Transcript
Transcript: Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The View from the Territories
[00:00:00 CSPS animated logo appears.]
[00:00:06 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen. Text on screen: Georgina Lloyd, Assistant Deputy Minister, Northern Affairs Organization, CIRNAC.]
Georgina Lloyd: Good afternoon. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this important discussion about the territories. My name is Georgina Lloyd. I'm the Assistant Deputy Minister at Northern Affairs Organization at Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
[00:00:35 Overlaid text on screen: Opening remarks; Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The view from the Territories.]
Georgina Lloyd: This event today is the 10th in a series. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the land where I'm joining the discussion from today is the National Capital Region, so un-surrendered, unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin. And of course, it's such a great privilege and an honour for us to be always so warmly welcomed by Algonquin peoples when we have such important discussions on this territory where their presence reaches back to time immemorial.
So, it's a great privilege for me to join you from this territory today, and I know a number of you are joining from various parts of the country, and I really do encourage you to just take a moment and recognize and reflect on some of the history and pay respect and acknowledgement for the territory that you're occupying today.
So, I'm pleased to introduce today's event, entitled Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The View from the Territories. Because of their populations and geography and unique constitutional framework, Canada's territories have different experience of federalism from that of the provinces'.
This 10th event in the Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series focuses on the specific challenges and needs of each of Canada's territories, as well as their unique approaches to federalism. Today's speakers will provide an overview of the context and considerations for federalism in Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
First, we'll look at the evolution of Canada's territorial system; its statutory and constitutional foundations; and how the territories have changed over time. We will also consider federalism for Canada's territories as compared with federalism in the United States and Australia. We will then discuss the process of transferring powers from the federal government to the territories, as well as fiscal federalism and the federal transfers to the territories.
Secondly, we'll take a look at the Northwest Territories context: learn about Modern Treaties, cooperative federalism. We'll get a vision of the division of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and finally a description of the Northwest Territories devolution transfer agreement and all those features. Today's participants will deepen their understanding of Modern Treaties and how self-government can be used to shape governance in the three territories.
Before we start our session today, we have the opportunity to have with us Inuk Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton.
[00:03:24 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd and Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton.]
Georgina Lloyd: Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton was born in Cumberland Sound, Nunavut, and then relocated to the community of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, when she was five years old. In the North, her work experience includes working for ten years as a housing manager in Pangnirtung, and as a community social worker, and child protection. Over to you, Elder.
[00:03:48 Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton appears full screen. Text on screen: Inuk Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton, Elder.]
Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton: Thank you for welcoming me to this learning day. Before I say my opening prayer, I want to share a little bit about the qulliq that my people used inside their sod house. We call the <Inuktitut language> as a main source of light, [the] main source of warmth, particularly in the winter months. Where I come from, it can get really, really cold and dark. Or, the higher north you go, the darker it is. So, we do still get a few hours of daylight. It's never totally dark, but it can be pretty dark at an earlier hour than here. So, it also helped the families with the cooking, especially also in the winter months, at the time when they didn't have any Colman stove or anything like that to help with the cooking and warmth.
So, the wick came from the land, two plants mixed together. So, cotton and then a harder texture that is also from the land. And you mix the two together, and that would be the wick. The oil in the centre of the qulliq came from any animal fat, like seal blubber or whale blubber. And it did take a lot of work to do, and because we had really no outside influence in the camp, it was the families, the land, the ocean, the animals. And I have some wonderful memories of that time.
So, I'm lighting the qulliq in honour of my ancestors, which allowed us to survive at a time when we had absolutely no stores, no medical care, nothing like that, just the people themselves and living solely off the land. As a child, I was so fascinated by the flames of the qulliq that my mother would tell stories that she would have to discipline me, I don't know how many times, but I eventually learned that this isn't a toy.
So, with that, I'm also going to read the Maligait, the fundamental laws and beliefs that our people held for generations. So, the Maligait defined how people should live with each other. They also define how people can connect with their environment. Maligait, our foundation of Inuit, <Inuktitut language>, that which Inuit have known for a very long time. They also provide a foundation for our spiritual development.
So, these are the four Maligait, the fundamental laws. Working together for the common good of everyone. Number two, maintaining harmony and balance, which we all can use these values. Number three, respecting all living things. I was told by our elders, particularly the men, because they were the providers, hunters, protectors, that they would always be advised not to get more than what they need as far as for food. And there was a lot more sharing back in the time because there always were people that didn't have a hunter or an elder, so they always got enough to do for the camp. Number four, and I think this is what we all do in our personal lives and in the work that you guys are doing, is continually planning, and preparing for the future. So, I wanted to end with that and say an opening prayer to begin your time together, which I will do in Inuktitut. <Inuktitut language>
Thank you, everyone. Have a good meeting and have a wonderful time off this special season.
[00:10:46 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Elder Evic-Carleton and Nakurmiik from all of us and thank you for starting us off in such a wonderful way.
Elder Reepa Evic-Carleton: Thank you.
Georgina Lloyd: So, as part of our session here today, we're going to be hearing from two fantastic speakers and I'd like to take just a moment to introduce them to you. Jerald Sabin is assistant professor at the School of Public Policy Administration at Carleton University. He's an assistant professor
[00:11:19 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Georgina Lloyd: where he teaches in the Master of Public Policy and Administration program, and the school's graduate program in Indigenous Policy Administration. His research interests include Indigenous settler intergovernmental relations; comparative federalism; and Northern Canadian political development. He has held academic appointments at Bishops University, Western University and holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. Welcome, Jerald.
And as well with us today we have Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox, adjunct professor at Carleton University and principal investigator, Modern Treaties Implementation Research Project. Stephanie is based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and has 20 years of experience working for Indigenous peoples' organizations in the Northwest Territories on political and community development, including treaty negotiations, implementation, and the development of public governance institutions in NWT. Thanks to both of you for joining us today.
[00:12:30 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: In terms of format, each guest is going to provide a short presentation and we'll follow that with a panel discussion and then have a question-and-answer period with the audience. For the question-and-answer period, you are welcome to send questions in the language of your choice by clicking the raised hand icon situated at the top right corner of your screen, and we'll try to get to as many questions as time will permit.
So, with that, I invite Jerald to get us started with a presentation. Over to you, Jerald.
[00:12:59 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen. Text on screen: Jerald Sabin, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: Great, thank you so much, and thank you to all of you who are attending today and for the opportunity to share my research and perspectives with you.
I've been working and researching in the territories for over 15 years, and in that time, I've come to understand the territories as a mirror that reflects Canadian political history, the country's colonial past, as well as its present, and, in the case of this talk, the development and function of its federal system.
So, in this presentation, I'd like to leave you with three takeaways.
