EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, September 24, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Order. We're here to deal with Bill C-6, an act to amend the Yukon Quartz Mining Act and the Yukon Placer Mining Act. We're resuming consideration of clause 1.

This is our second day of public hearings. We had a number of witnesses present yesterday. Today we want to welcome, from the Yukon Conservation Society, Jennifer Ellis, executive director, and Bob van Dijken, member, board of directors.

Please proceed.

Ms Jennifer Ellis (Executive Director, Yukon Conservation Society): Good morning. I'm glad to be presenting here to the committee. Bob and I are going to do a bit of a joint show here.

I'm the executive director for the Yukon Conservation Society and have participated in some of the YMAC committee meetings.

Just to give you a bit of background on the YCS, we're a 28-year-old grassroots community organization. We've been in Whitehorse since 1968. We're run by a volunteer board of directors. We have lots of active volunteers and two part-time staff. Our membership is nearly 300 people, which in a community our size is fairly substantial.

We work on a wide variety of issues. We do advocacy, education, and research. We work on mining, forestry, water quality, environmental education, nature appreciation - a very broad range. Certainly our approach is to work cooperatively with government, first nations, industry, and other stakeholders as much as possible. We sit on a wide number of advisory committees. The Yukon Mining Advisory Committee is just one of many.

We've been involved in YMAC since its inception in 1990. However, our concern for the regulation of mining exploration dates back to about 1967, when the Territorial Lands Act was drafted.

Mr. Bob van Dijken (Member, Board of Directors, Yukon Conservation Society): At this point I think it's important to complete the record and put some things said yesterday in context and just fill in the record a bit about the YMAC document and the YMAC process in particular.

The process started in July 1990, or at least the letter of invitation to join the process was issued in July 1990, and that actually said the process would wrap up by November 1990. Here we are, at the end of September 1996, and we're still plugging away.

Eventually a consensus document was signed in April 1992. There was some discussion yesterday about what that document contained and what that consensus meant. I would like to put on the record a number of things that haven't been mentioned, though that document stated them and they were consensus recommendations.

The first is that:

YMAC has been working towards the implementation of this land use management system before the 1993 field season.

That was put into the report at our request, at our insistence. It was made clear at that time that the document was a considerable compromise and was accepted for expediency reasons, to get something in place quickly.

Something else that hasn't been mentioned but that comes from the YMAC report:

YMAC recommends that there be a review of the regulations, including the standards, after two years of operation.

So not only have we missed the initial deadline but we should have been in a review process, or reviewing and revising, right now instead of still trying to get the legislation in place.

The third statement I would like to highlight from the YMAC report is:

It is particularly important that regulations prepared for mineral activities result in environmental protection comparable with that protection now possible under the TLUR or territorial land use regulations. We feel this goal has not been accomplished.

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It is also necessary to look at changes that have taken place in both the legislative agenda and outside factors since the signing in April 1992. I'll highlight four things.

The first is the settlement of the first nations land claim, signing of the UFA, individual first nations agreements, and commitments for things such as the development assessment process and land use planning. CYFN talked about that yesterday.

The second is the Whitehorse Mining Initiative and the accord signed as a result of that. When the process resumed in 1994, we asked that some time be set aside to ensure that the legislative package brought forward would meet the WMI goals and principles. That was refused, and it is our feeling that the package does not meet WMI goals and principles, particularly some in the environment section, the land use and land access section, and the open decision-making process section.

The third change is the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and, more particularly, the necessity to look at cumulative impacts. We will deal with that on a more detailed basis later in the presentation.

The fourth is a piece of Yukon legislation, changes to the Yukon Wildlife Act, which were passed in 1992 as Bill 7. It was passed but never proclaimed. These dealt with designated habitat protection areas and damage to or destruction of habitat. Again, we'll deal with that issue in more depth later.

I have a couple of other points to deal with before we get into the meat of our presentation, again dealing with some things that were said yesterday.

The territorial government suggested that the committee had committed to continuing to work on an implementation period and then overseeing the implementation of the legislation. In October 1995, at the last meeting of YMAC, we indicated that we would no longer be a member of the committee as it was structured at that time. There has also been no formal commitment from DIAND for this to take place. At that point there was a suggestion by a staff member in the Yukon that this should take place, but to our knowledge there's no commitment from the government that it will.

The last thing I will deal with is public consultation. Because of the terms of reference of the committee, we were not able to consult beyond the membership of the conservation society during this process. We had to make clear any number of times that we were there representing the Conservation Society and that the terms of reference and confidentiality agreements prevented us from conducting a wider consultation. Consultations conducted to a broader public, for example, were conducted after the document was submitted to the minister in April 1992. There was another round in the summer of 1995, again after a substantive part of the work had been done and it was clear that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make major changes.

We would like to note that given the pace of change in both the quartz and the placer mining acts, and in the YMAC process again, from a deadline of November 1990 to the end of September 1996, we believe it's particularly important to get these changes right the first time. History has proven that chances to change this legislation are few and far between.

Ms Ellis: We support the direction of Bill C-6, and certainly, after 30 years of promises to put something in place, we'd like to see it bring us up to date, as Bob said. But there are some outstanding concerns that we'd like to raise with you now.

One of the biggest concerns we brought to the YMAC table again and again is the protection of critical wildlife habitat and the impacts on wildlife during sensitive times of the year, such as calving and breeding times.

For the most part, those of these activities that are going to have an impact will trigger a review and it will go through an environmental assessment process. However, we feel that there are some gaps, particularly with class I and the kind of level of activity that's allowed during class I. Class I, as you know, does not trigger a notification; therefore there can be no environmental review and the people with wildlife expertise, such as the folks at the Yukon government, are then not able to review the applications in concert with DIAND to make recommendations on how wildlife impacts can be mitigated.

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This was highlighted for us in a particular way. The Yukon government has a couple of caribou recovery programs happening throughout the Yukon. In one particular case this recovery program also includes a very controversial and expensive wolf kill. So the caribou population is so low that the Yukon government has felt the need to help boost those numbers by using a predator control program.

A couple of years ago in this very same area, an exploration company went in to stake some claims and proceeded to do some work. It had to get a land use permit to get to the claim, but at that time, given that this bill was not in place, there was no environmental assessment.

That particular activity would have probably triggered an environmental review and been mostly a class II level of activity. However, it certainly highlighted that the area was open for staking. Even if this bill were in place today, there is absolutely nothing preventing a mining company from staking right in the middle of the calving grounds of this very same herd that's so low in numbers that we have to undergo a wolf kill program. A mining company can set off one thousand kilograms of explosives in a 30-day period or trench up to 400 cubic metres on each claim using a small bulldozer. It can have a small camp and stuff during calving time, because these are all class I activities. Because they wouldn't trigger a review, there would be no possibility of instituting terms and conditions that would simply allow a company to do that work, but not during the one month of calving time.

That would certainly apply for a lot of the class I activities, although at most times of the year in most places in the Yukon they probably wouldn't have a great impact because of their low level of activity. There are certainly some very sensitive areas in the Yukon where we feel there needs to be either notification of class I activities to allow for this review so terms and conditions can be put in place to protect these critical areas, or the class I and class II thresholds should change so mechanized activity would move out of class I and into class II, except for hand-held equipment.

We feel this would bring us on par with other jurisdictions. Often as soon as there is mechanized activity on claims it triggers review in other jurisdictions.

It would also bring it more on par with the Territorial Lands Act. As Bob mentioned earlier, one of the intents of the YMAC process was to give equivalent protection under the new changes to the regulations.

Bob mentioned the Wildlife Act. During the deliberations in YMAC there was considerable debate about whose responsibility it was to guard wildlife habitat. A lot of the discussions that led up to the signing of the 1992 report were based on the Wildlife Act that the Yukon government was amending. We were frequently told it was its responsibility and that it was going to exercise that responsibility.

However, since these amendments have never been proclaimed, that has raised some problems. Last spring the minister for renewable resources of the Yukon government explicitly stated in Hansard in the House that the Yukon government is not responsible for managing the wildlife habitat.

It's clear that the federal government does have some responsibility for managing habitat. It's expressly stated in the Territorial Lands Act that the chief can look at habitat impacts. There have been other decisions that show that the minister of DIAND is responsible and can request security for habitat impacts. A legislative gap now exists because of the lack of protection for critical habitat. We feel that a simple change to Bill C-6 and the regulations will help fill that gap.

In terms of the impacts these class I activities may have, I'd like to quote from a letter that was written to me from the director of the fish and wildlife branch in the Yukon government. He says:

On the matter of thresholds, both the correspondence you cited from our Director of Environmental Protection and Assessment, and my correspondence to the Yukon Fish & Wildlife Management Board, note that some activities that could have a significant effect on critical wildlife habitat, or cause disturbance of wildlife during critical periods, could well occur in the case of Class I activities.... Also as noted, the lack of prior notice for Class I activities also is problematic from an enforcement perspective.

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So we would like to present two different options for dealing with this problem. One is instituting a class I notification. This would be by changing proposed subsection 136(1) of the bill to parallel the wording that's found for class II notification, which is found in proposed subsection 136(2). This change would enable all class I activities to be reviewed for their potential impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitat, and for these impacts then to be mitigated by notification of the operator on specific terms and conditions that could apply to their activities. As we'll discuss later, this would also help in assessing cumulative impacts of a number of class I activities in the region.

The other option is to change the thresholds in the regulations, as I noted, so any mechanized activities in class I are restricted to hand-held mechanized equipment, and also to lower the limit on the use of explosives to 50 kilograms in a 30-day period, which would bring it on a par with the territorial land use regulations.

These kinds of changes would increase considerably our level of comfort with the potential impacts of these regulations on wildlife and critical wildlife habitat in the area.

