of things I wanted to probe. One was population growth as a stressor, and the second was saline water from Hudson Bay. Could you speak to those two elements? The others are self-explanatory, but those are ones I hadn’t heard about.
Mr. Manzo: The rapid population growth is because you have industry working and developing a mine, but also people moving from other communities to Baker Lake because of the jobs. We have a very rapid population growth. That’s a fact.
We have a vast territory, for sure, that can actually hold as many people as we can. Then we have the mine development. Geologically speaking, it’s a very rich belt. There is very little exploration in comparison to the percentage of indicators found in the belt. It will take years to continue exploring the area.
How we marry both of them into one voice is we do a lot of interviews with elders and we select those areas which, for them, are very important. These are areas like drinking supplies for tea: lakes where they actually harvest ice for tea and drinking water.
They are important; they are special places. They go there for a reason.
We also incorporated the science. It’s difficult to answer. Everything started when the question was: Is the water safe to drink? When I studied the question in a consultation in Baker Lake, I had to verify results with science to actually answer the question. It is a question we cannot answer, because it’s the responsibility of the department of health. I found out later on, after three years of research, that even the department of health has its own policies about what kind of information can be put out.
We can be sure with this methodology that we collect information. We have found so far no indicators yet of accumulation of contaminants in the water.
Mr. Hutchinson: With population increase — and we all know that Nunavut has the most rapid rate of population increase in the country — from an environmental perspective, we’re seeing there will be increased shipping traffic bringing supplies into communities like Baker Lake. Of those supplies are tens of millions of litres of diesel fuel every year. We’re burning a lot of carbon in an area of the world that’s sensitive to it. That’s another stress.
There is an increased need for quality food. There will be increased hunting pressure, harvesting pressure on fish and increased need to bring food in from the outside because we don’t think we can sustain the population with what’s there. Luis spoke to the need for quality and quantity of drinking water.
At the other end of that cycle comes sewage and sewage treatment. Baker Lake has a sewage treatment process, but it has had to be improved. This information can help us decide where to focus the management.
The issue of salinity is one we heard during our first visits to Baker Lake, where the residents would tell us that, under certain conditions of wind and tide out of Chesterfield Inlet, they would taste a salty taste at their water intake in Baker Lake. The question becomes: Why is that and what’s causing that? We went back and found that, in 1964, someone had taken a profile of chloride content in Baker Lake and found high concentrations of saltwater at the bottom. Is that something that was isolated there when the glaciers left that in Hudson’s Bay marine water, or is it constantly replenished in response to winds and tides blowing water in from Chesterfield Inlet? We’ve been out there once in the winter and twice in the ice-free season. It changes dramatically from season to season. It’s not always present at Baker Lake. That tells us the problem seems to be more related to ongoing conditions, and wind and tides coming in.
If those are related to climate change, we might have a management problem. If it has been happening forever and is only occasional, the community can live with it.
Senator Coyle: This is very important work. This database that you have put together, which brings together the data from various sources and you’re updating — you have a baseline, at least, which is so critical.
Could you tell us a little bit about who owns that database, who uses it and who updates it?
Mr. Manzo: The database is owned by Kivalliq Inuit Association. We did a project with Mr. Hutchinson, and his company of data — because it has to be certified professionals who do the data management; it has to be certified quality control companies that are listed in the federal government companies. That’s why Mr. Hutchinson is with us, to enter all the data we collect. Right now, we have that data in-house only at this point in time. KIA is working on developing a portal to display all the data we have hosted in this database.
We may have to change the system or the platform. Right now, we have it in Access, and that’s something we have with the federal government, because they can use Access. We built it in Access without knowing the protocols in the federal family, so I needed to hold it. We have storage in there, but we need to buy different software that the federal government can use.
Nevertheless, we share that information with all the federal agencies, and the federal agencies share information with us. At this point, that’s the state of things. We’re hoping to have funding through this program so that we will be able to finish the platform and publicize all the information collected over the last 15 years.
Senator Anderson: Thank you for your presentation. I noticed in your presentation that you reference capacity building. Coming from a small northern community, capacity building is a huge issue. Can you advise if this is also the case for the Innu’tuti, as well? I notice there was an example of capacity building with the DNA training. I also noticed in your program design summary, there was a lack of funding to provide the capacity building training, especially for youth.