[00:13:37 Split screen: Dr. Jerald Sabin, and slide. Text on slide: Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The View from the Northwest Territories.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: The first is a clear definition of what territories are and the role they play in the federal systems of settler states, such as Canada, the United States, and Australia. Second, I'd like to leave you with an understanding of the political development of the territorial governments of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.
[00:14:00 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: And then finally, I'd like to explore three contemporary policy areas where I think that paying attention to the territories is instructive and can give us insights into some of the contemporary challenges that Canada is facing, in particular, that the federal government is engaged with.
So, there are two major approaches to understanding Northern politics in history. My talk will focus on the development of non-Indigenous and settler institutions in northwestern Canada. That should not be understood, however, as meaning that Indigenous peoples and their governments were non-participants in this story. By contrast, Indigenous peoples resisted the imposition of the settler state and endured throughout the history I'm sharing with you today. And in the Q and A, I'd be happy to talk about some of those moments. And I know Dr. Irlebacher-Fox's presentation will engage in those many important narratives and stories that have brought us to this contemporary moment.
So, one question that I hear all the time is, what is a territory? It is something that not many Canadians, I think, are familiar with. They know there are provinces and territories. They hear people say that all the time. But what a territory actually is seems to be a bit elusive. So, I define territories this way. I think there's three components to think of.
The first is that they're sub-national federal possessions, so they belong to a federal government. The second is that they have circumscribed self-government. It means that their ability to be self-governing is constrained constitutionally, and jurisdictionally. The third is that there is limited access to full constitutional membership in their respective federations, so that they are constitutionally contemplated, but not fully entrenched governments within the constitutional frameworks of their respective federations.
So, what does this mean? If we take the example of Yukon, section 146 of the Constitution Act 1867 grants the federal government the power to admit colonies and other lands into the federation and to provide for their governance and administration. And that's the first sort of constitutional hook within Canada's constitutional framework that enables the federal government, historically and today, to provide for the governance and administration of what is today called Yukon.
Yukon was created through ordinary federal legislation, the Yukon Act, rather than being empowered by the Canadian constitution, like the ten provinces whose powers are outlined in section 92 of the Constitution Act 1867. So, this – and hopefully we'll get an opportunity to talk about this later – places them in a very interesting position vis-à-vis contemporary Indigenous governments, many of whom are constitutionally entrenched and therefore have more legal heft in Canada's federal system than at least two of the three territories, Nunavut being a special case. And Yukon was not granted full responsible government until 1979 and did not receive the same set of jurisdictional powers as the provinces until its final Devolution Agreement in 2003.
So, while today all three territories, from a governance standpoint, have a look and feel that reflects the practices of the Westminster Parliamentary Systems at the federal and provincial levels, there's some key legal and constitutional differences that colour their relationship to the broader federation, and the ways in which they're financed and governed.
And then finally, the pathway to province-hood, should that be desired, is also constrained. So, while the federal government has the power to admit new provinces through the Constitution Act 1871 – I'm sure many of you didn't even know there was a Constitution Act 1871 – the political, economic and policy impediments to that decision seem greater than ever. The narrative arc of territories in the North American context has been that they've started in a sort of subordinate or statutorily driven jurisdictional place, and then have worked their way through demographic benchmarks and political development benchmarks to gaining full status within their respective federations. So, in the case of the United States becoming states, in the case of Canada becoming provinces, like Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Obviously, I'm not here to speak for the federal government, I'm speaking to people who work for the federal government. But to the best of an observer's understanding, the pathway to province-hood for these three territories is quite limited, in part because of their demographics, geographic remoteness, and then the costs: the high cost and the absence of own source revenues that would sustain the transition to province-hood. But certainly, that's something that I think needs to be discussed, and the Indigenous partners in all three territories will have definitive thoughts on that particular and potential transition.
But this definition only tells part of the story. To understand fully what territories are, we have to go back to their beginnings. In the Canadian case, territorial possession occurred in 1670, when English sovereignty was extended over parts of northwestern Canada with the granting of the Hudson's Bay Company charter over Rupert's Land. And jurisdictionally, the territorial story actually starts in what would become the United States. So, we get this sort of possession piece on the part of the English crown in the 1670s, but it's not until the 1780s that the system for actually governing that area and incorporating it into newly formed countries in North America was developed.
So, that story starts with the Royal Proclamation in 1763. The Royal Proclamation is known for many things. It's known predominantly for setting out the relationship between English and French Canadians, or the role of French Canadians in the fabric of British North America. But a large portion of that document was about the relationship between the English crown and Indigenous peoples. And one of the stipulations was that settlers in the 13 american colonies would not pass the Appalachian Mountains and begin incursions into Indigenous peoples' lands on the prairies. And that was important to the English crown because they didn't have the resources to garrison those areas and to fight wars of conquest in the American interior. And this turned out to be a real source of grievance for the American colonies and was one of the drivers of the American Revolution.
Now, the American Revolution saw the independence of the United States from the English colonial system. And this really coloured the way in which the founding fathers thought about incorporating new land into their federation. First, they adopted a system of federalism that reflected Haudenosaunee approaches to governance and confederacies. And then they had to think about a system for incorporating land across the Appalachians into their new state.
And they could not call them colonies. They had just fought a war of independence against the English colonial system, so they needed new nomenclature to assist them in the incorporation of these lands. And so, they went with the word territory. Now, there's a long etymological history that I won't get into here of where the word territory comes from, but it's long been associated with the incorporation of hinterlands into polities or jurisdictions, and that's what was done here.
So, to facilitate the expansion of their empire of liberty, the Americans developed a system of territorial expansion that was driven by benchmarks related to the numbers of free settlers that were in the territories. When they reached certain benchmarks, they could then become states, and those states would enter into American federalism on an equal basis with the original 13 american states.
These were called organized incorporated territories, and they were incorporated because they would become part of, and were part of, the United States. So, people who lived in the incorporated territories were citizens, and they had the same kinds of political rights and responsibilities as settlers in the original 13 states. The first of these territories was the Northwest Territory, which eventually became Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota.
And this system was adopted across the continental United States for two purposes. One, it provided an orderly way to incorporate newly acquired lands into the United States. And second, it provided a mechanism to develop republican political systems that reflected the American constitutional system. So, in all, 32 american states began their jurisdictional life as territories.
Now, the United States still has territories, but these are what are called organized unincorporated territories. Their populations are largely Indigenous and racialized, and they're predominantly overseas. So, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands. And they're held outside of the American constitutional system. They have varying political rights and varying access to American citizenship. This is not a practice that has been reflected in Canada, but that first system that organized incorporated territories was the system that was adopted by the fathers of Confederation when they were trying to figure out Canada's federal framework, and how Canada would expand into the northwest.