Mr. van Dijken: We'll move on next to the issue of security. I think that was dealt with a number of times yesterday. We have a concern about the discretion to require security, and also a concern that security would be demanded only where there is a risk of significant adverse environmental effect. We believe the WMI principle of polluter pays endorses a stricter dealing with the issue of security. Things such as bonding pools, abilities to generate the revenue, abilities to make it easier to deal with the issue of security, have been suggested.

Rather than take up too much time on security, I will go straight to our recommendations.

We recommend that you change proposed section 143 of the bill by deleting reference to ``risk of significant adverse environmental effect'' and changing the ``mays'' to ``shalls'. There are also subsequent changes to section 20 of the regulations by deleting reference to consideration of financial ability of the operator to pay security. It should be a cost of doing business.

About monitoring and enforcement, any piece of legislation is only as good as its enforcement mechanisms. Most legislation is designed for the people who require regulation: the people who do not live up to environmental protection requirements unless forced to by law. Enforcement must include measures for monitoring adherence and for penalizing those who do not comply with the laws. Methods of monitoring enforcement should not be a burden on those who abide by the laws.

We're making a few recommendations here on Bill C-6. Inspections are central to monitoring compliance. We believe there should be a requirement of a minimum of one inspection per year for exploration sites, more frequent inspections of mines in development or production or undergoing reclamation.

The other recommendation deals with the ability of citizens to request inspections. Because the Yukon is so large and the enforcement force will be limited, it seems to make sense both economically and just for the sake of having people on the ground as eyes out there watching to enable citizens to report concerns and requests that inspections be conducted to ensure compliance is taking place.

Early in the YMAC process it was agreed that the task in front of us was daunting and we should break our deliberations into two parts, dealing with exploration and then moving on to development and production. It was with this understanding that YCS agreed to no jail terms under the offences and penalties section of the report.

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The way the bill is designed, it uses a common offences and punishment section for both exploration activities and operating mines. YCS must reiterate a position we have consistently voiced since YMAC reconvened in 1994: that the fines proposed are totally inadequate for operating mines, that the directors and officers of companies should be liable for jail terms in the case of offences committed by operating mines, and that directors and officers of companies should be liable for offences of the company if they have participated in some way in the commission of the offence.

This is common to most law throughout Canada and throughout North America in these times. It's not something that is leading edge, cutting edge, or that in any way varies from the north.

Again, the amounts of fines were discussed by a number of presenters yesterday. We feel that the fines are too low, lower than those found in other legislation, such as the Fisheries Act or CEPA.

In terms of recommendations: institute a requirement for a minimum of one inspection per year; change regulations to allow for an annual report on activities; change Bill C-6 to allow for jail terms for directors and officers under production activities by expanding the range of penalties under proposed section 154(3); allow for citizen enforcement measures; adopt wording contained in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act or the proposed Endangered Species Act.

In terms of effective assessment, it is critical that all approvals and decisions made under Bill C-6 and its regulations should trigger a review under CEAA. For classes II, III, and IV, this was repeatedly stated as the intention of DIAND, and it has been repeatedly stated that they intend to have these added to the CEAA list prior to the act and regulations coming into effect. We would like to ensure that this will take place.

A central component of CEAA is the need to take cumulative effect into consideration. We would like to deal a bit with cumulative effect and the current legislation and use the example of the recent staking rush in the Finlayson Lake area.

In the Finlayson Lake area in the mid-1980s the Yukon government conducted a multi-year wolf kill to try to bring the numbers of the local caribou herds up to healthier levels. In the last year and a half there has been a significant staking rush in the same area, including some of the most sensitive calving and post-calving areas of the herd. Approximately 1,600 claims were staked.

The scale of staking was so great that a senior DIAND official commented this spring that the rush was over because there was no ground left to stake.

Even if Bill C-6 and the mining land use regulations had been in place, the cumulative impact of the initial staking activities at a lower level, exploration activities, could not have been adequately assessed, as many would have fallen within class I.

One of the main companies working in the area, Cominco, in their Kudz Ze Kayah initial environmental evaluation, has written:

A potential for cumulative impacts arises from the combination of project activities with other activities in the relevant wildlife ranges. In particular, activities associated with mineral exploration on the ground and increased air traffic support, have been identified as creating a potential for cumulative effects. It is not possible to predict the level of exploration activity that will occur in any given year. Also, explorationists would not likely reveal publicly in advance where they intend to conduct future operations. Such activities usually involve a number of independent companies, each with its own approach to the work.

Therefore we must argue again for implementation of notification of class I or changing of the thresholds so that cumulative impacts of mineral activities in instances such as the Finlayson rush may be assessed.

Effective assessment also requires baseline data. Currently in the proposed legislation the operators are required to provide a description of natural characteristics of an area at only the class III and class IV levels. This information is critical in making assessments, and we feel some information should be required at lower levels. The degree of detail should increase as the activity becomes greater, but to assess impact, one must have a reasonable baseline to work with. If we wait until an activity gets to class III or IV before looking at a baseline, we're no longer looking at a valid baseline, we're looking at a baseline that's already been affected by activity.

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One must also have a framework to guide review decisions. YCS would like to see Bill C-6 include goals that state there will be no loss of habitat or biological diversity after activities regulated by the act are conducted.

I'll move on to outstanding regulations.

We understand and realize the committee is now looking at the act, and regulations will be dealt with in some way at a future date. However, there are a number of outstanding regulations that we feel are critical: regulations on reclamation - and again, the Whitehorse Mining Initiative made recommendations on the need for legislation on reclamation - regulations on production and development, which have been promised; and also particularly critical, regulations on public comment, public consultation, public participation. There are requirements for public comment and participation in the proposed act, but to date no work has been done to develop regulations on how that takes place or what the format will be. We feel it's critical to have those in place also.

So our recommendation is that the minister be required to establish a timetable for completion of outstanding regulations arising out of Bill C-6. We also feel it's critical to know what's contained in the entire package. It's difficult to comment on and to judge this package against the goals and principles, for example, of the WMI, in terms of public participation and transparency, if we do not know yet what the regulations, what the requirements, and what the abilities will be.

Ms Ellis: Before we conclude, I'd like to touch on free entry. I know a lot of presenters have mentioned it.

This isn't really a new issue. I'd like to read a quote from a brief that was presented to the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development in 1971 by Dr. Andy Thompson. He's on the faculty of law at UBC. I quote:

What is complained about is not that mining is recognized as of the first importance in the Yukon but that mining should be given a universal priority over land without being called on to justify itself as against other uses to which land may be put. Modern resource management requires that all values - aesthetic, recreation and wilderness, as well as oil, minerals and forest - be taken into account in a planned effort to maintain a quality environment along with the exploitation of natural resources. The ideology of this management requires that a full range of options be examined and weighed in the decision-making process about land use. If miners, or any other resource users, have priority right to appropriate the public lands for their purposes, the options are limited and the opportunity for planned management is frustrated.

Last week I was in Dawson at a land use planning council meeting. Under our Umbrella Final Agreement we're required to do regional land use plans throughout the Yukon. Frustration was expressed at how one resource industry had priority in use and how that would negatively impact on our ability to plan and manage the various regions of the Yukon effectively. I'd like to add our voice to the call for this committee to hold public hearings on this topic - it certainly is an important topic across the north and it has particular implications for land claims - so diverse interests and perspectives, and possibly solutions, can be fully explored by the committee and we can resolve this issue.

In conclusion, I'd like to reiterate that the Yukon Conservation Society does support Bill C-6, or at least the direction of Bill C-6. However, we feel a few changes that can be made would dramatically strengthen it and bring it into the 1990s. We've outlined these changes in our presentation, particularly the one on critical wildlife and wildlife habitat. We think that is one of the most substantive issues that this legislation is not yet addressing.

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As Bob mentioned in his presentation, YMAC agreed to do a two-year review of the legislation after it had been implemented. In my recollection, all of the non-government organizations supported at the YMAC table the idea that this review period should be built into the legislation. We've all seen the number of commitments that have been made to a certain timetable that has not been met. We would like to see it being put into the legislation.

This is not a new mechanism. It has been used in other legislation. Perhaps the requirement to be looking at this could be extended to five to seven years in order to give us a reasonable timeframe to look at how the implementation is going.

Also in terms of implementation, given the delays, we'd like to make sure that these regulations and this legislation will be in effect for next summer's exploration season for both placer and quartz. This will be 1997, four seasons after the commitment was originally made in the YMAC report.

I thank the committee for listening to our presentations. We'll be more than happy to entertain questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

We have two minutes per opposition party and three minutes for government questions. At the end of this, I'll ask members if they wish to proceed beyond the forty minutes.

Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand (Saint-Jean): I would like to thank Mrs. Ellis and Mr. van Dijken for their presentation. I must tell you that before going into politics, I too was very active in the environmental protection movement. The environmental groups were always striving for a consensus. When municipalities and economic groups such as boards of trade as well as environmental movements stuck together, that gave us a very strong leverage to raise concerns. Admittedly, sometimes we had to somewhat tone down our claims to get all the stakeholders on board, but that was a sacrifice that we had to make in order to reach a strong consensus.

What we have seen up to now in this case and what these groups came to tell us is that after a lot of consultations, all sides resident as compromise regarding the bill at hand. I am sympathetic to the proposal that you are making, but I would like to ask this question: would it be possible to include in this bill some of your complaints or claims without incurring the risk of causing a chain reaction? 32What about the other groups who were involvent in this compromise? Will they not come back and ask you to add their own point of view since we allowed you, on the conservation side, to mention your ideas in the bill? Would we not risk a breakdown of the actual compromise, which would require yet more discussions, not to mention mining explorations in Yukon where no environmental standard would be respected?

I'm not asking you to wear the hat of a member of Parliament, but this is the predicament in which we now find ourselves. If I accept you complaints and your claims, we run the risk of the Chambers of commerce asking us to add their own changes. This might jeopardize Bill C-6 and once again we would be faced with mining exploration without any environmental protection.

