AANR Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS, NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES AUTOCHTONES, DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DU GRAND NORD ET DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, March 22, 2001

• 1109

[English]

The Chair (Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.)): I would like to call the meeting to order, since we have a quorum. Thank you for coming in this wet weather.

The order of reference dated Friday, February 16, reads as follows: it is ordered that Bill C-3, an act to amend the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act and the Petro-Canada Public Participation Act, be now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources.

• 1110

We have on our agenda that we shall be doing clause-by-clause consideration today, so we shall proceed to that.

(Clauses 1 and 2 inclusive agreed to)

The Chair: Shall the title carry?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Shall the bill carry?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Shall I report the bill without amendments to the House?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi—James-Bay—Nunavik, Lib.): Point of Order, Madam Chair.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Are you going to report to the House of Commons tomorrow or Monday?

[English]

The Clerk of the Committee: He wants to know if we can table it.

The Chair: The clerk tells me we can.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Tomorrow?

[Translation]

The Clerk: Tomorrow morning.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chair: We also have on our agenda future business.

Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Madam Chair, I have tabled a notice of motion on housing in the Chisasibi Cree community in particular. As you know, the Aboriginal Affairs Committee gave a detailed report in 1999 on the housing crisis in Canada's Inuit communities, in isolated communities, particularly northern Cree communities. The situation was critical in 1999 and again in 2000, and now it is even worse: the situation has become extremely critical.

There is now a public health crisis in Chisasibi; illness has struck in 185 houses where mildew and fungi are causing health problems.

That is why in my notice of motion, I am calling on government representatives to appear before us as soon as possible to discuss the housing situation of our friends, the Inuit and Cree of Canada.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): I think this may give us a chance to do two things at once. If we're now into a session where what we're essentially trying to do is figure out, first of all, what we have to do in terms of.... I'm sure we'll be hearing from the two parliamentary secretaries as to the order and expected dates of pieces of legislation.

Beyond that we're trying to be strategic about our time and pick a few important topics. Everything I've heard on the aboriginal side of the file from I think all parts of the committee says that housing is a major problem. From what I'm hearing from people, what's not in dispute is that this is a serious problem. We've had lots of study. The challenge is now to find solutions and programs that will actually solve the problem, which we have so well defined and so well documented.

I'm wondering if we can't both tackle the housing problem generally.... I would think we'd want to start with on-reserve housing and northern housing, and maybe the way of helping out Mr. St-Julien on this and helping out this community would be to use this as one of the examples, a precise example, where by getting into the detail of one community we can begin to understand the dynamics of what's at play. It's a case study in some ways.

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So if we can make this part of our housing work, if people think we should do housing when we don't have legislation, then I think we can....

[Translation]

I think we can do both at the same time, Madam Chair. This is a perfect example of a situation that requires rapid action.

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: I appreciate that comment. It is true, this is a good example of what people from the South should pay attention to. They should realize that when solutions are found to the problems of people of the North—Inuit, Cree or other Aboriginal people of Canada—that benefits people in the South. It is good for the whole economy.

But what really matters here, is that these are social problems. What I am saying about Chisasibi is supported by doctors and reports that are very well done. Doctors visited the community last week, and I have made visits too. You leave in tears. You see families taking their bath with fungi growing on the walls and all around. I have never seen such a thing in my entire life.

We should have responded in 1999. We did in Nunavik. The government made great efforts. This time, however, there is a crisis. I have never seen such a situation in an Aboriginal community. It is sad to say, but we have here a serious problem. It is not a “good example,” but a serious humanitarian problem. That is the perception, in any case.

I am putting it mildly, but when there is a raging fire, Madam Chair, all the opposition parties, everyone gathered here, the government and the provinces must rush to the rescue. We must find solutions together. That is why I am asking for officials to meet with us. It is urgent.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

[Translation]

Mr. John Godfrey: I wonder whether officials could give us a broad overview of the situation in this community, give us the big picture by highlighting certain features of residents' lives. That would be one way to do two things at once.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Excuse me, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: While we are at it, if we are inviting witnesses, we might as well invite a couple from Chisasibi. You will be surprised. The doctor who works at the hospital, I have never seen such a... His report was very well done, quite honestly. The same thing is going on in other communities, but some lack the people or skill to draw up reports. However, it will not be this young doctor's first appearance before a committee.