So, acquiring Rupert's Land in the northwestern territories, which is today most of northwestern Canada, except for British Columbia, was a key part of the Confederation compromise. So, something that the political class of Upper Canada or Ontario really wanted because it would provide access to markets for their manufactured goods. So, when people moved out west, they would buy manufactured goods on their way in Ontario and carry on. But it also provided an outlet for the excess agricultural population in Upper Canada who were running out of farmland to farm and needed new lands to begin farming. So, the federal government, post 1867, negotiated the acquisition of Rupert's Land in the northwestern territories, and provided for their governance, first in 1869 and then through the Manitoba Act.
And one of the significant differences with the American system of territorial governance was that the Canadian system of territorial government was expressly for the purposes of the Dominion. So, agricultural development; the exploitation and extraction of non-renewable resources; the development of mining and resource sectors; was always key to the logic behind investing in the development of governments in western Canada. And that is key not only because it explains a lot of the federal government's approach to western political development, but it also explains a lot about our politics today and resources being a cornerstone of the conversation between east and west, the federal government, and western provinces. And then also, within the Northern Territories, why so much of the conversation and debate has been about non-renewable resource extraction and development.
So, out of this system, we see the development of, first Alberta and Saskatchewan as provinces in 1905, and the landmass of Manitoba being increased. Today, territories are used in a number of federal systems, including the United States, Australia, India and Canada.
So, this brings me to the development of Canada's northern territories. And I'll only talk about this briefly because it will come out, I know, in our conversation. So, you have this rump that's left after the creation of the southern provinces. So, I'll start with the Northwest Territories. It was created in 1870. Its government was largely dormant between 1905 and 1921 until oil was discovered at Norman Wells. And then the federal government awoke the Government of the Northwest Territories, which lived inside what is now CIRNAC, but at the time had various different names, it was the Department of the Interior at the time. And eventually started moving towards, through both jurisdictional devolution and political development, granting increased autonomy to the settler residents, predominantly of the Northwest Territories.
The first major signpost of this was the transfer of the Government of the Northwest Territories from Ottawa, where the government was located from 1905 to 1967, to Yellowknife in September 1967. Over the next 20 years, more political autonomy was granted to the Northwest Territories, and in 1986, it was granted full responsible government.
It operates under a system of consensus government, which means it operates without political parties. This is an accepted alternative within the Westminster Parliamentary System. It's thought and sometimes said to be reflective of Indigenous practice. But there is a debate within the political science literature on whether or not it also just reflected the fact that the GNWT was a branch of the Government of Canada, and so having a partisan government within the Government of Canada that may have a different partisan flavour might be more disruptive than it would be helpful. And then finally, there was the devolution of control over Crown lands and non-renewable resources in 2014.
Yukon – I see that I have a couple minutes left – Yukon developed out of the Klondike gold rush and was created in 1898 out of a dispute between the federal government and the old Government of the Northwest Territories, whose capital was Regina at the time, over who would collect taxes on liquor imports. I guess it was thought to be sufficiently lucrative, and so the federal government wanted to collect those resources themselves and so carved out the Yukon from the Northwest Territories in order to gain those resources, presumably for the purposes of the Dominion.
After the gold rush, there was a decline in population and that government, while it continued to exist, was very small. Starting in the 1950s, in the post-war period and the construction of the Alaska highway, the population started to increase in Yukon, and the settler government was reinvigorated. Political parties were introduced in 1976, and responsible government was established in 1979. And it was the earliest of the three territories to gain control over its crown lands and natural resources.
Finally, Nunavut was created in 1999 out of the Nunavut Lands Claim Agreement. I think the thing I want to leave you with, in discussing Nunavut, is that there is some conversation about the status of Nunavut, as it's not an Indigenous government, it's a public government, but it's a public government derived from a Modern Treaty process. And so, there continues to be a live debate about whether or not Nunavut is the right vehicle for Inuit self-determination. But it operates in a similar line to the Government of the Northwest Territories, using a consensus system without political parties, and has yet to see control over natural resources devolved to the territory.
I'll take my last minute to tell you briefly about three contemporary issues that I think should be on the radar of anyone interested in the territories. The first, oddly, is a southern Canadian story, and this one was inspired by my own experience of the occupation of downtown Ottawa. It had me thinking about how Ottawa sits in the province of Ontario. Whereas in most other federations, national capitals are actually territories, or districts in the case of the United States. This has its drawbacks. Often, as I said, the self-governance of territories is circumscribed and can subject to the whims of a federal government. On the other hand, it gives greater tools to a federal government to be able to direct the security, for example, and control within its own national capital.
The second issue is climate change and the 2023 wildfires. It is absolutely unprecedented to have a capital evacuated so completely. Every provincial capital and the other territorial capitals should be thinking about what happened in Yellowknife this year and what it means to have a government decamp, a legislative assembly be evacuated to Inuvik, and to have its cabinet and Premier governing from outside of its own jurisdiction, because it wasn't safe for it to be there.
So, the continuity of government is something I didn't see a lot of people talking about. Obviously, it was an emergency. People needed to be taken care of. But the continuity of government is so important, and the territories are on the leading edge of climate change, and this is going to become an increasing issue. So, if I was in Victoria, or Charlottetown, or Halifax, I would be thinking about what it means to evacuate your capital and what that would look like. And then finally, and this would be a great segue to Dr. Irlebacher-Fox's talk, is that the territories are on the leading edge of Indigenous government. We've seen Indigenous governments in the territories since the mid 1990s, and they have so much to teach the rest of Canada about what government can look like, [and] the possibilities that exist for Indigenous self-determination. And it is a very hopeful story with within the Canadian federal fabric and system that we have such flexibility and are able to engage in these kinds of innovations so peacefully, and in a way that can affirm the rights and aspirations of Indigenous peoples.
So, thank you very much for your time.
[00:36:31 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd and Dr. Jerald Sabin.]
Georgina Lloyd: Thank you so much, Dr. Sabin. This is such a great way to set the conversation. Really rich information. Really appreciate that.
[00:36:43 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: And I will move now to Dr. Irlebacher-Fox to provide us with her presentation. Over to you.
[00:36:52 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen. Text on screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox, Adjunct Professor, Carleton University.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, from here on Chief Drygeese territory of the Yellowknives Dene in Sambaa K'e, or Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, also the home to the North Slave Métis, and to the many surrounding Indigenous Nations in this territory.
As a bit of background, I was born in Ontario, but moved to Inuvik with my family when I was in primary school. And so, I spent my formative years in Inuvik, graduated from high school there. And then eventually, I think because part of what was happening all around me at the time, that was in the mid to late 80s, lots of things happening with land claims; with oil and gas; seeing the army [have] such a huge presence and then pulling out, having big economic impacts on the town. Same with oil and gas, that boom and bust economy. So, it got me very interested in politics. And when I was in high school, we learned nothing about the land claims, Indigenous rights, everything that was going on around us.