[English]

The Chairman: Answer very briefly, please.

Mr. van Dijken: We realize that there is a risk. There is always a risk. But you also have to take into account that there is a time for talk and a time for action.

Compromises were made, and I think that if action had been swift we could have lived with them. However, major changes have taken place.

We outlined, for example, habitat protection. When the compromise was made in 1992, habitat protection by the territorial government was about to be passed into legislation. That was passed but never proclaimed.

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Until April of this year we were under the impression - and the Yukon government did not advise us otherwise - that it would be able to handle habitat protection. So rather than having to deal with it in this bill, it would be dealt with at the territorial level. However, in April the cabinet minister from the Yukon indicated it is not a territorial responsibility, it is a federal responsibility.

Since that is the case, we feel compelled to suggest that it has to be dealt with. It is a responsibility of the federal government now and must be dealt with.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Ms Ellis: If I may add something....

The Chairman: No. We have to move on to Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan (North Island - Powell River): I'll defer while she answers.

The Chairman: Mr. Duncan is deferring his time for you to answer the first question.

Ms Ellis: Thank you very much.

I just want to add to that. As Bob said, we did agree to a consensus report in 1992, and that was based on certain information. We made compromises, but the promises that were made in exchange for those have not been lived up to. There is no consensus.

During the 1995 meetings of YMAC and in the legislation that went forward to the minister, outstanding issues were appended to those recommendations that clearly stated our position. So there hasn't effectively been a consensus since the exploration season in 1993. That promise was not met.

In terms of how this may open up deliberations for the future, it's imperative that the federal government introduces legislation that effectively protects the environment and exercises its responsibility in that area. Sometimes that involves hard decisions, but I think the onus is on the federal government to ensure that it actually introduces legislation that is going to effectively protect the environment and cover its responsibilities on land management.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Are there any comments from the government side?

If Audrey McLaughlin is here, I would like to offer her one minute.

Ms Ellis: She has no questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

We now invite from the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board: Gerry Couture, Georgina Sydney, and Doug Urquhart.

Mr. Gerry Couture (Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board): Mr. Chairman and hon. members, we represent the Fish and Wildlife Management Board of the Yukon, which has been identified in the UFA as the primary instrument of fish and wildlife management in the Yukon.

My name is Gerry Couture. My colleague is Georgina Sydney, from the Teslin Tlingit Council.

You have before you our letter to the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs outlining some of our concerns with Bill C-6, which is now before you. Most of our concerns have been eloquently addressed already by presenters who have preceded us. We'll cover them briefly later.

We would like, however, to provide you with some background as to why we are here today. I'll ask my colleague to begin by giving a first nation perspective of the Umbrella Final Agreement and what it means to first nation people.

Georgina.

Ms Georgina Sydney (Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the standing committee. My Tlingit name is Kooxuhan. I belong to the Yanyiedi clan of Teslin.

It's quite an honour for me to sit here this morning and speak to people who run this country. We come back time and time again to make our views known.

I'm sure you remember Bill C-33 and Bill C-34, which the standing committee reviewed for 16 or 17 hours to get it through your committee in June 1993. What I'm going to speak about this morning is the Umbrella Final Agreement, which was cause for the legislation to pass in 1993 and came into effect in February 1994.

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The reason we negotiated, the reason we wanted a land claim settlement, the Umbrella Final Agreement, was to have input into management in the Yukon. We were very concerned about future generations. First nations people are responsible for seven generations coming behind. I'm responsible for my great, great, great, great grandchildren. We'd like to have input into management. That was why we negotiated our deal.

You talk about a compromise you reached in 1992. Well, we too reached a compromise in our Umbrella Final Agreement. We conditionally surrendered 90% of our land in our traditional territories so we could have input into management, so we could have proper consultation.

We're very concerned about the depletion of wildlife and habitat in the Yukon. They talk about the Finlayson herd. I'd like to speak about the Carcross caribou herd, which we're trying to protect now. A lot of habitat erosion is going on there right now. The caribou are moving. They're being spotted in places where they haven't been seen before. I've seen them move closer to Teslin because there's no habitat for them. Everybody is going and building on where they used to live. We're very concerned about that.

That is the reason why we negotiated the Umbrella Final Agreement. It's the first time in history that aboriginal title was recognized on category A lands. Category B lands are protected a bit. But we're concerned about all the Yukon. Habitat has to be protected in all the areas, not just a selected area, because wildlife roams all over. The animals don't know the boundaries.

There were very hard negotiations on chapter 16 in our Umbrella Final Agreement. I remember sometimes we went for sixteen hours. It usually went like that when it was very hard in negotiations. Sometimes we went on weekends. It was a hard struggle for us, and for our elders, who helped us. Our elders always told us, it is not for us that we're negotiating this deal, it's for future generations; it's for you younger people. Those elders who helped us negotiate that deal are no longer with us today.

They were very concerned about our being able to eat our wildlife. That is how we were raised. We were raised from the land. When we talk about first nations people being one with the land, we were and we still are one with the land. First nations people are very respectful. We have a lot of respect for the animals, we don't take just what we need. We don't take just the hindquarters off moose and leave the rest. We take the whole thing.

We looked after this land here. When we came to the table for negotiations we brought a 30,000-year title to the table with us. We have traded that in for input into management. It is very important that we be involved in management and what happens on the land. It's not for me, it's for my children and my grandchildren coming behind that I'm worried.

We have a lot of respect for wildlife. We were raised thinking and believing everything in this world has a spirit, even the rocks, the water, fire. All the animals have spirits and we have to look after them, because if we don't we're not going to have any left. You can see what is going on down south, in the southern part of Canada. There is no habitat left for animals. There is a lot of population expansion, a lot of development going on. And you look at the Great Lakes, how polluted they are.

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We're very fortunate people up here in the Yukon. It's not like that yet and we're very concerned from a first nation perspective about what is going to happen on this land.

First nations people are also holistic in their thinking. We look after all, not just the physical part. We look after the emotional and the spiritual also. If you look at our Umbrella Final Agreement, it is holistic. Each chapter is related to another. It is all one big picture. You can't take pieces out of it. It all has to be considered together.

There is talk about cumulative impact. This has to be really looked at. There are a lot of land uses in the Yukon. Forestry and mining are being talked about. All those developments have an impact on the wildlife and habitat.

As I said before, we've seen animals where they haven't been before because they're being run out of their own places where they live.

Our whole agreement, the Umbrella Final Agreement, looks at co-management. In all areas we looked at this. We traded in that 30,000-year title for input into management because we looked at it as native and non-native people living here in the Yukon together. The fish and wildlife board is made up of all the people in the Yukon. It's not just first nations people.

Because we wanted to have input, the federal, territorial and first nations have to work together. This is the spirit of the Umbrella Final Agreement we signed.

The management board of the Umbrella Final Agreement is responsible for the management of fish and wildlife and their habitat according to paragraph 16.7.12.1. The Minister of Indian Affairs sent us a letter in May 1996 telling us we're just limited to fish and wildlife management. He should read this clause and enlighten himself, because clearly it speaks about habitat.

We're not against mining. We're not against development. But we'd like to have a planned development, not just going into the country and doing whatever people want.

We also have a trap line in the Yukon. There are mining companies that go on this trap line and they leave their equipment strewn down our trails.

We're very concerned about the way things are being handled in the Yukon, and this is what I'd like to share with you this morning. Thank you very much for listening to me.

The Chairman: Thank you. Can we proceed with members' questions, or did you have more to add?

Mr. Couture: I have more to add, sir.

The Chairman: Please carry on.

Mr. Couture: As my colleague has pointed out, Canada, the Yukon and Yukon first nations have named us, the Fish and Wildlife Management Board, as the primary instrument for the management of wildlife in Yukon and have given us the task of working toward ensuring the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitats.

After a year and a half of experience, it seems to us a responsibility this large requires that tools be made available to us so we can do our job. Our mandate is broad. It is much more than simply making hunting and fishing regulations. We do this in fact rather well. This is the easy part.

But when we attempt to make recommendations for the protection of habitat and the protection of wildlife from the effects of development, we find ourselves faced with a maze of sectoral legislation and policies with a mixture of federal and territorial jurisdictions, none of which, in our experience, seems crafted to approach or integrate with the other in a system that recognizes that development in any one sector has effects in all other sectors.

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This legislation, Bill C-6, continues that process of placing sectoral legislation and regulation in closed compartments and attempting to manage sectoral development in bits and pieces.

If we are to do our job, we have to work on this legislation, forestry legislation, gas and oil legislation, agricultural legislation, and access management legislation, besides having the job of the direct management of fish and wildlife management users.

The Umbrella Final Agreement outlines processes for integrated management, such as land use planning and a development assessment process. These will take time to build. Bill C-6 fails to move significantly towards that integrated system.

The first step might be recognition in this legislation that mining activity management must be undertaken with the interests of wildlife as an important consideration.

We, as a board, recognize that the primary purpose of Bill C-6 and the acts that it amends is to allow for orderly and responsible mineral exploration and development in Yukon. Nevertheless, given the potential of mineral exploration and development activities negatively to affect wildlife and their habitats, and the constitutionally entrenched obligation of Canada and the Government of Yukon to conserve wildlife, the board regrets that neither the proposed bill nor the regulations reference wildlife conservation in any manner whatsoever.

It seems apparent to the board that the management of mineral activity must be undertaken with the interests of wildlife as an important - indeed, a key - consideration.

This is the first piece of federal legislation dealing with Yukon since the passage of the acts approving the Yukon land claims final agreement. The failure to address conservation in any direct manner in sectoral legislation that affects wildlife we see as being a significant unfortunate oversight.

In view of this, the board recommends an addition to the purpose of the part sections of both the quartz and placer mining amendments, to add the words ``and conserve wildlife and wildlife habitat''. Those are proposed section 134 in the quartz mining act and proposed section 100 in the placer mining act.