As Mr. Godfrey says, this is an example and a typical example. It is very unfortunate, and we have to find a solution for the well-being of the children. They are our Cree friends after all, are they not?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Duplain.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.): I would like to express a point of view that is related to this issue. It is fine for the committee to invite witnesses on the current medical situation, but there is another angle to the issue that should perhaps be considered.

I have worked on construction sites in the far North and would say that if there is mildew in those houses, it would be a good idea to look into how they were built and perhaps also how those people live. How are houses designed in the South to be built in the North for communities whose way of living is different from ours?

That is a very significant dimension of the problem; it may be the root of the problem and should be dealt with before investing millions of dollars in those communities.

[English]

The Chair: What we have in front of us are four meeting days before the Easter break that we can fill in with different briefings or have witnesses appear before us.

What we need to come away with today is what you want on March 27, March 29, April 3, and April 5.

Mr. Cardin, did you have something to add to the discussion?

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin (Sherbrooke, BQ): To begin with, I am in favour of studying this matter. If there are serious and persistent problems in that region, I think it is important to find out what is going on there.

Mr. Duplain just expressed one of my concerns; why is such a serious problem occurring in that particular environment? There may be construction design flaws. There may be all sorts of causes. If we want to shed light on the problem, especially if there is a serious threat to community health, I think it would be important to act as quickly as possible.

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However, Madam Chair, we are talking about inviting witnesses. If it is about this specific matter, would witnesses from your region already be ready to come and talk about that?

Another question comes up. Since we are talking housing, you will recall that yesterday or the day before, there was a presentation by the FRAPRU. Are we going to deal only with this specific problem, or do committee members wish to go beyond that and deal with social housing? Are we just going to deal with the problem that has been raised?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: Well, one way of advancing both the aboriginal file and the natural resources file—I'm just going to put this out as an idea, and then shoot at it because it's.... I was listening to what Mr. Chatters had to say the last time. It'll take a little bit of time to line up witnesses on this file, I would think.

What I'm wondering is whether next week, that is, Tuesday, March 27 and Thursday, March 29, we might not be able to get two briefings from Natural Resources, one on the climate change file update and the other—we can do it in either sequence, whichever fits there—on the potential of this North American energy deal. There are real connections between the two, but ideally I'd like to hear the climate change one first—an update on Kyoto, where we are with all of that—and then after that what is this thing we're hearing about.

The following week, since we will have done a fair amount on natural resources because of the two bills we've had and those two briefings, we could then switch gears. Since it is a big issue, maybe we could devote Tuesday, April 3 and Thursday, April 5 to a first look at the housing issue on the understanding that we want the big picture first, and then we want to be able to get into some detail, which will give us a real feel for the problem on the ground.

I think it's good to start with the general, then move to the particular, so that one has a framework in which to fit this. After we return, we will then be in a better position to figure out how to move forward on both the natural resource issues that we've looked at and the housing issue, plus of course all the legislation. Maybe we need to know from the two parliamentary secretaries—just to be sure—that we're not getting anything in the next three or four weeks as far as they know. That is a plan subject to what these fellows are going to tell us.

The Chair: Okay, Mr. St-Julien had his hand up so I'll let him say his piece, and then we'll ask the parliamentary secretaries to....

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I listened carefully to what my colleague had to say. With respect to those people's physical problems, we could hear witnesses on that at 1:00 p.m. on the 27th for two hours.

Do not forget what has been done in months and years past. We have all the reports. The committee's last study was right to the point. What I particularly liked about the recommendations of the committee of which you were a member, was that the government of Quebec and the government of Canada got together to identify the problems in Nunavik. Together, they earmarked $50 million for the problems of the Inuit. Those problems are being fixed.

Why is nothing happening elsewhere? If we say the 27th, since it is an emergency, I assure you that in two hours... That means bringing witnesses from Chisasibi, including the doctor I referred to, who has slides. Anyway, everything is ready to prove to the government...

There have been meetings, and I have not provided all of my documentation. I even have placards. In fact, there was a demonstration in Chisasibi two weeks ago. Families are worried about their children and wives who are home all day long.

In closing, why do we have a housing crisis? Because our government does not take the homeless in remote regions into account. In the big cities, it does. And why does it not take them into account? Because the Inuit, Cree and Aboriginal people have the decency in winter to take in whole families into homes built for three or four people. There are 18, 22 or 23 people in one two- bedroom house. They put them up for the whole winter.