After I did a master's degree, I moved back to Inuvik with my husband, who had just graduated from law school at the time, and he was working for the Gwich'in Tribal Council, and I got a job working on the self-government negotiations that at that time was jointly being negotiated by the Inuvialuit and the Gwich'in.
That experience, what I thought would be about empowerment and Indigenous people implementing their rights and overcoming colonization impacts turned out to be a process that was very much weighted in favour of government. And at the time, no one was talking about, for example, the residential school, but everyone in the communities was talking to us as the negotiating team about that. And the big message we were getting about our mandate was, "Get government out of our lives. They've done so much damage."
So, when we would go to the negotiating table, Canada would say things like, "That's all in the past. We're not responsible for that anymore. We weren't responsible when that happened." So, I went away to Cambridge University in England to really think about those things. And I tried to come up with a language in policy about how to talk about that at the negotiating table. And I have to say, through the 2000s, particularly the early 2000s, those were really hard conversations that Canada was not open to.
So, I'm always kind of amazed when I'm giving these talks, or talking with students, or talking about the literature in political science, that we now have a language for that. We have a government that has significantly changed its policies. We've come so far.
I remember being at negotiating tables in the early 2000s, just after finishing my PhD. I decided not to go into academia, but to continue working with Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories. And I remember officials from both GNWT and Canada openly laughing at us if we use the word Indigenous, or if we talked about rights. And now here we are, 25 years later, talking about the UN Declaration. And what we're seeing in the Northwest Territories is, Modern Treaties have been negotiated, are in negotiation along with self-government agreements, and those are really changing the landscape of governance. And I think we're at a very critical point in the territory where we need to figure out what is governance going to look like, with respect to a territorial government developed, as my friend Dr. Sabin was talking about, it's created through federal legislation. It doesn't have constitutional protection of the things that it can do, of the authorities that it has.
But the Indigenous governments do. They have constitutionally protected treaties, rights to lands and resources, in a sense, far more than the Government of the Northwest Territories has. Also, access to money, to funding. There are direct lines now between Canada and Indigenous governments. There's new money in the tens of millions of dollars for Indigenous governments to do things, not only that GNWT has been doing, but to do things that no government has ever done. That governments have neglected to do; that governments haven't done well.
And GNWT cannot get that money, the Government of the Northwest Territories, they cannot access that money. And they're in a debt situation and a fiscal situation and an economic situation now where they have to partner with Indigenous governments. They want better housing; they want better health. Indigenous rights are the pathway to funding better governance in the Northwest Territories and changing the material conditions of all people in the Northwest Territories.
[00:42:12 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox, and slide. Text on slide: Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The View from the Northwest Territories; Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox, PhD; Fox Consulting Ltd., Yellowknife, NT.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: So, my presentation today looks mainly at that.
[00:42:15 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: I spend most of my time now working for Indigenous governments, as I have for actually almost 30 years, not just 20 years, I'm embarrassed to say. I'm getting a lot older, thinking a lot about mentoring people lately. But over that time, I've seen a lot of change.
So, I just want to start by talking about the context of the NWT. With respect to the historic treaties that are operative in the Northwest Territories, there's Treaty 8 and Treaty 11. Like every treaty signed between Canada and Indigenous peoples, or formerly the Crown and Indigenous peoples in Canada. The catalysts for these are always, always about access to land [and] to resources. Land for settlement exploitation, resources for exploitation. Whether it was the gold rush; trappers; hunters coming into the Northwest Territories; the oil in the proven area in Norman Wells, treaties were always about securing Canada's rights, as per under the 1870 Northwest Territory Order, dealing with the aboriginal rights of the original inhabitants.
So, if we look at the Northwest Territories, it has a number of distinguishing features with respect to Modern Treaties, but also with respect to the territorial government itself.
Dr. Sabin has covered the consensus government aspect. We just had an election here. There is a new Premier, a Premier elected from within the legislative assembly, along with his cabinet. This is a territory where over 50% of the population here are Indigenous people, so very different from the provinces. And in addition to that demographic reality, what we also see here are Modern Treaties.
So, while Canada's comprehensive land claim policy always had a caveat that comprehensive land claims could only be negotiated in areas where there were no historic treaties, an exception was made for the Northwest Territories. And that relates in part to a couple of court cases. One with the Nisga'a, of course, and another called the Paulette case, or Re Paulette, where there was a proposal to put a gas pipeline down the Mackenzie valley of the Northwest Territories, and the Dene objected. They said they had signed these treaties where Canada had promised certain rights to them, and they didn't release and surrender their ownership of the land.
So, while Judge Morrow found, at first, in favour of the Dene, and that there was this very vibrant oral history among the Dene, that rights had not been released. Eventually that was overturned on a technicality, but nevertheless, in view of the findings in that court case and with the case with the Nisga'a in BC, Canada decided to sit in down with the Dene and later the Métis, who negotiated together as well as the Inuvialuit, and negotiate rights.
So, there were a series of processes that went on in the 1970s. Initially, the Dene and the Inuvialuit started the negotiations together. The Inuvialuit, fairly early, broke off and they tried to work with the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut, at the time, TFN, and eventually they broke away from that larger group, which went on to focus on the Nunavut land claim, with the Inuvialuit negotiating their own agreement through COPE, the Council for Original People's Entitlement. And the Dene joined with the Métis later in the 1970s to negotiate what was called the Umbrella Final Agreement, similar to what was in the Yukon.
In 1990, that process fell apart and it was actually Canada that walked away from the table. There was an agreement in principle on the table with the Dene and Métis, and Canada said, "Look, take this to get approval as an agreement in principle, and then we can continue."
And there was disagreement among a number of regions about accepting that agreement in principle. Two of the Dene regions walked out, and after that there was then a movement to negotiate at the time what were known as regional claims. Those claims were modelled on that original umbrella agreement. And so, the result of that was the negotiation of the Gwich'in and the Sahtu claims, which were reached in the early 1990s. The Inuvialuit settled their claim earlier, in the early 1980s.
One interesting thing about Canada's comprehensive land claim policy at the time, was that Canada would not negotiate what was called political self-determination. So, in the late 1980s, they started to talk about it, but these weren't included. The only reference to political self-determination, or what then became known as self-government, are found in chapter 5 and appendix B of the Gwich'in and the Sahtu land claims. So, along with the Inuvialuit, these two land claims are similar to what are known as the Older Modern Treaties.
The Tlicho Agreement is different in that while they were negotiating the Tlicho Agreement in 1995, Canada came out with an inherent right policy and said, we can include self-government within a land claim, which is what the Tlicho negotiated, reaching their own agreement in the early 2000s.
So, what we see in the Northwest Territories is there are four land claims. There are two unsettled areas, the Akaitcho and the Dehcho areas, which are currently in negotiations, and Akaitcho is close. They almost have an agreement in principle. And I'm aware that the Dehcho agreement has made significant process.