Mr. Manzo: Yes, you’re correct. The programs we applied in the last 10 or 15 years are designed to gather data — water, caribou. This has to be a component of that, but the money cannot be used directly for training in that field. While we do this, we are picking up a contribution — the training component to develop a workshop. First the staff — when the staff is fully trained, then we can go to communities and train the community. In cases that are specialized by eDNA, or taking water samples that require the expertise of the people who are certified, we are tapping into programs that already exist in the federal government, like water sampling basic training.
We just signed a cooperational agreement with the University of Manitoba. It’s a very high-level cooperation agreement. One of the important components of this agreement is formal training. We are looking into having our own bachelor degree, hoping that we will be able to have a proposal to submit to the respective organizations.
We have the support of the University of Manitoba, thanks to Dr. Stetefeld and the deans of the faculties. They are anxious to start designing this program that will be focused on people who are working today — 20 per cent of the people who are working — can leave your work and go to school. In the future, we are hoping colleges and institutions in the North will be able to provide training to kids coming out of school.
This is a complementary program. It’s a pilot project as well. We haven’t finished our design. We haven’t started a dialogue with the University of Manitoba. We have the concept that it’s the way to go, because most of the federal and territorial positions related to the environment requires a bachelor’s degree. This is very much a must, because we will continue implementing the land claim agreement. That’s what I can say in terms of the training.
We started small with little workshops, and now we’re thinking there is more to it. So how can we put this together and take it to the people who are living in Nunavut?
Senator Anderson: In your report, it states that you’ve applied for funding. What happens if you don’t receive funding, or if you don’t receive adequate funding?
Mr. Manzo: All right, I will be honest with you. I will walk away with all this work done in the last 15 years. We are monitoring a cumulative effect of fish habitat, fish sampling. All of those are environmental issues that are actually the responsibility of the federal and territorial governments. We are a small organization that looks after Inuit rights. We try to co-manage this together with all the institutions.
I don’t see how the federal or territorial governments can work without us. At the same time, I don’t see any program put forward to appropriately collect the data.
That said, the federal and territorial governments have been helping us in the last 15 years through little parts of money, from here to there, that go between $50,000 up to a max of $100,000 a year. Unfortunately, we receive that after the summer most of the time. We need to co-manage some of those to make sure we fulfil the criteria of the federal government actions in regard to funding.
The last year, in 2017-18, the monitoring programs changed to climate change and adaptation. It’s the same amount of money with a different name, but in Nunavut — and this was after the conference of all the provinces and territories for monitoring funding and programs.
The provinces decided not to monitor anymore, because they have enough information from the provinces, so they wanted more adaptation to climate change. The decision was made at the federal level without consideration of the territories. They did consider, but there was more provinces than territories.
At the end of the day a change was done to climate change and adaptation. We left out the monitoring. In Nunavut, we don’t have monitoring. How are we going to put a proposal forward to adapt? We cannot even do a gap analysis of what we’d need to adapt to. This program tried to collect that information. Then we can apply to that funding adaptation.
There is a gap, we realize, in the programming system, and it’s a limitation of $100,000, which doesn’t take you very far when you’re flying in and out of those locations in a chopper. We would be looking at 100 locations. You need to send them three times per year.
The budget that the program has is true — collecting some monitoring focus specifically in small areas, which really doesn’t cover the whole spectrum of things that you need to look at in the environmental aspect of things.
The Chair: Thank you. I had the privilege of discussing this with you at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Conference recently. I understand that monitoring, particularly water, is very important when it comes to security for the projects. We have an issue in Nunavut about double-bonding the challenge of providing security, both for Inuit-owned land and Crown land.
Could you tell us how this monitoring program is important for this security that developers must pay to protect the environment as a result of the impacts of development? What’s the connection?
Mr. Manzo: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your question very much. I didn’t know it was coming.
I will go back in history. We did an MOA with the department of water resources to collect basic water sampling locations, focused on project development. That’s how we started this project. We knew mining was coming in. One of the aspects of mining that probably nobody understands is that it’s not about the goal of the rock. Most of the dollar value is in how you manage your water. If you don’t manage your water in a mine setting, you don’t have a mine, period. You need to make sure that the water is managed properly to develop the mine because that would be safe. It’s as simple as being safe.