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In summertime, the Inuit and Cree fish and hunt. They have fishing camps, and they come back home for the winter. It is always like that. But they have no homeless people sleeping in the streets, because they take them into their homes. There may 22 people in one house. I have to tell you I had never seen that before.

In any case, I would appreciate it if committee members could take two hours of their time on the 27th—and everything is ready, the studies have all been done—to explain to officials... Officials here in Ottawa, Madam Chair, are like monks in a monastery, like hermits. They do not know what is going on in Aboriginal communities in Canada. They do not know.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien, I understand from looking at your motion that you now want different people to appear before the committee than you have stated in your motion.

I understand what you're saying, and I've been saying the same thing. We're past the study stage. We're past the writing a report stage. We have a crisis in our aboriginal communities, and now we're looking for the way to get more houses into the communities.

We are at a point where we have to say that some strategy has to be delivered by partners—whether they are the federal government and the public or the provincial-territorial partners—to come up with a plan that will see units being built in the communities. We've studied it. We've done committee reports. We've heard from witnesses.

My feeling on this is that we have to come up with a way of getting those units to the community. So how is it you want to do that? I understand what you're saying about getting people from the community to come to speak to us, but in your motion you just have representatives of the government—departments of Health, Indian Affairs, and Public Works to appear before the committee.

I see what you're saying and the motion as being two different things. I'll just put that out.

I have Mr. Chatters, Mr. Serré, and Mr. Finlay.

Do you want the parliamentary secretaries to give us a little run-down first of what legislation is...?

Mr. David Chatters (Athabasca, CA): Yes, maybe that would be helpful first.

The Chair: Mr. Serré, I'll start with you.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Serré (Timiskaming—Cochrane, Lib.): First, I do not expect us to have any new bills to study in the immediate future, and certainly not in the next two or three weeks. I basically agree with everything Mr. Godfrey and Mr. St-Julien said.

However, unlike Mr. Godfrey, I think the Aboriginal housing crisis should take priority. Although I myself have made the point at other meetings that we have studied that issue to death and that a number of reports have been drawn up, I nonetheless think it important, given the seriousness of the current situation in Chisasibi, to spend an hour hearing witnesses so the media and officials are forced to acknowledge the urgency of the situation. Maybe then various departments will swing into action.

I think it is our job to push them up against the wall and get answers from them.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much for that intervention.

Mr. Finlay, I'll give you an opportunity to speak on the Department of Indian Affairs.

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I met with the minister. There will be a lot of work coming down next fall on governance and the things that he's working on with the modifications to the Indian Act and so on.

However, he's away for the next week. The immediate thing is that once the estimates are here, he's prepared to come before the committee, as the committee asks. So that's covered. But he suggested that if there's anything coming from Natural Resources, we should get at that first, because the picture will change later on, and we'll have considerable legislation to deal with.

I hope that's helpful, Madam Chair.

The Chair: But he doesn't think it will be until the fall, except for that one bill we talked about that's originating at the Senate—

Mr. John Finlay: That's right.

The Chair: —and that will come some time before June. But we didn't anticipate any large legislation until the fall.

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I agree with what Mr. Serré was saying that because some of the members are new, it might be a good idea to get a general understanding of the situation, and then try to come up with some solutions that we can present to someone.

Mr. Chatters.

Mr. David Chatters: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I certainly don't disagree with any of the discussion that's been going on concerning Mr. St-Julien's motion. I'm open to hearing witnesses and addressing this issue. But I think we need to look at the broader perspective rather than dealing with a specific community that has a crisis. If we're going to deal with it, we should look at how this crisis came to be, how these houses got into the condition they're in, and what resources the community has to deal with that issue. We need to look at all of that. If the intention is simply to highlight a crisis situation to get the department or the government to put money into the community to solve the current crisis, I think there are other ways to deal with that.

But if we're going to deal with this particular community as a current example of a sickness that exists in many communities, and if we are going to look at it from the broader perspective of solving the problem in other communities, rather than simply dealing with this crisis, then I'm open to that. I have no problem.

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: Let me try to see if I can pull this together, because I think we've got agreement basically. It's mostly an organizational challenge at this point.

Perhaps we can set it out this way. We start on the whole issue of housing in general with specific reference to this issue as a way of getting us into the discussion. It adds an element of reality to it.