[00:49:12 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: So, it's really important context that the land claims we see, the Modern Treaties, as they're called, in the Northwest Territories today were negotiated over about 30 years. For the Modern Treaties, the Gwich'in, the Inuvialuit, and the Sahtu, that don't include self-government or political self-determination, all the Indigenous governments or organizations that have authorities over those agreements, those Modern Treaties, are negotiating self-government.
And an interesting thing is that whereas the Gwich'in and the Inuvialuit have chosen to negotiate self-government regionally, the Sahtu is very different. Their Modern Treaty is very different. Their negotiation of self-government is very different. They are de-centralized. They don't have a big regional Modern Treaty organization like the Inuvialuit or the Gwich'in. You walk into the Sahtu secretariat offices, there are five or six people working there. You walk into the Inuvialuit regional corporation offices, they have over 100 people. And the Gwich'in, I think they have dozens of people working for them. So, all of these Modern Treaties are very different.
Then what we see in 2014 is the Government of the Northwest Territories negotiated what is often colloquially referred to in the Northwest Territories as their own land claim, also known as the Devolution Agreement. And in that agreement, I'll talk about that a bit more later, but really, that was about devolving control of lands, waters, and resources from the federal government to the Government of the Northwest Territories.
I think another important development that just happened recently, after we all returned from the wildfire evacuations in September, is the Legislative Assembly passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Implementation Act. Very similar to the federal act, somewhat similar to the legislation, as well, in the province of British Columbia. Basically, that legislation will see Indigenous governments and the GNWT working together to review all their legislation and policies and adjust those to reflect the implementation of Indigenous people's rights.
So, when we're talking about Modern Treaties and cooperative federalism, and sorry, we should probably be on the third slide. Sorry, I've got my presentation open in front of me. I'm not really looking at the screen. Sorry, Genevieve.
[00:52:09 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: So, I have worked in most regions of the Northwest Territories. I've worked with the Inuvialuit, with the Gwich'in, with the Métis and the Dehcho. I've worked with the Tlicho Government, not on land claim implementation, but on some programs and services. And I've worked with a number of Sahtu communities. And through all my career, I've worked mainly on negotiating self-government agreements, but also implementing land claims within communities and regions.
[00:52:46 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: Modern Treaties in the Northwest Territories, because of the demographics, result in Indigenous peoples and Indigenous governments really holding a balance of power in the Northwest Territories. And what I've just described to you with all these different treaties have resulted in this critical mass where we have a number of regions at the regional level, at community levels, implementing comprehensive land claim and self-government agreements, and authorities.
Shout out to the federal government, I think another really important aspect of this is that Canada has started to get serious in the last few years about putting resources into actually implementing Modern Treaties and self-government based on needs. So, we have processes like the Collaborative Fiscal Policy Process with self-governing Indigenous governments. There's a process with the older Modern Treaties without self-government to look at how to resource implementing those treaties. So, that has made a big difference. You can't implement without resources. What this has resulted in is a lot of opportunity, a lot of synergies for cooperation in various respects between Canada and Indigenous governments. But also, between Indigenous governments and the Government of the Northwest Territories.
The thing about Modern Treaty Holders is that they are located in communities. They are in places like Inuvik, in Colville Lake, in Délı̨nę. They have presence in communities where there is almost no federal presence, or maybe the RCMP officers, and that [might] be it. And a very slim presence of the Government of the Northwest Territory. So, a nursing station, for example, or an office of a regional service centre. But most of the programs and services that people care about, that affect their everyday lives, local services and other aspects, those are provided by Indigenous governments and in a lot of cases, by Modern Treaty Holders.
The other thing is that Modern Treaty Holders and self-governing Indigenous governments are seen as legitimate. They are seen as having legitimacy for the authority to do things, to make decisions in the community. And when people want government services, they want it from their own government. They don't necessarily want it delivered by public governments, non-Indigenous governments, Canada or GNWT, because there are always concerns, not only about the context of colonial impacts that continue and colonial policies that continue, but also a really important sense that Indigenous governments can provide culturally safe programs and services in ways that other governments simply cannot. So, Indigenous governments and Modern Treaty Holders are in a position to enhance or improve what other governments might provide.
I also just want to make the point that land claim organizations, self-governing Indigenous governments, these may provide municipal type services, but they provide a lot of services and provide services in ways that public governments, municipalities, cannot. I did some research a few years ago with the graduate students. What we found is that when Indigenous governments, Modern Treaty Holders, set up their governments, they spent significant resources focused on healing; focused on recovering from colonial policies; building capacity that is intended to overcome the deficits created by colonization. So, a lot of what Modern Treaty Holders, Indigenous governments have to do is try to build back up. To maintain, to restore culture and language, to further develop that. To build strength within their communities in ways that make sense to communities.
They're also taking on authorities that neither GNWT nor Canada really ever paid attention to. And in ways, couldn't pay attention to. They simply wouldn't have known how to do some of the things that Modern Treaty Holders and Indigenous governments are called on to do. Next slide.
[00:57:35 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: So, I was asked to speak briefly about the division of the NWT and Nunavut. So, of course, the creation of a new territory was the last sort of bite that was taken over the original Northwest Territories, which covered most of western Canada at one point. So, the division also was connected with the comprehensive land claim negotiating processes that were happening in the 70s.
So, all Indigenous Nations in the Northwest Territories at the time, and at that time that would have included the Inuit of what's now Nunavut, were negotiating their rights with Canada. And there was a lot of dissatisfaction around – the Northwest Territories was a huge territory. It covered all the eastern Arctic, which had so many unique needs: Inuit culture being so different; geography; resources; climate; so many differences. So, there was a real push on the part of Inuit to have that recognition, to have a government for a territory where Inuit were the majority over their lands, Nunavut.
So, in 1982, a plebiscite was held in the Northwest Territories, and about 57% of residents voted in favour of division of the Northwest Territories. So, Nunavut came into existence in 1999. And throughout the 1970s and 80s, the boundary between the two territories was negotiated really in part through the land claim processes that were going on with the Dene, the Métis, the Inuit, the Inuvialuit. So, there were a lot of connections between the negotiation of those Modern Treaties at the time and the division of the Northwest Territories into what's now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
So, this slide talks a little bit and gives a bit of an overview of the new government of Nunavut, of its territory, of its focus. And Dr. Sabin mentioned that there is debate over whether this is Inuit self-government. It is a public government. It administers all people in Nunavut. There are no political representation guarantees within the Government of Nunavut. And Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has incorporated, has talked about initiating a self-government agreement between itself and Canada on behalf of Inuit. So, I'm not sure of the status of that right now, but certainly that's something to watch to see how that might play out in the coming years.