I did that MOA with CIRNAC. I’ve worked since 2002 with them until now. It’s still in place and is 50/50; 50 per cent of that agreement is paid by KIA and 50 per cent is paid by the federal agency. The rest of our colleagues in the other regions don’t do it because they say this is the responsibility of the federal government. We’ve been proactive in this necessity of collecting the data, because we have mining. If we don’t protect the citizens, we aren’t doing our job.
Security management agreement and double bonding — we did with NRCan, the proponent, and with KIA where the mine is. There were a lot of discussions. It took me 12 years. I am the one who put the first security management agreement on the table for them to not over-bond. There are three situations. There’s double bonding, where the federal government has 100 per cent of the security and the landowner has 100 per cent of the security. There’s over-bonding, when the federal gets some percentage of the security and the landowner gets another percentage of the security. We try to avoid duplication in that bond, of course, in favour of the Inuit institutes for those jobs that we most needed in Nunavut. We went and signed with NRCan an agreement for security management with no double bonding the company. That agreement is a component.
We put it in there. It says “monitoring program,” because that agreement is based in precautionary principles and risk assessment. What does that mean? I did the risk analysis; what are going to be the liabilities for KIA and what are going to be the liabilities for the federal government in interpreting Article 20? Article 20.2.2 of the land claims agreement says the water must run through, in and out, of Inuit-owned land and should be substantially unaffected.
That was an eye-opener for me. That article applies for the federal government and the landowner. If the water comes contaminated from Crown land, we are entitled to compensation. In the other way, if the water becomes contaminated from the area, it goes the other way: The federal government can come back to us. That encompasses the security bond, because if something happens, you use the security bond if it’s operated by the government and try to mitigate the impact of that failure or contamination.
We put that in there, hoping that our partners will put forward money for monitoring. The impact to that security — yes, it’s going to be an impact. I don’t doubt that we can eventually do double bonding, just because of the reason that we don’t have the tools of monitoring in place to verify if the industry is doing what they say they’re doing is correct. It’s a race to us and to the citizens.
That’s why we went through almost 15 years of research. Every time we went back to them for funding, they wanted a design, scientific design and more research. We finished — stamped by all the agencies and they agreed technically with this design — but we still have no funding. There is no core funding from the federal government, and the program is only up to $1,000 a year. Some of the programs don’t apply to this kind of project.
The Chair: As you said, the criteria seems to have been changed from monitoring to climate change —
Mr. Manzo: And adaptation.
The Chair: — and adaptation. There’s a general monitoring plan in Nunavut.
Mr. Manzo: That’s correct.
The Chair: And that’s where the money is held for this kind of work, the money from the federal government. What’s their annual budget?
You said there’s no consistent support, that it comes in bits and pieces. But what’s the annual budget, and what do you need to allow this important program to continue?
Mr. Manzo: Twice they give us $100,000, in two years, and then between $50,000 to $75,000. Then lately they cut off the general, temporary funds, and made the program very narrow. They need to extend it to other regions, which is perfectly understandable.
In this year, when we apply for the eDNA and we apply for a monitoring program, our proposals didn’t get priority because there was a lack of funding. That was the answer in an email. There was not enough funding to continue supporting it.
I want to understand what kind of budget they have. We don’t know. But this is required, according to the Inuit people, core funding at the end of the day. This program that we developed with them, with CIRNAC and industry and other partners, the Nunavut Water Board, required core funding. We are aware of that. These three years, we are requesting funding.
The Chair: That’s on your presentation at page 15.
Mr. Manzo: The amount is $3,418,000 for the next three fiscal years.
The Chair: I have one last question before we go to a second round. You’ve been in Nunavut for some decades now. Your region is doing this traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge approach. Is that happening anywhere else in Nunavut or in the North; would you know? Is this a model that we should be considering elsewhere?
Mr. Manzo: We’re hoping the other regions and partners we have will take advantage of the scientific relationship we’ve developed. It’s a good tool. We are the only region that actually does it. Not even the federal family has this in the operating programs and approach. They have the consultation and are collecting data, period. How that data is used in the program, this is what the bridge is between them.