Because today is Thursday and we're talking about Tuesday, I think we need to give the clerk—that's a fairly big trip they're going to be making—a mandate to do his best to bring these folks here in a timely manner, understanding that if Tuesday doesn't work, for whatever reason, we might have to do it on Thursday or even in the fall. But our ambition is to get them here as fast as possible.

Then we want another session—and again this will all depend on when we can get these folks here—on the more general issue of bringing in people from DIAND and CHMC to give us the larger picture.

Then—and these are the more juggle-able bits—we want one session on a global warming update and another session on the North American energy accord.

Understanding that we've got four sessions and there has to be some juggling, I don't think we need a resolution because I think we've got agreement. What we need to do is to be flexible enough to allow the clerks to do their best to book witnesses. In one case, it's going to be quite challenging to do it as soon as the 27th, but maybe they're ready to go.

That will take care of our pre-break stuff.

The other suggestion I would like to put out to the committee is that we might wish to use the occasion of the estimates as a way of drilling in further into the housing issue, because that's a specific program where the money is spent and they're going to spend more money in the future. Rather than diversifying our efforts, we can use it as part of our work.

There's also one more element, which is just worth bearing in mind. The Auditor General's department—of course there is going to be a new Auditor General—is casting around for future work, which is on the aboriginal file. So at some point or other, if we feel that as part of what we're doing here we need some more firepower of an Auditor General type, then that's another instrument that is available. We can't tell the Auditor General what to do, but I know from experience on another committee that if you direct a series of questions to the Auditor General.... That department is looking for useful activity. I know it happens to be looking very hard at aboriginal affairs.

Is that a plan that people can live with, if we can empower the clerk to do his best to juggle all of these things? We may be out of sequence. We may have global warming one day and...but we can retain that in our mind, I think. Is that okay?

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The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you, Madam Chair. I have duly noted those comments and can guarantee that Tuesday morning, Dr. Violet Pachanos and possibly Dr. Ted Moses, Grand Chief, will be present. They have 1,100 kilometres of road to travel, but they confirmed yesterday that they can be here even tomorrow morning, Saturday or Sunday, because it is a crisis, a classic example. They will be here, rest assured.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: I heard the witnesses Mr. St-Julien is proposing to invite. It is important for the doctor to be there to talk about the health issues, but I imagine there are construction experts who have assessed the situation as well. We must not forget them, because if we are looking for information, we should get full and complete information. It is important to do that all at once, not spread it out over time.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: That is a good point.

[English]

The Chair: If I can offer a suggestion, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada has their head office here in Ottawa. Last November they had a conference on housing. From what I understand, they are very close to finishing their report. They might be able to give us an overall, national, snapshot picture of what the situation is like in the whole country. We could probably do the other half of Tuesday, if not March 29, if I could be given the authority to invite them to give a national, snapshot picture of the housing situation.

From what the clerk is telling me, AFN has also had a national housing conference. So there are organizations that represent aboriginal people nationally that have dealt with this issue, and I think they would be willing to come because their head offices are here in Ottawa. So it would not be having to fly people in from any great distance to come in and speak to the committee.

Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you. If we choose Tuesday the 27th for two hours, people from Chisasibi will come because it is so very important, but as you said, both these organizations have had offices here in Ottawa. I can assure you that two hours is enough time to put us in the picture. We need witnesses from Chisisabi to explain precisely what is going on there. It is happening elsewhere too. But in two hours, we will have covered everything.

[English]

The Chair: Okay. So the general consensus is that on March 27 we have the witnesses as requested by Mr. St-Julien, and on March 29 we'll have half the time for ITC and half the time for AFN to give us their national overview on the housing situations.

Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with that. I want to go back to something Mr. Chatters said, with which I fully agree.

This appears to be a crisis. This committee is not equipped to deal with crises. We can highlight them; we can talk, but someone has a responsibility. Our responsibility is to look at the whole picture, and I rather think this isn't the only aboriginal community in which there is blue mould or green mould, or whatever mould it is; nor is it the only aboriginal community that has 17 people living in a house.

We saw that in Iqaluit when we were there last year, even. We saw it in Quebec. We were told about it out west as well. I'm just saying we should just step back a little bit and take a somewhat broader view. There are people in danger here. There's medical help there; Mr. St-Julien has said that.