I'd now like to address free entry. On the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words, I'd like to refer you to a map, which I hope you can see on your screen. This is a map of the summer range of the Finlayson caribou herd. It includes important post-calving and calving grounds and the main portion of the summer range and the main portion of the rutting grounds.

Early this year the chief of the Ross River Dene people came to us and explained that he had a problem, which he explained by rolling an overlay over the map. You will note that the caribou are designated by the small dots and the green habitat areas. This is the overlay the chief gave us. The red items are the some 16,000 mining claims that now exist in that area.

The chief welcomed the idea that he would be able to work with mining companies to develop some economic opportunity for his nation, but he was frustrated by the fact that only the companies with which he had agreements were ones over which he had some modicum of control.

This herd is central to the soul of those people, but as he explained it, there are people coming out of the bush like fleas out of a lynx's back. Sixteen thousand claims, with all the attendant activities, even those allowed under this legislation, have a monstrous impact on that herd.

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Enough said about free entry. It seems to us that what the legislation must address is not the normal operation of mining activities but what we call the ``gold rush'' phenomenon. This type of rush has occurred at least three times in the past three decades. It seems to us that this legislation must attempt to address the worst-case scenario, because those are the times when the damage is done. Bill C-6 as it presently stands fails in this.

I'd now like to address the review period. For years it has been painfully obvious that there were deficiencies in the existing quartz and placer mining acts. Even in the face of mounting evidence that a mining land use regime was badly needed, it took many years for the Government of Canada to consider making the changes, several years to develop the changes, and still more years before the changes were introduced. To avoid a similar situation in the event that the current amendments do not prove effective, we believe the act should include a review provision to allow problems with the act to be responsibly dealt with in a timely manner and not delayed excessively, as was the case with the current set of amendments.

We therefore recommend that Bill C-6 should incorporate clauses that would open the quartz and placer mining acts for review and possible amendment in five years' time. We believe that both government and industry in that time would have an opportunity to identify problems with the act that might require amendment.

On the subject of security requirements, proposed paragraphs 143(1)(a) and (b), which are proposed as additions to the quartz mining act, would allow the chief of mining land use to require security on a discretionary basis in the case of class II notifications and in relation to operating plans. Similarly, under proposed paragraph 143(1)(c) the minister may require security in the case of licences. We recognize that there will be considerable variation in the scale and impact of activities permitted or licensed under these acts, and we appreciate the need for discretionary powers in setting an appropriate level of security.

We are convinced, however, that the question of security cannot be left entirely in the hands of the chief. The act should send a clear signal to operators that they have a legal responsibility to respect the land and wildlife habitats and to complete adequate reclamation when their activities have ceased. For this reason, we recommend that you consider amending proposed section 143 to require operators of any program, except in the case of class I activities, to make a mandatory security deposit before beginning an operation. We believe that the amount of the security should be equal to but not exceed the estimated cost of appropriate reclamation.

We support the Crown's access to security to rectify problems. We also support the provisions that provide for refund of security to an operator when appropriate reclamation has been completed. We believe that the mandatory posting of security before class II, III and IV activities begin, and refund as soon as reclamation is complete, would function as an effective incentive to operators to fulfil the conditions of operating plans.

On the subject of fines, under proposed section 154 of the quartz mining act amendments and proposed section 117 of the placer mining act amendments, five maximums are set for a variety of offences under the acts. The board appreciates that the level of fines for offences will necessarily be linked to their environmental impact. What is of concern is that the proposed maximums do not send a serious enough message to operator. Our review of the levels suggest that they are inconsistent with levels set by comparable contemporary legislation. This suggests to us that the Government of Canada may be prepared to adopt a lesser standard of protection for Yukon lands under mineral exploration and development than is generally in place in the rest of the country. This is of particular concern regarding your government's fiduciary responsibility for the interest of Yukon first nations, many of which have not reached final agreements.

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Consequently, we recommend that the penalty and fine levels prescribed by the acts be revisited with the intent of bringing them into conformity with the provisions of other modern Canadian legislation. We also specifically recommend that the fine ceiling set for contravening subsection 139(1) of the Yukon Quartz Mining Act should be increased from $100,000 to $1 million. We feel in the case of large operations a fine of $100,000 would simply be counted as a cost of doing business.

We would now like to comment on some of the regulations as they are written in the act. First of all, on the classification activities, previous presenters have outlined the problem of the thresholds of class I activities in relation to heavy equipment, drilling, and explosives. Perhaps a simple illustration would serve to make the point. We are extremely concerned that an operator, with no prior notice, has the ability to enter a critical lambing area for sheep, for instance, and through the impact of a single blast destroy a whole lamb crop for the season. These are things we believe should require notification so the chief at least has a chance of making some sort of assessment of whether the activity will have an impact on wildlife.

On the subject of baseline data, paragraph 10(2)(b.1) requires ``a description of the natural characteristics of the area where the program is to take place''. We view this as a very positive step, in that those evaluating an application might be able to glean some sense about what might be threatened by an operation. However, to ensure the Government of Canada is in a reasonable position to determine whether or not a proposed operating plan will have significant impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitat, and to allow monitoring of impacts, should they occur, we believe an operator should be obliged to furnish baseline information on wildlife.

To that end, we recommend the addition of a new paragraph, 10(2)(b.2) which would require:

...sufficient baseline data regarding wildlife and habitat in the area where the program is to take place to allow a relevant and appropriately detailed assessment of the possible impacts to wildlife and habitat of the proposed operating plan.

On the review of operating plans, we believe that given the accelerated pace of mineral exploration in Yukon and the limitations on the department for monitoring and enforcement, some exploration and development could proceed for extended periods without being evaluated for conformity with approved plans. To offer the public greater assurance that there will be timely reviews of these activities, we believe more frequent reviews should be established.

We therefore recommend that operating plans approved for seven years or less should be reviewed at the midpoint of their term and inspections should be conducted to ensure operators are conducting activities in conformity with approved work plans.

We have been informed by the minister responsible for this legislation that he does not feel it appropriate that our concerns for wildlife be dealt with in this legislation, which is essentially mining legislation. At the same time we have been told by the Government of Yukon that they have no jurisdiction for habitat protection on crown lands administered by the federal government.

In summation, if, after consideration, the Parliament of Canada decides this legislation should pass unaltered, we suggest strongly that in order to acknowledge its obligations under chapter 16 of the Umbrella Final Agreement at least partially, Canada should state unequivocally to the Government of Yukon that under paragraph 17(m) of the Yukon Act it has jurisdiction to introduce and enforce territorial legislation to recognize wildlife habitat and its use.

In conclusion, we are not anti-development. In fact, I am a placer miner and I derive part of my income from royalties received from placer mining today. Members of our board derive part of their income from placer mining. Mining is an essential part of the economy of the Yukon. It provides benefits for all Yukoners, including many first nations who are in the process of developing economic agreements with mining companies.

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However, We know the dangers to wildlife and wildlife habitat that are involved with mining exploration and development activities. We ask that you consider seriously our recommendations for making this act better.

Thank you. We'll take questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Now for members' questions. Mr. Duncan, four minutes.

Mr. Duncan: At the end of your presentation you referred to the fact that the federal government should make a clear and unequivocal statement regarding wildlife and its jurisdiction and management prerogatives in the Yukon. How in your mind would that operate in terms of the whole movement towards devolution that the federal and territorial governments are currently talking about? Do you think that would still be the case? Would it complicate it, or would you argue that it should become clearly a Yukon jurisdiction at that time?

[Technical Difficulty - Editor]

Mr. Couture: I don't believe a movement by the territorial government to exercise jurisdiction for habitat protection would at all impair the coordination of devolution activities. Indeed, it would provide a basis upon which we can work to develop single permitting processes. I don't see at all how that would complicate the process; I think rather it would make it easier.

Mr. Duncan: Okay, but what you were requesting was a clear and unequivocal statement that would make reference to the federal responsibility for wildlife and wildlife habitat. I believe that's what you were asking for. Would that not reduce their future option, and is that not something that's in discussion and negotiation right now? Would that not be a very strong argument against doing what you're suggesting?

Mr. Couture: I think you misunderstood me. I suggested that the Government of Canada should state clearly and unequivocally that the Government of Yukon has jurisdiction under section 17 of the Yukon Act, in its responsibilities for the preservation of game, to manage fish and wildlife habitat. So what I'm suggesting is that the Government of Canada could state to Yukon that it can take over this jurisdiction.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you. You did clarify that for me and I did misunderstand you at first.

Mr. Finlay (Oxford): I want to go back to something Georgina said very eloquently earlier about giving up a 30,000-year title to get 90% of the land on which they would have some control, but that also under the Umbrella Final Agreement this organization, the Fish and Wildlife Management Board obviously felt they would have some real influence on development in other parts of the Yukon.

Georgina used the term ``proper consultation''. I've heard the complaint before over the last three years in regard to these co-management boards that, from the perspective of the aboriginal people, somehow or other proper consultation doesn't seem to take place. Can you explain a little more specifically what you see as proper consultation? Maybe we're not understanding the term in the same way.

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Ms Sydney: When I speak about consultation, I talk about it going both ways. Getting feedback when you bring an opinion to the table is what I talk about with consultation. It's never happened to us in the Yukon. This, the legislation we're talking about now, is the first time we're having input into something before it happens. If we were involved at the outset, I think the whole legislation probably would have developed quite differently. If you ask the Yukon people themselves, if you go to the communities, they will tell you that when we reached the Umbrella Final Agreement, it raised us to the third order of government in this country. That's what I talk about, about us all working together, because we are a government also.

Mr. Finlay: You don't think that the YMAC committee perhaps represents that kind of consultation?

Ms Sydney: When that legislation was happening...in 1990 it started. You talked about a compromise that was reached in 1992. Our agreements didn't come into law until February 1994, and I don't see our Umbrella Final Agreement being mentioned anywhere in the legislation.