We’re now bridging the gap and trying to put it all together. Using that methodology will help everybody who uses it, any program. When you develop a program, you can actually see how they marry.
We are using it because it is beneficial to us on many fronts, especially for environmental assessments. We see that this methodology can be used anywhere. That has been proven. We will test it this year.
I don’t have the powers to tell the rest of the world, “You can use the model.” Doing research to try to develop a methodology is not easy. That’s four years of research and hiring experts who are not living in Nunavut to come and gather the data in order to develop those methodologies. That’s a difficult task. I don’t see other regions developing the same tool. I can see them using our tool, but whether that kind of tool is only in Kivalliq. Right now, we are the only region that uses it.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Bovey: Thank you for all of this. I’m going to go on a bit of a tangent.
Dr. Hutchinson, you mentioned in response to Senator Coyle’s question about population, about the increased shipping supplies in fuel and the list goes on. We’re all very aware, having been in the North last September when icebreakers had to go help a cruise ship and a sailboat, of issues around supplies not being brought into some of the Northern communities. Were any of the communities you’re working with affected by not getting their annual shipment of supplies last winter?
My second question is about fuel. We heard a lot about diesel fuel. You mentioned carbon. I’d be interested to know if there’s any parallel work going along with yours about what the future fuel source/resource is going to be that will be friendlier to the environment. Is any parallel research going along with that at the same time? I appreciate it’s a tangent, but without that tangent I’m not sure we’re moving forward with any of this.
Mr. Hutchinson: Thank you, Senator Bovey. In response to your first question, the only community I was working with last year was Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet. I’m not aware of any delays because of shipping there.
In terms of climate delays and fuel consumption, I’d like to pass that to Luis. One of the things that we see, and we’ve heard from AEM, are the benefits that hydropower brought north from Manitoba and up the coast of Hudson Bay would bring to these communities. Uninterrupted power supply may be an issue in extreme weather. The mining companies have said this would make many projects economical, that are not currently economical based on diesel, and any one project contributed about 16 per cent of Nunavut’s greenhouse gas emissions. I would think that an ability to tap hydro and bring it north would be valuable.
Luis, maybe you want to speak to that initiative.
Mr. Manzo: Yes, the Kivalliq Inuit Association has been working with the Government of Nunavut, the Government of Manitoba and NTI since the beginning of the alignment. I was the lead in the selection of the alignment for the new Manitoba road. That alignment became the new project, which the federal government funded not too long ago. There was a ceremony in Rankin Inlet for some funding to get the baseline data to establish what the alignment will be between the 50 kilometres.
We’re happy that this initiative for hydro and fibre optics is taking place. We are very encouraged that people working in that are making progress, and that will change. That will change the actual situation of the Arctic, especially in the Kivalliq. That will be a big change, having hydro power.
Senator Bovey: Thank you. I thought that was the case, but I thought, Mr. Chair, it would be good to get it on the record.
The Chair: Yes, and members will recall that we received a presentation from the proponents.
Senator Bovey: Yes. I think it’s important to box the compass and tie these important elements together.
Senator Eaton: I’d like to continue on Senator Bovey’s track. What I find very discouraging — because I’ve grown extremely interested in the North, it’s Canada’s future — is that everything seems to be siloed. You want to do this great environmental monitoring, which seems to be essential. We heard a great presentation about a possible fibre optic line and hydro going to some aspects of the North.
In the Senate Finance Committee, I hear from Innovation Canada that “Oh, they’re doing this here and there,” but there doesn’t seem — and, of course, we know of your food insecurity. You’ve talked to us, Dr. Hutchinson — you’ve reminded us today of not only of food insecurity but that with the fastest-growing population, there’s greater need for diesel and housing; we know in Inuvik and Nunavut the shortage of decent housing.
Nobody seems to have come up with a plan. Among all the Inuit associations in the North, whether it be in Nunavut, Inuvik or anywhere in the North, you get together, do a plan and say to the government, “This is what we need and this is the deadlines we should hit”?
When we live in such a large country as Canada, everything seems to be siloed. You in the University of Manitoba are doing wonderfully fascinating things. I’m sure that there might be somebody at the University of Laval doing equally interesting things, but nobody meets.