We have a whole group of young people from Davis Inlet who are awaiting treatment to be detoxified from sniffing glue and gasoline, and that's going to take a little while. We learned that the other day.

So I don't want us putting up flags all over the place that are so specific that we're going to take responsibility for it. Overall, yes, but let's keep a sense of perspective on it.

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The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Madam Chair, we are responsible for the Chisisabi situation. Under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, we are trustees for the Cree and Naskapis. We have been responsible for them since November 11, 1975, when the governments of Quebec and Canada signed the Agreement. We are trustees for the Inuit and Cree communities. That is why we have a responsibility. In light of everything I have heard from the Bloc Québécois, the Alliance and my Liberal colleagues, I think Tuesday the 27th is the best time.

I can tell you that in two hours, we will be able to target the issue. It is not simply a question of money. It is a question of quality of life. If there is not good housing, then the economy suffers. If there is not good housing, then there are social problems. That is why I am telling you that pursuant to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the first agreement in Canada, we are trustees for these communities.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Godfrey.

[Translation]

Mr. John Godfrey: Mr. Finlay is right. We have neither the executive nor the administrative power to respond to emergencies. We may study them, however we do not have the means to do anything concrete tomorrow with resources when there is a crisis such as that in Davis Inlet, not because this is a medical crisis. I hope that Mr. St-Julien is pursing other avenues regarding the current daily crisis, because we are not able to mobilize resources tomorrow to do anything.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: I am taking note of the comments from both my colleagues, but the government in place does have means. It is our responsibility to take care of these people.

[English]

The Chair: I fully understand that, and I just want to read something from page 20 in the estimates for 2000-2001, part III, which discusses the expected results. One of them is improved health and safety through improved housing and community infrastructure. Others are improved housing on reserve, improved water and sewage services on reserve, and environmental remediation.

Those are the things we're talking about for which we want to take a broad issue. I always feel that when we take the action of just selecting one community and highlighting one community and the situations there, it sort of leaves the other people that are in exactly the same situation out of the loop.

A lot of us members, as much as we feel we want to help everyone in the country, get put in a position where if we don't support one individual crisis, we're seen as not supporting all those other ones. We get caught in dealing with things crisis by crisis instead of focusing on the broad picture that we want to try to present so that everyone in that situation can be dealt with by having a unified national strategy of some sort. I don't know.

That's why, in a way, I'm sometimes reluctant to just focus on one particular crisis. As Mr. Finlay said, every one of us can come up with ten other situations that are crises. That's part of our problem; we're just putting out fires all the time instead of doing initiatives that will not let that fire get started in the first place.

I put that out to you because we're writing an outline here of what we might do on these four days. I'd much rather, in a way, deal with it in a broader situation right now and try to deal with it strategically. How do we come up with solutions?

• 1145

I know, Mr. Serré, you put your name down to speak, but if I can just put it out to you that if we do one particular crisis, then 200 other crises that are happening across the country are going to wonder why they don't get an opportunity to come before the committee to present their crisis directly to us. That's why I put out the national organizations because they do represent all these different individual crises in the country. They have a national voice, and that's what the structure is there for—so that these people that are elected by the general assembly, or whatever, are able to speak generally on their behalf.

We also have an opportunity to have DIAND, CMHC, and Health Canada come at one time in one of those sessions. In the other slot, if you want to divide it in half, we could do climate change and the energy policy, unless you want those to be two separate briefings.

So I lay that out to you before we completely fill in all those four slots.

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: I just want to make sure I understand. So we still go with March 27 as proposed? That stays in place. That is to say, we bring in the witnesses as suggested. But we understand by doing so that Mr. St-Julien will be pursuing other means at his disposal to do the crisis management, as a good MP would. What we're doing is our way of getting into this discussion in a concrete way; that's the purpose of it. It's not that we're going to do a special report. It's just a way of starting with a real situation that we view as representative but by no means the only one, and we're not going to do a report specifically about this community. That's not what we're up to. But it's a way of getting those of us who are maybe new to the committee and others...just a dramatic way of starting the conversation. Is that what you had in mind?

Then there would be subsequent sessions. What I thought I heard you say was then there might be two more sessions, one with officials and one with representatives of other national organizations, and then the fourth slot would be a combination. We would push together the climate change update and a North American energy thing. Is that roughly the plan?