Mr. Harper (Churchill): I'd like to congratulate both of you, particularly Georgina, for your fine presentation. I think these are the same kinds of arguments and thinking that I have personally, as an aboriginal person, raised out on the land.

I believe you mentioned that you do have some authority, some legislative power, to make laws respecting particularly category A lands. I would see those lands to be much more to conserve the way the aboriginal people think, at least within that area. I think within category B lands you do have some process, but it's not satisfactory to achieve those ends to meet the vision of the aboriginal people. I think that's where you have the problem. But I certainly congratulate you on your presentation. It was well thought out and I think provided some education to some of our committee members here.

You just mentioned the words ``being recognized as the third order of government''. I think that under the umbrella agreement you do have the ability to make those laws. I hope you will continue to do that as a guide for other people. It shows that aboriginal people can provide the vision, not only for our people but for the rest of the country. I just wanted to say that to you.

Thank you very much.

Ms Sydney: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Ms McLaughlin, do you wish to have two minutes?

Ms McLaughlin (Yukon): I'm sorry, we're a bit crowded here so I'll be very brief.

I want to point out briefly to the committee that the issue the Council for Yukon First Nations raised, which was raised by the representative for the Inuvialuit and which is raised today by Georgina Sydney and Gerry Couture, is an ongoing issue of implementing agreements that have been made for consultation and the need for consultation to be well defined. I just point that out for the committee because it will come up in other pieces of legislation relevant to the Yukon and probably to other areas.

The Chairman: Thank you for your input, and thank you to our witnesses.

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We now invite, from the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, chair Keith Byram.

I will mention to committee members that when we go through the bill clause by clause we will invite persons from the department who are very familiar with the legislation. In some of the presentations things are said that may not relate to the bill or could be questioned. I allow witnesses to express their feelings no matter what they have to say. So you may want corrections, and we will bring some staff in to answer your questions when we go through the bill clause by clause.

Mr. Byram, welcome.

Mr. Keith Byram (Chair, Yukon Mining Advisory Committee): Good morning.

I'm a bit distressed to see a lot of the things that we spent hours and days and weeks trying to get consensus on being brought up and rehashed again. I guess my main purpose here today is to tell you how long we spent over a number of years in getting to where we finally got.

Bill Dunbar was the chair of YMAC for a couple of years when the original recommendations were put in. Then he felt he had served his part, and, I guess with the consent of all members of YMAC, I took over as chair. We spent a couple of more years, during some long sessions, getting to where we finally put the report in to the minister about a year ago.

I really urge care and caution to your committee in cherry-picking items here and there and changing the recommendations. As one of your committees said, if you start making substantial changes on behalf of any particular viewpoint, it will perhaps be very upsetting to people who spent all those years getting to a consensus.

There were some points at the end of our last deliberations where consensus just wasn't possible. I outlined those areas and what the various stands of the members were in my letter to Minister Irwin last October 27. If you have all that information, there's no point in my going over it. If you don't have it, I could run through this letter and outline the high points of that.

The Chairman: I think that you should highlight the high points. We don't have that letter.

Mr. Byram: Okay.

This was written to the minister last October. I advised that we had completed discussions on the development of the mining land use regime and that I believed that the proposed legislation on the whole represented a balanced and responsible approach to regulating mining exploration activities.

Given the diversity of the committee and the differences of opinion, some issues were not resolved and complete agreement was not possible. In these cases I had been directed to bring these issues to your attention.

The Yukon Chamber of Mines, the Klondike Placer Miners Association, and the Yukon government support the original 1992 YMAC recommendations as a reasonable and workable compromise and as an acceptable management regime for the Yukon.

The Yukon Council of First Nations is represented on the committee. The primary concern of that representation was to ensure that the mining legislation would be consistent with the requirements of the Umbrella Final Agreement.

Steve Taylor from Dawson, certainly for the time I was chair, was the representative. There may well have been another member in the days of Dunbar.

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The Yukon Conservation Society's support for the original recommendations in the 1992 report was contingent on speedy implementation at the time. Delay in implementation has been of great concern and some of the issues are no longer supported. Tougher controls over exploration activities are sought by YCS. The various views on the key outstanding issues are outlined as follows.

On fines, the Yukon Conservation Society desires to see fine levels substantially increased, to be consistent with legislation such as CEPA, the Fisheries Act, and the Yukon Environment Act. They also wish to see jail terms for production activities and director liability. The Yukon government and the mining industry associations support the original YMAC recommendations that offences reflect the concept of strict liability and that penalties should not exceed those for similar offences and should not include jail terms. The industry objects to the ability of a fine to be levelled on a per diem basis. DIAND officials have maintained that the proposed levels are consistent with other fine levels in the Yukon related to land use under the Territorial Lands Act or water use under the Yukon Waters Act.

On the matter of security, the Yukon Conservation Society believes security should be required for all land use activities. They believe only the risk of environmental impact should be considered in the establishment of security levels. Third parties should be able to appeal the level of security required. DIAND and the Yukon government support the original YMAC recommendations, which include security to be applied in cases where there is a risk of significant environmental liability or where an operator's previous performance indicates the likelihood that mitigation might not be implemented. The industry associations feel prior convictions should be the only consideration for requesting security.

There was some disagreement on thresholds. Except for the removal of reference to acid rock drainage and the 10,000 tonne production allowance, the thresholds were recommended in the 1992 YMAC report. The Yukon Conservation Society wishes to see all mechanical activities require an environmental screening. Lowering of the threshold between class I and class II to provide no mechanical trenching strictly near blasting was one option presented which would alleviate concerns about impacts on sensitive areas and wildlife uses.

The mining industry associations and the Yukon government support the original YMAC recommendations as a reasonable compromise: ensure that management resources for environmental screening are focused on high-impact activities where there is the greatest potential for adverse environmental impacts.

The Yukon government does not wish to change the thresholds to provide for screenings of physical activities now in class I. These activities are not considered to present a significant impact on wildlife, and the government administration of land regulations should be focused where environmental impacts are considered to be potentially significant; that is, on the higher levels of exploration activities. I added that I felt significant changes in class thresholds would jeopardize the negotiated balance in this whole regime.

The mining industries were concerned about the effect of the new regulatory regime coming into force in the middle of the summer, at the peak of the exploration activity. The Yukon Conservation Society stated they could not support further delay in the implementation of this regime. My recommendation was that the timing of implementation take into account the seasonal nature of mining. I'm not sure where we're at now or when this would be implemented, but it's something to think about that planning is required for all these activities and it would be difficult if these were promulgated at the last moment.

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I also recommended that further polishing be done by YMAC on the performance options so the workable version will be available prior to the promulgation of the land use act. A realistic deadline for this work to be completed by would be the end of February 1996.

After the letter went out nothing happened, so that issue has still to be attacked.

I also recommended that an implementation team should be struck to monitor the performance of the MLUR and that a formal review be performed after two full years of implementation.

That's all I have.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Members' questions. Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan: This act would represent a quite significant change to the status quo. You've talked a lot about the planning required and the timing. Has anyone tried to estimate what the average operator's cost of compliance would be? How much is this going to contribute to not only costs but also other implementation problems for people who were involved in this process?

In the last 24 hours we've heard a lot about a wish-list of people wanting to impose more into this bill, but it already represents significant change to many people that, as you've talked about, hasn't even been implemented, and a planning window is required. Are you aware of any estimate at all as to what the breadth of that would be?

Mr. Byram: No, I personally don't have any numbers to put to that. I guess that it would vary considerably depending on the activity.

This is one reason why some thought should be given to the timing and the implementation of this new regime, so it would give operators the opportunity to see what the extra costs to them would be and to decide whether or not to go ahead. If someone in the industry was planning to do some exploration and had everything set up but at the last moment they were given some new rules by which they had to abide, it could make a difference to whether they would go ahead or not.

A lot of people in the industry are somewhat familiar with what is likely to happen and may have taken this into consideration, but it would certainly be desirable to time it so the operators had some time before starting the season under the new regulations.

Mr. Duncan: I guess it would be fair to say that the smaller the operation, the more concern this new act would be. Whether it's an individual prospector or a small placer mining operation, the cost of compliance and the burden imposed by this act would be proportionately much higher on smaller operators. That's where the major concerns would be.

Am I correct in assuming that?

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Mr. Byram: Yes, I would think that's accurate. The bigger, more sophisticated companies probably have a fairly good idea of what's coming in the proposed act. But even they might be inclined to change their plans depending on what the final wording and criteria would be. But I would say the smaller operators would be most affected.

The Chairman: Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Finlay: Mr. Byram, I appreciate your obvious skills in I guess steering the YMAC committee to the final conclusions they reached.

I'm interested that in your letter to the minister you suggested a review of implementation after two years. That's something we've had suggested to us in previous testimony.

I want to explore just a little more...and I may have this wrong. You mentioned that the first nations people - and Steve Taylor was at the table - wanted to ensure the Umbrella Final Agreement was...what? Was not compromised? Was paid attention to? Can you tell me in what way or where it is in any way mentioned or significant in the current acts or as proposed?

Mr. Byram: The intention was that we not do something totally at odds with the Umbrella Final Agreement and that the Umbrella Final Agreement criteria be reflected in our report. Of course the two things were ongoing. To the best of my knowledge this was done. I didn't hear any objections from Steve Taylor to anything we were doing in this report as possibly being in conflict with the Umbrella Final Agreement.

The Chairman: Ms McLaughlin.

Ms McLaughlin: I have a brief question. One of the issues many of the witnesses have raised was the issue of lack of notification on class I. I wonder if Mr. Byram, for the committee, could give us information on the rationale for lack of notification on class I.

Mr. Byram: Class I activities are considered to be fairly minor as far as any problems with the environment are concerned. I've heard some statements made about how class I activities could be quite horrendous. From all the deliberations we've had over the years, I think some of that is exaggerated. It would be pretty difficult, I think. I suppose if you did go with a small bit of exploration considered as class I into an absolutely sensitive area you could do some damage, but it's a bit hard to contemplate that would happen, I believe.