Has devolution made a difference in the Northwest Territories? So, again, I think the Devolution Agreement, it's important to understand it within this context of the Modern Treaties. In the Northwest Territories, it is referred to as the GNWT's land claim. Again, it's an agreement.
It's interesting because the process at the time there was sporadic involvement from Indigenous governments. I think that's all I will say about that. I was involved in sort of a junior role at the time. I was just starting out in my career working for one of the Sahtu communities that was involved in the discussions through the aboriginal summit. There were other processes.
This was a deal that would see the GNWT Minister having a final say with respect to a lot of the co-management structures, and co-management decision making that was set up through the Gwich'in and Sahtu land claims that are under the MVRMA. And then of course, the co-management body set up under the Inuvialuit final agreement, and under the Tlicho agreement as well, which was negotiated by the time the Devolution Agreement was finalized in 2014.
Five regions signed on to the Devolution Agreement, some under duress. I can say they were told things like, the train has left the station, either be a part of it or lose out. The Dehcho and the Akaitcho areas did not sign on to devolution. A couple of communities from south of the lake, as we call it, have signed on individually, but those two regions still have not.
So, really, this agreement is about providing the commissioner of the Northwest Territories with the administration and control of public lands and rights. And rights in respect of waters. There were a number of carve outs, so Canada still very much has its hands in with respect to fisheries; the offshore oil and gas; the Norman Wells proven area. What was important about this agreement for Indigenous governments and Modern Treaty Holders is that their rights are recognized and protected within this. And the agreement is very careful to say the Government of the Northwest Territories is not gaining any new authorities over Indigenous governments, Indigenous Modern Treaty Holders, or Indigenous rights.
A couple of interesting features. At the time, the Government of the Northwest Territories accepted a deal that they had initially rejected. A lot of people think the transfer of resources was not enough. There's a sharing of resource royalties, and also the funding that was provided by Canada, none of this was tied to any kind of sharing agreement or formula financing agreement similar to the kind that you would see in the provinces. And that was how the Government of Canada operated 15, 10, 20 years ago, where they would just decide on a number and that would be it. And I think that's certainly the situation that happened with the Devolution Agreement.
How has that changed things in the Northwest Territories? In some ways, significantly. In other ways, not so much. I think there's also a lot of debate about that.
[01:04:32 Split screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox and slide, as described.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: But moving to the last slide, strengthening the federation, I think there are a number of issues that are on the horizon. Both for the federal government, certainly for federal bureaucrats that may have responsibilities with respect to Modern Treaties or governance programs and services in the North. One of the issues we see is that the Government of the Northwest Territories is governing over a vast land area. It has additional authorities as a result of devolution. It has additional responsibilities as a result of all of the Modern Treaties and self-government agreements.
So, there's been this debate in the Northwest Territories where there's one view that says, "Oh, the GNWT is going to eventually just wither away as all of these Modern Treaties are negotiated and self-government agreements." Working for Indigenous governments for the last 30 years, I am quite confident that that will not happen at all. In fact, we see the exact opposite. We see a number of different cooperative governance mechanisms popping up. At the federal level, direct with self-governing Indigenous governments and Modern Treaty Holders at the territorial level.
So, for example, the Modern Treaty Implementation Policy has spawned the Intergovernmental Forum, the Policy Circle, various other mechanisms. What we see in the Northwest Territories is there's the Intergovernmental Council, which flows from the Devolution Agreement. Modern Treaty Holders in the GNWT have to sit together and develop legislation. They can't not cooperate. Same with Modern Treaties. If Canada's implementing those, or self-government agreements, they have to sit with Indigenous governments and talk about that.
So, I think what we're seeing is a lot of fragmented, one off working together as a result of Modern Treaties and self-government, the Government of the Northwest Territories being a territory, not having constitutionally protected powers, and the federal government always being in the picture, so it's made for complicated, fragmented governance. And I think we're at a point where we have to think about, how do we bring all of those different things together.
As Dr. Sabin pointed out, I think the last point I'll make, we really need to think about Modern Treaty Holders, the Government of the Northwest Territories in Canada and that relationship with respect to climate change and governance infrastructure. Can we really have cooperative governance if the Territories doesn't have the infrastructure it needs to function? And if we don't have the mechanisms where those decisions are being made in a cooperative way?
So, I'll leave it there, grab a drink of water, and turn it back over to the moderator.
[01:07:38 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Irlebacher-Fox. This is a really great conversation. I often think in my day-to-day work, that there are so many lessons that the North provides for the rest of Canada. And I think the two of you have been able to really paint that picture for listeners today. So, just a huge thanks for the presentations and how rich the information has been shared.
What I might do is, in terms of the panel session, is jump right in.
[01:08:13 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox. Text on screen: Panel discussion; Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The view from the Territories.]
Georgina Lloyd: So, we're going to have a little bit of a panel session now and then follow it with a question and answer with the audience. So, just a reminder, after the panel discussion, if you'd like to ask a question, please don't hesitate to submit a question by clicking the raised hand icon in the upper right corner of your screen. And while we're waiting for those questions to come in, I have some to kick off the panel session.
[01:08:36 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: So, what I might do is I'll put out a question here and see who might want to jump in and respond to it.
[01:08:43 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Georgina Lloyd: Thinking about the territories, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are places I'd say very few Canadians have had a chance to experience, have had a chance to visit. And we heard even today that [we] know very little about them. We haven't learned – the education system hasn't kind of really shone a spotlight here.
Can you tell us what makes these spaces distinct and what kind of features, geographically, historically and politically, that you would share from your perspectives and experience?
Dr. Jerald Sabin: Stephanie, you live there, but I guess I'll say very briefly that certainly the proportion of Indigenous peoples who call the North home,
[01:09:36 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen. Text on screen: Jerald Sabin, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: in comparison to southern Canada, is one of the most distinctive features. Even in Yukon, where it's about a quarter of the population. The political culture is inflected by this fact. As we've been discussing, the institutional structure of the territories reflects now – it didn't – but it does now reflect this fact.
I heard of an interview with the new Premier of the NWT on the radio last week, and the interviewer asked him about, "Will climate change mean that you have to move Indigenous communities? Or you'd be asking Indigenous communities to move?" And he got quite mad, actually. You could hear the blood coming up in his response, saying,
[01:10:34 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: "This country has spent many years telling Indigenous peoples where they will live and where they will go, and we're not going to do that because this is their home since time immemorial." So, that stewardship relationship that infuses both Indigenous governments but also then the territorial governments because, at least in the NWT and Nunavut,
[01:10:56 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: the majority of the MLA's are also Indigenous, is, I think, one of the distinct features [of] northern government in Canada, is that perspective.