The Chair: Well, that's what I threw out to you, but Mr. Serré's been waiting a while to speak, so I'll give him a chance.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Serré: Part of what I was going to say was already mentioned by you and Mr. Godfrey, but I do have a few comments.

First of all, with respect to Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Finlay's comments, it is true that we do not have the required executive powers to accomplish things, to provide money, etc., however I do think that we have a definite moral obligation.

[English]

It's our duty as elected members of Parliament to push those issues to the forefront of government action and put them in front of the media—when you see people suffering, when you see people dying. If we cannot, as members of Parliament, advocate and push for change, then we should all go home. So I think it's not only our role, it's our duty and responsibility to do so.

[Translation]

I understand the problems it might cause to bring in people from a specific community. I understand this problem, but I would still like to go ahead. I would like to hear from this doctor. We need to put a human face to these problems.

The problem is that our bureaucrats are in their ivory tower here in Ottawa when there are housing problems 1,100 kilometres away from here. There are also housing problems in Toronto, in Northern Ontario and elsewhere, but there are no housing problems here. We are warm, everything is fine, everything is perfect.

Bureaucrats, like politicians, need to act. I mentioned earlier that we needed to pin the bureaucrats down, but bureaucrats follow policies established by governments and by politicians. We too have responsibilities that we might not have honoured in the past, and we need to think about this and to see what more we can do.

So, this is important to me. As we decided at the outset, I would like to hear from the witnesses from Chisasibi and the national organizations so that we have at least one concrete and human example of what we are talking about and then a general, national ideal. Afterwards, we could hear from bureaucrats and we could continue with the process.

• 1150

[English]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Perfect.

The Chair: Mr. Duplain.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Duplain: I agree with what was just said. It is very important to try to understand the problems in these regions. There are crises that need to be solved. This is extremely important.

However, I also agree with what you said. A general idea is quite important, as mentioned Mr. Serré. The only thing that I would add, to follow up on what Mr. Serré said, is that in fact, a number of department officials are working on projects, both architects and thinkers. I think that when you spend six months or a year in these regions... I am thinking specifically about Nunavik because this is the region that I know. Often, the people responsible for developing projects are not there on the ground and may not really know what happens.

My suggestion for you would be to try to find, in addition to the national organizations, private sector consultants who have concrete experience, who have worked in these communities and who understand not only the field of construction, but also the stakeholders in the field who are able to analyze different situations. In construction, what is important is not only how to assemble and nail boards, there is the whole issue of how people live in the houses which counts.

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you. I have one last point.

I like Benoît Serré's plan, he understands the issue very well and he also understands Mr. Duplain's comments on construction. We will also proceed along the lines of your proposal with respect to the organizations. We need to find a long-term solution.

[English]

The Chair: I have that March 27 we will have the doctor. We'll need the names from Mr. St-Julien of the other witnesses he wants to have appear before the committee.

On March 29 we would have and AFN with their national view. On April 3 we would have the officials from DIAND, CMHC, and Health Canada to answer questions from the other two sessions, and we'll probably draw up some questions to ask them.

For April 5 we have climate change and the energy policy, but I don't know if you want that to be two topics in one, or did you think that...?

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey: Remember, what we're doing here is having a first look at both of these issues. This isn't the last word, and there'll be room enough for

[Translation]

Mr. Duplain's excellent proposal to invite, for example, people from the private sector in construction.

[English]

So we're just getting into the files. It would be quite useful if we could actually have both discussions, the climate change file, on the one hand, followed almost immediately by witnesses on this proposed potential North American energy deal. This would be useful because there is a very direct connection between the two.

To have them all at the table at the same time allows us to do some contrasting and comparing and to look for inconsistencies. If we're going to be basically sharing resources with the United States, who are using them at a profligate rate, does that really help us on reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

It's those sorts of contradictions we'd like to explore, and having them both there for everything would be very helpful.

The Chair: Okay, there's general consensus on this as the way we'll proceed with the schedule for the next four meeting slots.

[Translation]

Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you very much. Could the clerk please send us a notice by fax on all of these different meetings so that we can prepare accordingly?

Thank you very much. I very much appreciate it.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much for your interventions.

We'll get back to you if we have any questions, and we'll confirm all the witnesses as soon as we can.

• 1155

I have one more note of information. Mary has ordered a video on climate change. It should be here within two weeks, and we'll make sure all the members get that too. Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.