One of the things is that a lot of these small activities take place with a fair amount of secrecy and the small prospector might not want to make his activities known. It would also be fairly difficult to turn a person down on a class I activity because it was a sensitive area, because no comprehensive mapping is done of what areas are sensitive and what areas aren't sensitive. Even if someone did come in and declare their intentions for class I activity in a certain area, I'm not sure the chief of mining could say whether that was a sensitive area or not. I don't think that information is known.

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The Chairman: I'd like to express our admiration for the work you have done as chair of YMAC. When I was in the Yukon my experience was that every party could identify some dissatisfaction with the agreement, yet you were able to bring them all to consensus. To me, when everyone is not completely happy it's good legislation, especially when they all agree to go forward. I want to congratulate you and thank you for the work you have done.

Mr. Byram: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Duncan has another question of you.

Mr. Duncan: My question is probably for the chair, from the standpoint that we still have two or three people to come before committee. If there's an issue that comes up from the next two or three witnesses and we'd like to pursue it with Mr. Byram, will he still be there, and will I have the opportunity to ask a question? I guess I'm asking both of you a question.

The Chairman: Mr. Duncan, if you're asking if there's a possibility for Mr. Byram to reappear on majority vote of the committee, the answer is yes.

Mr. Duncan: But he may be leaving. Do we know -

The Chairman: Could we ask you, Mr. Byram, if you plan on staying until the end of the hearings?

Mr. Byram: I believe we have only one or two more witnesses or speakers, do we not?

The Chairman: Three more.

Mr. Byram: Yes, I can stay.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

I now invite Mr. Mike Power, president of the Yukon Prospectors Association.

As we await Mr. Power, I would like to mention that the Teetlit Gwich'in Council will not be appearing, but they had made a written presentation and it's included in our documents and it will be considered.

I now welcome you, Mr. Power. Please tell us who is accompanying you and proceed.

Mr. Ron Burdall (Vice-President, Yukon Prospectors Association): Actually, Mike Power is out in the bush working, so I've been handed this, as far as I'm concerned, rather voluminous document to present to you.

I'm vice-president of the Yukon Prospectors Association. My cohort, Rob Hamel, is a director of the Yukon Prospectors Association.

When I first heard Bill C-6 was going to be reviewed by the aboriginal affairs committee, I was a bit puzzled as to why mining legislation would be looked at by your committee. Upon reflection it seemed to make a lot more sense, from a prospecting point of view anyhow, because many prospectors are of aboriginal descent. Certainly the most significant discoveries in this territory have been made by aboriginal people. I guess in that regard it makes a fair bit of sense.

I just came here this morning and sat through the fish and wildlife submission and the last submission. I haven't been to all the committee things, but I was interested in hearing what some of these other folk have said.

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So rather than just reading through this document verbatim, I might jump to answer some comment that has been raised in a previous submission. I hope you will bear with me as I jumble around and stumble through this thing.

First I would like to give you just a little bit of background information. Some of this you've probably heard from the Chamber of Mines or the KPMA, but I guess you will hear it again.

The Yukon mining industry is the backbone of the territorial economy, providing 90%-plus of non-governmental revenue - 90% at least. It has been the mainstay of the territorial economy since the early 1890s, when gold was discovered on the Fortymile. Currently a very significant percentage of non-governmental workforces is directly employed in mining, and revenue from the industry is a major input to secondary and service sectors of this economy. The mining industry is particularly important to the economies of the smaller communities in our territory, towns such as Ross River, Mayo, Faro, and Dawson.

A mine must be found before it can be mined. Mines will not be found unless a significant expenditure is made in searching for the minerals. This work is inherently a very high-risk venture. The odds of a mineral discovery proving to be significant are in the order of 10,000 to l. In most cases, many years of exploration work must be conducted in any given area before a mine is found. The capital risks to put this into production are phenomenal. In some cases it has taken over 50 years to put a property into production after a prospector has found it.

Prospectors are individuals engaged in a very high-risk occupation of locating mineral showings, from which mines are developed. They make their living by finding and staking mineral occurrences and then selling these staked properties to companies willing to explore mineral occurrences. Aside from the difficulty of finding new mineral occurrences, they must be able to attract exploration capital to explore the properties.

Mining companies of all sizes now explore globally, and the Yukon must compete for exploration capital with jurisdictions that have better transportation, more favourable climates, and a more efficient regulatory regime than we find here in Canada.

The collective efforts of prospectors over the past hundred years have had an impact far in excess of their numbers. Of the 69 mines that have been producing in the territory in the last hundred years, 67 have been found by prospectors or by junior mineral exploration companies and their syndicates that they put together. The majors have found two mines, and they're not necessarily the big ones.

The Yukon Prospectors Association represents prospectors active throughout the Yukon Territory. Our members are residents of the Yukon Territory and derive all or part of their income from mineral exploration.

Bill C-6 will directly affect our livelihoods and the livelihoods of all other prospectors in this territory by regulating our activities in the bush and by influencing the investment climate for mineral exploration in this territory. Prospectors are engaged in the riskiest sector of the mineral exploration business, and the sector most susceptible to changes in the investment climate. We stand to lose more than any other sector of the mineral exploration industry if cumbersome, poorly drafted mining legislation is imposed on this territory.

You can look on it as being a food-chain type of situation. I'm a biologist, by education anyhow, so I tend to look at things in that way. The prospector is right at the bottom of the heap. If anything changes above us, we're affected, unfortunately usually in a negative way. We have to worry not only about the weather, about the insects, about the mundane things that prospectors have worried about for the last hundred years, but also about what some mining company in London might be doing, what some environmental group in southern California might be doing, and God only knows what else.

So when you're looking at the prospector, remember that we're at the bottom of that food chain. It seems as if everybody is preying on us.

We are certainly an entity very different from the major mining companies. We are not Inco. We are not Noranda. We depend on them, but we are not them. We are completely separate entities.

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To get back to the paper, the YPA, the Yukon Prospectors Association, has the following specific concerns with Bill C-6. First, Bill C-6 effectively proscribes small-scale mining by imposing unworkable regulations on this activity.

I'll just quickly run through the concerns and then maybe expand on a few of them as time permits.

Our second concern is the aerial specifications under class 1. We feel these may impose unnecessary burdens on the exploration, contracting, and consulting firms operating in any given mining camp.

Our third concern is that the notification periods for class II activities and the thresholds for class I and II exploration activities are not fixed in the legislation and are therefore subject to arbitrary change by Order in Council.

Our fourth concern is that the thresholds for the use of campsites in the class I regulations are too low and some grassroots exploration projects may easily exceed these.

Fifth is the lack of any list of qualifications required of the chief, who is going to have enormous power over our day-to-day lives, and his hoard of inspectors.

Sixth, the proposed continuing offence subsection, proposed subsection 154(7), is extreme and exposes the prospector, the little guy who is out there, often making very little money, and the small exploration companies to unacceptable risks.

Seventh, the security deposits in class II, under proposed section 143, again, are set arbitrarily by the chief. The committee should remember we're a very small jurisdiction. There are 30,000 people in the entire territory. We know the regulators. We know the folks from the environmental community. They generally know us. Maybe I'm paranoid, but it's my feeling that an inspector or a chief or some bureaucrat in the regulatory regime is going to have a greater tendency to come down hard on me than he is on an Inco or a Noranda or a Placer Dome. They can deal with me quite easily. Those larger, better financed companies which have a whole department of lawyers are a different situation.

Other concerns we have are that under class I, if you use any sort of mechanism to do trenching, these things have to be filled in. I think what we have here is just a lack of understanding of what mineral exploration is. Mineral exploration is not mining. They are two completely separate entities.

It's like the territorial government and the federal government. To somebody who just rolls into the country, the government is the government. There are all these big buildings up there and they're polished nicely and they have all sorts of people with suits running around in them. But from your perspective you certainly understand the difference between a federal government and a territorial government and a municipal government. We have the same situation here. Prospectors are a far different breed of people from junior mining companies, and especially from senior mining companies.

Back to the trenching issue, what a single prospector, or even a group of prospectors, can do under the class I limitations is really very small. Opening that trench up gives us something to show one of these larger mining companies. If we have to cover that trench back in, what good is that?

I just flew out of the bush from a property that was last worked on in 1969. Those trenches are open. I didn't see any bones in the bottom of them, so I assume nothing died. They are there. I can see what was done. I don't have to bring a cat in there again and reopen those trenches. They're not significant. They had a fair number of raspberries growing along the sides of them, so the bears were utilizing them a fair bit. The trails that went from trench to trench were completely covered in alder, making a wonderful corridor for moose and bear to travel through.

.1405

Again, from a biologist's point of view, I really couldn't see any significant environmental degradation from an exploration program that was carried out in 1969, when a guy could jump on a D7 Cat and drive it from one end of the territory to the other.

I'm not suggesting that we necessarily should still be doing that. The mining industry, and certainly prospectors, changes with everybody else, and we are very concerned - as prospectors, probably more concerned than anybody else is - about the environment. We live in the bush. Some of us make very small sums of money and we hunt and fish just to help supplement our incomes. Many of us are trappers.

Again, I'm sorry about stumbling around here. I'll get back to the trenching.

Mineral exploration is a renewable resource, really. Again, I've just said I came from an area that was explored in 1969. Some of these areas are explored again and again. Every three years, every five years, people go into these same areas and do the same thing as somebody else did.

This might seem to be a bit wasteful, but new geological models come up all the time, mineral prices change, communist countries fall and the way commodities move about the world changes, and properties become viable again. Tens of millions of dollars are pumped into this territory for exploration without any real environmental damage.