[01:11:10 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: Yes, I would agree with that. I think for myself, and I think a lot of us are thinking about this now, is after the experience of the wildfires this summer, but also south of the lake, there have been floods for the past couple of years. I think a distinctive feature is vulnerability, the infrastructure vulnerability.
[01:11:28 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen. Text on screen: Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox, Adjunct Professor, Carleton University.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: And what we saw this summer – I was evacuated from Yellowknife, and during that evacuation I spent my time working with the community of Délı̨nę, who had been significantly impacted by the evacuation of Yellowknife. And I think it made us all realize that Indigenous governments need to be far more involved in emergency management. We have one highway out of the territory from the south. The Sahtu has no highway at all, so it would be an airlift from the Sahtu. But also, planes stopped flying. They were all redirected to fighting the fires.
So, some communities were not getting food. Tlicho region, Colville Lake, its food shipment got lost. They didn't have a food shipment for almost two weeks. So, there were infrastructure, supply chain, transportation chain. There were low water levels in the Sahtu, and I think some of you last week may have seen news story how there's no aviation fuel, there's no stockpile in the Sahtu. The airlines cannot fly as they have, creating yet another crisis coming into January, usually the coldest time of the year. And government saying, don't worry, the ice roads are going in, but it's warm. The ice isn't forming as quickly as it was.
[01:12:57 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: The community of Délı̨nę is asking all governments to move its ice road off of Great Bear Lake. They had a tanker go through several years ago. They're worried about people driving on that ice. They need to get that road onto land.
So, the vulnerability of our infrastructure, the vulnerability to climate crisis and the weather, which all we can predict is that it's unpredictable. And I think that's starting to shape a lot.
[01:13:33 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: I think it's moving people away from ideological stances to more pragmatic stances. I know it has made the newly elected MLA's think about, we need to, as GNWT, go hand-in-hand with Indigenous governments to Ottawa, and together tell Ottawa what we need and hopefully strengthen the appeals for Canada to invest.
It's very clear that there has been underinvestment in all of the systems. So, if we look at education system, the health system. We know, for example, right now the GNWT is paying with its own money for a deficit, a difference between the non-insured health benefits costs that it covers, and what Canada will reimburse it for. It's incomprehensible that that's been going on for years. There's still no agreement with Canada. And so, that money that's supporting that deficit, it is taken out of our health system, the health system for everybody, including small communities.
So, I think that vulnerability to climate, and the vulnerability of the infrastructure that's here is going to be huge. And it affected all our lives this summer, every person in the Northwest Territories. Thanks.
[01:14:55 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Georgina Lloyd: Thank you. And it's a good segue into the question I wanted to ask next, which is really about these crises.
[01:15:00 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen. Text on screen: Georgina Lloyd, Assistant Deputy Minister, Northern Affairs Organization, CIRNAC.]
Georgina Lloyd: We're seeing very different events unfold across the North than we have in the past and with the projections and the models for climate change.
I'm wondering, some of your perspectives on how the territories have responded to modern crises like, I would say, the pandemic, Covid-19; the wildfire season; the flooding season; and anything else you might want to share.
[01:15:27 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: I'll just say briefly in terms of Covid-19. On the one hand, the territories performed very well, but in part it was because they were able to seal their borders for so long
[01:15:42 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen. Text on screen: Jerald Sabin, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: and to have pretty robust quarantining policies that weren't as available in other parts of Canada. But in part that reflects again, this vulnerability. There isn't the hospital capacity in most of the territorial North to be able to handle a pandemic, like we saw with Covid-19. And certainly, in places like Nunavut, where most non-acute health care, like long-term chronic illnesses; elder care; dementia; even childbirth, maternal health, is dealt with outside the territory.
[01:16:26 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: People are sent to Ottawa to access medical services and other centres in the south. And so, they're taken from their families, from their support networks, their cultural and linguistic context, and placed in very different systems. And so, there are ways of mitigating these issues, these infrastructure deficits, but they're not always the approach that is most conducive to ensuring healthy communities and in keeping people in place in those communities.
So, yes, did the GNWT and the city of Yellowknife, for example, and the city, or the town of Hay River, did they deal with these last crises? Yes, they dealt with them. Was it done in a way that was forward looking and engaged, as Dr. Irlebacher-Fox was saying, Indigenous governments? No. Indigenous governments didn't know where their people were evacuated to. And many First Nations [peoples] don't live in their First nations community. They live in Yellowknife. Or the case of Yukon, they live in Whitehorse. In the case of Nunavut, many people migrate from community to community.
[01:17:55 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: So, keeping track of the citizens of various governments is challenging. And it just revealed that the long-term planning for these unexpected but foreseeable crises has not happened. Obviously, they're unexpected. No one thought it was going to be this way, but it was foreseeable that it could. And so that again, is that continuity of government question I ask. Administratively, we can see that these things are going to happen again, right? So, what is the plan for how cabinet government will continue? For how the legislature will operate? For how people will be resourced, when we know that these crises are going to happen again?
[01:18:36 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: Yes, I completely agree with Dr. Sabin, and [I] was just thinking,
[01:18:43 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: Covid was interesting, the wildfires as well. After the wildfire, businesses closed. After Covid, businesses closed. The business community has been really hard hit in Yellowknife. Inuvik is a shell of the community I grew up in. The impact of these climate disasters, economically, is really significant. And again, that traces back to the vulnerability and in large part the lack of infrastructure.
One thing I would say is that Indigenous governments, there's a federal government panel that reviewed the disaster – I can't remember, the acronym is DAAF, the Disaster Assistance Fund – where funds are provided to provinces and territories in times of emergency to pay for firefighting costs, and whatnot. So, if you're a First Nation under the Indian Act, you can go to Indigenous Services Canada. If you're a province or territory, you can go to the federal government. If you're a Modern Treaty or self-government, you have to talk to CIRNAC. And you do that in the middle of an emergency or in the direct aftermath where your whole government has been oriented towards the emergency for a couple months, so business has stopped. And then while you're playing catch up, you have to engage in these discussions about how do we get money back? What money can we get back? Oh, we have to write proposals. Great.
So, that needs to be fixed.
[01:20:18 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: And the legislation in the territory needs to be fixed to include Indigenous governments and to recognize that not all Indigenous governments have the capacity. Tlicho government; self-governing Indigenous governments like Délı̨nę; Modern Treaty Holders like the Inuvialuit and the Gwich'in; they might be able to participate, but smaller First Nations that don't have self-government, where their Modern Treaties haven't been implemented, their people are affected. They want to be involved. They simply don't have the resources to do that.
So, this is one of the complicating factors, I think, and we can't wait. So, we can't wait for the next disaster. We have to learn, and we have to anticipate. And I think federal policy and federal approach to this needs to figure out how to include Indigenous governments in emergency management, emergency management planning, and internally look at its own resources and be prepared.