Has there ever been talk of getting together with other parts of the North to devise a plan for the federal government that doesn’t seem to be able to do it for itself?
Mr. Manzo: Yes, you are correct. In the area of my expertise, monitoring, two things need to happen, and they are very important to guide any activity. One is the completion of the land-use plan — after being in the works for so many years. Just to get the guidance of what activities can or cannot happen in certain areas in the North. The second thing, in the specific case of monitoring, is that the water authority has to get all that information from us to come up with a policy to guide us in how we’re going to continue collecting that information.
Senator Eaton: Because it’s all very well what you’re doing in the Baker Lake area, but what about areas of Kuujjuaq or up near Iqaluit? It’s so large, but is your information, what you’re doing, being shared or used in other areas across the North?
Mr. Manzo: We work with CIRNAC and Environment and Climate Change Canada. We also work with industry. Everybody is aware of that information. It is difficult to implement because it requires funding.
Senator Eaton: I know.
Mr. Manzo: That’s really the bottom line. When you look at one region and you don’t know if its design will work, you have to do more research to see if it will work in Nunavut and what kind of budget you’re looking at. To me, it’s a federal portfolio. They have to look closely how they will monitor waters in the North, how often and which waters. They cannot just go in there and monitor for the sake of monitoring. You need to have something like the provinces have. They have the guidance or framework, and they have the stations established, hydrometric stations.
It’s so hard to get hydrometric stations in the North. It’s hard to get one or two. To reopen those hydrometric stations is a lot of dollars.
As regional associations, we don’t have that mandate; that’s federal. We just contribute to the machine. But I think with this program, this is one of the best programs in the North today. There’s nothing similar to it.
Senator Eaton: That’s what I’m saying. It would be nice if other areas in the North learned to do what you’re doing in sharing Indigenous knowledge and hard science, and the monitoring was done everywhere. In other words, you’ve started something, and it would be nice if it could spread everywhere in the North.
Mr. Manzo: We’re trying. We’re meeting with the boards and the RIAs to provide presentations to the community and the boards. The Water Board is sitting on our committee. They have all the information first hand. They do their own water storage basin measuring.
That’s how to give us a big picture, and how to negotiate and tackle the funding through the federal government, because we can’t get funding from the federal government. The example is there. The template is there. The pilot project is there. It’s 17 years of research.
We don’t work in silos, as you made a point. The federal government has been in this committee since the beginning — in the Nunavut Water Board. Hutchinson Environmental Sciences has been in this committee. The scientific colleagues from EDM and industry has been at the committee.
As they are frustrating. You know how private sector works, they are go, go, go. They have the budget, they have this. We are struggling just to get funding for one year. If we don’t get it, we do just $50,000 of funding, and we try to manage how to collect that data today. We need to prioritize in the whole scheme which things we need to monitor with that amount of money.
That’s why we’re here today — it’s for you to look at the picture and the evidence that we present, to see how much work is being done and to publicize this work, because that’s the thing. All of this work we submit to the committee is a huge number of years of collection.
You’re right there are other institutions that not apply to the region, or if they don’t want to apply to the region, but that’s very political.
Senator Eaton: No, that’s planning.
The Chair: We’re going to wrap up here. We’re a committee that reports to the federal government. Senator Eaton asked the question that I’d like to just maybe throw out again at you in conclusion. The land claim agreement provides obligations, in this case the federal government, to monitor the environment. There are some strict provisions in article 20 about water.
What do we need to recommend, as a committee, to the federal government to make sure this important obligation and model you’ve developed in involving Indigenous knowledge is respected and applied? What do we need to recommend? What needs to change?
Mr. Manzo: In the first three years probably, allocate one single program to Inuu’tuti — one single program to focus and really monitor that we have the standards required to collect the data — by the time the federal family can apply for core funding, and take over the program under their wing. That needs to happen. It needs to increase the funding in the Iqaluit office, the water resources office, and increase that funding for them to take over what we designed to implement.
We will continue to cooperate with them. We can continue to work with industry in this transition. They require specific allocated funding for that particular project, for the interim funding, and then core funding to be allocated.
The Chair: All right. Mr. Manzo, and your colleagues and partners, thank you very much for this presentation. It’s been very useful for the committee.
(The committee adjourned.)