I would love to take members of the Conservation Society or anybody else who has the money for a helicopter or airplane trip or a nice backpacking trip to where I worked in the last ten years. They would be hard-pressed to find anything other than a few ribbons hanging on trees, and that would be just in the last few years where they haven't deteriorated.

Mineral exploration on the class I, and even some of the class II, scales is not ripping up the landscape.

We'll move on to number 9. This is something that Georgina was talking about, maybe from a slightly different perspective. This shows the duplicity of regulations.

We keep hearing about a one-window approach and certainty. Again, we're at the bottom of that pile. We need certainty and the one-window approach more than anybody else does. We do not have a bureaucracy behind us to help us get through things. We don't have lawyers to help us get through things. We're one man or two men - or women - and that's it.

So when we see things like DAP coming down the line, surface rights legislation, this MLUR, all these acts, and then, accompanying all these acts, regulations, we're a bit concerned too. So we would love to see all these processes somehow being integrated.

Although we are not completely happy with it, as we weren't actually sitting on the board, YMAC may be a good model from which to start that integration.

Our last specific concern is recovery of cost. We see all through the government, the federal government especially, a big move toward cost recovery. If an inspector flies halfway through the Yukon Territory to check out what I've done or haven't done on a property, that ruins me. Financially I am done for if I have to come up with a $3,000 helicopter bill. Of course he's going to have a couple of guys with him, and by the time you pay some of those wages and the helicopter bill, I'm done for. You might as well shoot me in the head - if we still have guns in this country.

That's another issue I'd love to talk to your the committee about, but I won't.

I can go into further detail on any of those concerns if you folks would like to, but rather than dilly-dallying through this maybe we can just move on to a conclusion here. Certainly if you want any of those things expounded on I can gladly do that.

.1410

In conclusion, given our concerns and the reality of the situation, the Yukon Prospectors Association reluctantly - with a capital ``R'' - endorses and supports Bill C-6 as it has been presented to your committee by YMAC. We feel in some matters our interests were not well represented at YMAC and aspects of this legislation will have serious impacts on our livelihood. Despite this, we recognize the process of drafting legislation on this contentious issue requires some compromise and sacrifice on the part of all concerned.

Our association has debated the merits of proposing amendments to this legislation and the consequences thereof. The YMAC was struck to attempt to reconcile the various interests on this question and struck a compromise which naturally pleases no one.

Your committee has heard...and I guess we'll hear from a couple of other interest groups, some within the mining industry and some not. Yukon prospectors live in this territory and we make our living directly from the mining industry. Of all the groups you hear, prospectors and other people in the bush will be the ones who are most affected by this legislation. Mining is a global industry and major mining companies can operate as easily in Ecuador as in the Yukon. Actually, they can probably operate more easily in Ecuador. Major mining companies have no ties to this territory, to its people, or to the local economy. Environmental groups in this territory have shown little, if any, concern for the livelihood of those in the resource industry, nor are their jobs or businesses greatly affected by this legislation.

I'd just like to put a little personal addendum in here at this point. Their livelihoods may be affected when, after mining is wiped out of this territory and federal transfer funds of half a billion dollars a year dry up, no more income is coming into this territory and they have to start slashing jobs at the weather office and other assorted places in the territory.

I'll get back to the brief.

We feel we have a lot to lose and little to gain with this legislation but would prefer to see certainty than to live with the continual uncertainty we are now facing.

The Yukon economy is driven by government and mining revenues. To generate mining revenues you require a mine. Some 97% of all the mines ever operated in the Yukon Territory were found by prospectors. If history serves as any guide, the equation is quite simple: no prospectors, no mines. If it becomes too difficult for the small operator to make a living in this territory, we will go elsewhere. No mines will be found. The Yukon's economy will become further dependent on hand-outs from Ottawa. The mining industry will be dominated by large mining companies fruitlessly searching for new deposits.

Jurisdictions favouring large mining companies over prospectors have a much lower rate of mine discovery. A recent example of that is Labrador. For forty years the Labrador government held a concession system, not a free-entry system. For over a generation those companies looked for things and really didn't turn up much. Once the legislation was changed a couple of prospectors went in and voila, Voisey Bay. The federal government now has billions of dollars of revenue coming in, in an economy in Newfoundland that desperately needs jobs to help finance social programs, to help finance government jobs, to help finance roads, to help finance hospitals; to help finance all sorts of things. Please don't step on the poor prospector.

I urge you to consider carefully the consequences of your decision on Bill C-6, both to the mining industry in particular and to Yukon people in general. Many of the features of this legislation will be difficult for prospectors to work with, not because they seek to protect the environment but because they are ambiguous and complicated and will be enforced by a ponderous bureaucracy. Despite this, we are willing to try to make a compromise and make this compromise work. We urge you to support Bill C-6 as is.

Our other recommendation is that if and when the proposed regulations that accompany Bill C-6 are worked on, it should be be done in-house, as a sort of continuation of the YMAC process. We would like that expanded a bit. I'm sure folks such as the fish and wildlife board and the Council of Yukon First Nations would like to see that expanded. An in-house, Yukon-made solution would probably work better than having some of your folks in Ottawa do the same.

.1415

I'm not sure if it's proper for me to make a few comments on some of the concerns that I heard before - like why notification on class I is what it is, and why it's a concern to prospectors, comments like the baseline information. Maybe the chair can inform me.

The Chairman: We're here to hear what you have to say; if that's what you want to talk about, the time is yours. Go ahead if you want to.

Mr. Burdall: All right, I'll do that.

We've heard, at least I have heard, concerns about unregulated exploration: that there's this group of people.... I refer to the map. You can't see it off to your side, unfortunately, but it was the Finlayson map where it showed the area where the caribou are and then where the staking has taken place. I would like to put this in a bit of perspective. The committee should remember that this sort of activity has been going on for a hundred years. There is a staking rush in the Yukon Territory. Three years from now that big ugly patch in red will once again be pristine white and the caribou will continue to be munched on by ever-growing wolf populations.

I don't mean to make light of the fact that there is a lot going on there. That's a very important caribou herd. I've hunted that caribou herd many times and I would hate to see it decimated or hurt in any way. But I sincerely don't feel that the level of mineral exploration in that area, especially by we free-wheeling prospectors, is at all detrimental to that herd or any other herd in the Yukon Territory.

We've had 100 years of this sort of activity in the Yukon Territory, and I would challenge anybody to show me where 100 years of grassroots exploration has significantly hurt any wildlife or habitat. That same 100 years of grassroots exploration has kept many families fed, aboriginal families and white families. We don't really make any distinction in the prospecting community. After two or three weeks in the bush, most of us are green or at least smell like we should be green.

There was a mention made about baseline information, that it should be provided before we go into an area to make sure that if we set off a few sticks of dynamite we are not destroying a lambing ground for sheep. Again, from a practical point of view, a prospector can't do that. We cannot hire a consultant to go out and do some wing-ding study on any area. We just don't have the resources.

Does that mean we should eliminate the prospector? No. Because if you eliminate the prospector, you've eliminated your wealth creation engine in this territory.

Again, I just refer back to history and say we have been doing this for a hundred years and we still have a lot of lambing areas. I cannot think of one lambing area; again, maybe there are and I'm just unaware of it. I'm not saying there haven't been problems, but I cannot think of one calving area or lambing area that has been destroyed. This is a very emotional issue from our point of view, because this is our bread and butter, and for those concerned about the environment. And when emotions run high, things oftentimes get exaggerated. That's another reason why we should be solving these problems in the Yukon so we can sit down face to face and put more of a personal touch on issues rather than bouncing things through a committee in Ottawa.

.1420

I have one final point. This is a free-entry system point. We've heard that for some reason people are kicking at free entry. You remember the big red splotch on the map. Whether it's free entry or not, that big splotch on the map is going to be there. Those claims were not staked by independent prospectors, though independent prospectors may have been making money when they were hired by big mining companies to stake those claims.

If you eliminate free entry - and I realize Bill C-6 has absolutely nothing to do with free entry, but it's obviously perceived to be a problem here - in my opinion you're simply shifting a problem. You're going to have these huge bureaucratic mining companies running the show. And a local-based conservation society trying to fight those guys, as opposed to walking across the street and talking with me personally, is going to have a lot less influence. That's my personal opinion on that one.

The other point I want to make, to mention what Gerry from the fish and wildlife board said about the staking in the Finlayson area, is that I've participated as well when I was out caribou hunting. The folks I was staking with were from Ross River, and two of those people were aboriginal people. Again, sometimes I have to shake my head and wonder where the controversy is, where the problems are. When I'm in Ross River I seem to get along very fine with aboriginal people. We prospect together, we stake claims together. Everybody seems to be happy. Caribou numbers are great.

That's it from the Yukon Prospectors Association, unless Rob has something.

Mr. Rob Hamel (Yukon Prospectors Association): I think you've covered it pretty well.

Mr. Duncan: I was happy to see that you made reference to the map with what you described as the big red stain. Sometimes colours can carry emotional significance as well.

Can you take a minute to describe the level of activity on the ground that this would represent? Are we essentially looking at some posts in the ground? How much human presence would there have been per couple of acres of land? I want to get a feel for what red colouration signifies on the ground.

Mr. Burdall: I'm probably not the expert to ask about this, but I'll answer from my personal point of view.

A claim is about 50 acres, so I'm guessing something like 20 hectares. On 20 hectares you set down two posts and that's it.

I'm not sure of the aerial extent of that red area, but in the vast majority of that area, save for a helicopter coming by in the morning, dropping off a crew of four men and coming back in the evening to pick those four men up who've spent the day walking through the bush, you would have seen very little activity. That's not to say that there wasn't a significant amount of activity out of Ross River and out of Watson Lake. There certainly was, and it was a direct economic benefit to those communities. Certainly around the two discoveries that started that staking rush there is going to be more activity, but again, that's outside of the realm of prospecting. That's Cominco, that's Westmin.