[01:21:17 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: So, Canada did a fantastic job with the military deploying people to Yellowknife, to the different wildfires across the territory. And people were so grateful for that. And that was a very tangible, helpful thing that Canada was able to do. It would be great if Indigenous governments were able to do their own emergency planning and to work with some of the resources that might be available in those situations to provide them plans; to tell them about their fire smarting; to talk about, "Hey, maybe don't let that area burn, that's a sacred spot; or that's where we get all of our fish for the community. It will help feed us. It'll help feed our dogs."
So, these are things that we really need that collaboration and partnership. So, again, we come back to, what are the mechanisms that we can use to do those things and what are the resources that we need?
[01:22:14 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: And again, it goes back to infrastructure, not just having infrastructure, but climate resilient infrastructure and climate resilient systems. So, the healthcare system was disrupted, the hospital evacuated in Yellowknife. So, they were diverting people to Inuvik. They were sending people south to BC, to Alberta. How can we build a health system where we can keep people in the territory? How do we keep our legislators in the territory instead of sending them south, or having them on zoom from all over the country?
So, these are questions that it's really important to grapple with, and Modern Treaties have levers and mechanisms to assist with that.
Dr. Jerald Sabin: I'll say briefly on that, too. They also have variation. So, one of the things that I would encourage the listeners to this panel to be thinking about is that not all Indigenous governments, they're not like the provinces in this respect: that the provinces have their list of jurisdictions in section 92, and they're responsible for those areas of jurisdiction. Indigenous governments have selected any number of powers that they're entitled to through their agreement and have drawn those down. But it's not a consistent list across Indigenous governments, and it's based on their capacity and interest.
So, some governments have not been interested, for example, in drawing down healthcare because there's economies of scale. Maybe it's better to be run at the territorial level that can allocate resources differently than one small First Nations government. Other things, like emergency management, are within that bucket of things that is so immediate to a community that many Indigenous governments are engaging in that.
[01:23:58 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: So, understanding what list of powers an Indigenous government has is a good first step, I think, in starting that conversation within the policymaking schema.
[01:24:12 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Georgina Lloyd: Thank you so much. We do have a question from the audience, and so I think I may go there next.
[01:24:19 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: How did the provinces react historically when they had to transfer a part of their territory to create Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut?
[01:24:28 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: They didn't. It was the opposite, in fact. They didn't transfer any of their landmass to create the territories. Instead, the provinces were created out of the territories. And so, you had a very small postage stamp – Manitoba at first, and then the rest was the Northwest Territories and the Arctic Islands. And then you had the creation of Yukon. And then Saskatchewan and Alberta. And then you had this rump that was the Northwest Territories until 1999, when it was cut and divided into Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
Now, there are a couple of areas inside the provinces, specifically Nunavik, which is northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut, which is in Labrador,
[01:25:14 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: that are subject to Modern Treaty by their respective Inuit communities. But those have not been uploaded or changed. They're still part of the territorial integrity of those provinces. But certainly, that is one difference.
[01:25:33 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: If anything, the provinces have gained. Northern Ontario was part of the Northwest Territories. Manitoba [also], they've gained. They've gained.
Georgina Lloyd: Wonderful. Thanks so much for that. I'm going to finish with one question. We only have a few minutes left. Just recognizing that we have an audience here, full of public servants and many whose interest has probably been really piqued in thinking about their own day jobs as they listen to this conversation.
[01:25:58 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen.]
Georgina Lloyd: How can the Government of Canada better represent the needs and the interests of Canada's territories?
[01:26:07 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: You go first.
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: You want me to go first?
Dr. Jerald Sabin: Yes. <Laugh>
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: I think listening to the different governments of the territories.
[01:26:24 Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox appears full screen.]
Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox: These are territories with vast landmasses. Indigenous peoples, for Nunavut and the Northwest Territory, are the majority. The Yukon has a significant minority of Indigenous peoples, and then, yes, in the northern part of some of the provinces. But I think for a long time, the territories have been seen as possessions for exploitation, so extraction of resources. People live here, and we have sovereignty. Canada has sovereignty in these areas. And Canada needs to pay attention to Indigenous rights, as well as to the needs of the territorial governments to be able to govern. And the territorial governments being able to govern is in partnership with Indigenous governments.
So, you can't just talk to the territory. The Government of Canada has to talk to Modern Treaty Holders and the territory and recognize that those two are together and they shouldn't be pitted against each other. They need to work in partnership, and I think the Government of Canada has to recognize that in the way that it conducts business. Dr. Sabin?
[01:27:38 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: Well, I guess I would go with responsibility. These are jurisdictions that constitutionally – I'm talking about the settler governments now – that constitutionally belong to the federal government. They're created through federal legislation. And so, balancing, and recognizing the importance of autonomy on the part of the settler government and self-determination on the part of Indigenous governments, but also recognizing that when you download, for example, infrastructure to the territorial level, that's great. That provides autonomy for those territories. But are then you then providing the fiscal capacity to be able to maintain, renew, and move forward with that infrastructure.
[01:28:25 Dr. Jerald Sabin appears full screen.]
Dr. Jerald Sabin: And so, in all these areas, it's responsibility and partnership on the part of the federal government. Recognizing the way in which Canada has benefitted from controlling the territories. But then, in turn, what it can provide the residents of the territories to ensure their own self-determination in the case of Indigenous communities, and then equality in terms of access to services and program delivery that all Canadians, as a part of their citizenship, ought to have access to. That's what I'd say.
[01:29:04 Split screen: Georgina Lloyd, Dr. Jerald Sabin, and Dr. Stephanie Irlebacher-Fox.]
Georgina Lloyd: That's wonderful. Thank you so much for all your remarks and really thought-provoking presentations that you shared with us today.
[01:29:16 Georgina Lloyd appears full screen. Text on screen: Georgina Lloyd, Assistant Deputy Minister, Northern Affairs Organization, CIRNAC.]
Georgina Lloyd: That's going to bring us to the close of this event and on behalf of the Canada School of Public Service, I'd like to wish you a wonderful and huge thanks for sharing all of your knowledge and your experiences and doing so in such a thoughtful way.
And thanks to everyone across the country who has joined us as part of the discussion today.
[01:29:35 Overlaid text on screen: Closing remarks; Contemporary Issues in Canadian Federalism Series: The view from the Territories.]
Georgina Lloyd: I hope you've enjoyed today's event and you're feeling knowledgeable and inspired and really thinking differently about Canada's territories.
The School has more events and courses to offer, so the next event in this series may be of interest to many of you. It's Federations in the World, and it's going to take place on February 2, 2024. So, I encourage you to visit the School's website to keep up to date and register for all the learning opportunities. And I would like to close and wish everyone a wonderful holiday season. Take care.
[01:30:15 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen.]
[01:30:20 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]