.1425

As far as giving you numbers, Mr. Duncan, I really can't, but basically it's a chopper coming in, dropping off two or four men, and coming back in the evening.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you.

In your presentation you gave us, I believe, ten points of concern. I didn't get out of the presentation whether there was any significance to the sequence in which they were given. As a matter of fact, I was thinking that maybe, given the time you spent talking about number eight, it was one of the more significant, or perhaps that it was of personal concern. Can you clarify for the committee what the significance of the order of those ten points is?

Mr. Burdall: I wish I was that organized. There is no real significance to the order in which I listed those. Certainly one of the biggest issues is point number one, the small-scale mining. There is a clause somewhere in the bill - I believe it's sections 135(2), 139(1) and 140 - that says that any production requires a class III or IV certification, which means all sorts of public input, etc. That would significantly affect a number of prospectors.

I have a hard time saying this, but none of these concerns would make the Yukon Prospectors Association tell you not to vote for Bill C-6, but if things were opened up, we certainly have points that we would like addressed.

I guess it must have been the trenching fiasco. That was more of mine. Again, it's something that frustrates me, not just about this particular point, but many. There seems to be a real lack of understanding of what grassroots mineral exploration is. When people hear that there's a stake in the ground, the first thing they think about is Sudbury. They see a big smelter smokestack spewing out stuff all over the place. Somehow the mining industry and the prospectors have to educate people to make them realize that a stake in the ground isn't necessarily the end of the world.

Mr. Duncan: On your reference to small-scale mining and the three clauses that affect small-scale mining, this committee hasn't had, as far as I know, any other witnesses that have really talked about the specifics of small-scale mining, and maybe that's why.... Are prospectors and small-scale miners one and the same? In other words, does the prospectors association represent the small-scale miners, or do prospectors do some small-scale mining sometimes? How big an item is this? I ask because it's affected in a major way by this legislation.

Mr. Burdall: Again, from my perspective I think it's more the latter. Prospectors are sometimes small-scale miners. What a prospector has to do - and again we're talking about a global market more and more, and Canada has sort of lost its position as being the place for mining in the world - is convince a mining company that is working in Chile, that is working in Siberia, that is working in other places in Canada, the U.S., or wherever, that he has something of significance.

.1430

What oftentimes happens is that when he digs his hand trench he obviously wants to dig it to expose as much mineral as possible. A couple of things are happening here. One, he is going broke because he doesn't have another source of income, so he is using whatever he takes out of the ground there to send to a smelter - Trail or wherever - to be processed to help defray the costs of that exploration project.

Any time you're getting that sort of mineral out of the ground, hopefully a mining company is going to be a little more impressed than if you simply have this little three-inch vein of galena or something. So it does two things: it actually raises capital for the prospector, and it makes the property more viable to a major mining company.

The Chairman: Okay.

Mr. Duncan: Can I follow up with one short question?

The Chairman: Please be brief, because we have gone way beyond.

Mr. Duncan: I understand, but I think this is an important subject.

Would it be fair to say that if the very same activity was going on, without sending this ore or this material for commercial extraction, that it would not be regulated in the same way by this legislation? In other words, is all of the onus placed not really because of environmental protection but because there is a difference between commercial and non-commercial products being...?

The Chairman: A 30-second response, please.

Mr. Burdall: This is not an environmental issue at all - that is what's frustrating. We're talking about very, very small areas that are being disturbed here, areas that would easily fit under class I otherwise. This is simply a jurisdictional problem.

The Chairman: I'll take 30 seconds just to share with you that Inco has just built Victor Mine, a site 300 feet by 400 feet, which is all re-vegetated and has a filtering pond for recycling of water, and even the shaft is green to blend with the trees at the back. So things are changing in Sudbury. I wanted to share that with you.

Mr. Anawak, you have eight minutes, to be used by yourself or to share with your colleagues.

Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): Thank you. I just have a few comments, not so much in terms of questions.

I thought there were some errors in the presentation just given. One of the comments was that there are aboriginal people staking, and if it looks like some of the aboriginal people are staking, then what's the problem. It seems to me that what you're doing is stereotyping aboriginal people. Just because they are aboriginal people doesn't mean they don't take the opportunities to try to find some ways of making money.

The other comment about a stake in the ground not meaning anything - well, my understanding is that a stake in the ground may not mean anything when it's put in the ground, but it represents a hope for something, hope for a big find that hopefully would result in a mine being up and operating.

I just have some problems with some parts of the presentation, in that it may not be at that particular moment that any problem will develop, but the hope is that there will be a big find and you'll put a mine up. I suspect the mines up and operating today are much safer, much more environmentally aware; however it's the past practices these people have to deal with and I think that's why there are some concerns.

.1435

I wanted to make those comments. I understand the presenter was also wondering why we, the aboriginal affairs committee, have this particular bill. It comes under the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and that's why we have the bill.

The Chairman: Yes, it's very important that you mention that. We are responsible for development in the north, and that is why it came to this committee.

Mr. Finlay: Mr. Burdall, we certainly appreciate your presentation and your candour. I suspect that you are an environmentalist. I also was trained as a biologist. I think you're an environmentalist at heart, but I must underline what Mr. Anawak has said, that a stake in the ground is not the end of the world, absolutely not. However, what happened in Sudbury was nearly the end of the world. We've done a lot to clean it up, but when they make pictures up there because it looks like the moonscape, that's what we're worried about here.

You say mineral exploration is not mining. No, it isn't, I quite agree, and good fortune to you as a prospector and so on. But might it not be wise to not prospect in certain areas if they are very sensitive, in which if you found something we would then run into our problem, wouldn't we? Are we going to build the mine there and drive the caribou out, or are we going to protect that area?

I think that's perhaps what I would be a little concerned about. I have no concern with what you're saying; I'm sure that prospectors, who like farmers work with the land and live on the land, are very conscious of the environmental situation. The danger is that if we find something in the wrong place, we then have to make a decision.

The Chairman: I have a clarification, not because it's Sudbury but because it needs to be understood. Mining did no damage to Sudbury; smelting did the damage. Mining in Sudbury is doneunderground, and it does no damage, but smelting is something that can destroy the ecology, there is no doubt.

Ms McLaughlin, did you wish two minutes? Did you wish to respond to this?

Mr. Burdall: She has no comments, but could I take half a second and address Mr. Anawak's concerns? Could I say a couple of things?

The Chairman: Take two or three minutes.

Mr. Burdall: Thank you very much.

I apologize if my presentation stereotyped aboriginal people; that was just my inability to give a presentation and I do apologize for that. Certainly when a prospector sticks a stake in the ground it's based on hope; we live on hope. As Mr. Finlay said, we are hoping that it's going to turn into a huge mine, there's no doubt about that. But by the time that happens, you quickly move out of anything that's covered under class I or class II under Bill C-6 and you enter a completely different regulatory regime.

In addition, of course, there are water licences, there are fuel storage acts; we're regulated by a whole host of acts. The mining industry certainly has given itself a black eye in the past, whichMr. Finlay referred to, and we have a lot of work ahead of us trying to educate the people that we are trying to do things differently and we are concerned about the environment. Hopefully, we can do that.

Finally, I believe Mr. Finlay had mentioned something about whether there should be areas taken out of staking consideration because they are important for other things. We're getting into the issue of land use planning here, and in order to have an effective land use plan you have to know what is there. If the area is important for migration or whatever, and there are minerals there, a decision does have to be made.

We saw a decision made at Windy Craggy. It displeased many people, but it greatly pleased others. Those decisions have to be made, but before those decisions can be made we have to know what's there.

Under class I prospecting, a prospector does so little environmental damage that there is really no negative environmental impact there. Then we say yes, there is a chance for significant mineralization here, now let's make that hard decision.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I'd like to say that Mr. Power made a wise decision by deferring the presentation to you. It's an excellent presentation. Thank you.

.1440

I now invite, from the Yukon Chamber of Commerce, Torfinn Djukastein, second vice-president, to address the committee.

Mr. Torfinn Djukastein (Second Vice-President, Yukon Chamber of Commerce): I would like to thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the opportunity to be here. I am Torfinn Djukastein, the second vice-president of the Yukon chamber and president of the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce.

The Yukon Chamber of Commerce represents a considerable amount of people of the territory. We're a jurisdiction of 30,000 people or so, and we're in a vast area. We've been asked to say a little bit about Bill C-6 here, and we would like to assure your committee in Ottawa that we are behind our mining industry 100%.

The Yukon Chamber of Commerce recognizes that mining, both placer and hard-rock, represents the largest private sector component of the Yukon's economy. Mining contributes 30% to our economy, ahead of tourism at 7% and renewable resources at 3%. Government, of course, leads the way with a hefty 60%.

The Yukon chamber looks towards the private sector to promote and encourage economic growth in these times of government's newly found economic reality check. Unreasonable legislation would certainly see mining contribution to our economy lessen, and consequently governments would have to fill the void. We can understand that seeing governments increase expenditures in times of economic reversal where we're trying to save some money.... We don't want to see our mining industries further encumbered by overly onerous legislation. We have to be able to go out to work as a business community, as a mining community, for all our people.

A clear example of mining can be seen in Dawson City, where approximately 65% of the economy is through placer mining. Territory-wide, mining alone employs approximately 700 people directly, at approximately 140 operations. That's for placer mining, which you can see if you can divide 140 into 700 gives you about five people per operation. We're not talking large money, a phalanx of lawyers to go through your paperwork and a system that requires a rocket scientist to get through all of this.

We believe the mining industry in the Yukon is already well and fairly regulated for environmental impacts. As we understand it, Bill C-6 deals with the one area that is left, and that is the land use regulations.

Bill C-6 is a made-in-the-Yukon document, and the Yukon Chamber of Commerce recognizes the benefits derived from having all central stakeholders taking part in having their concerns addressed. This can only benefit the people to whom it matters most, the Yukon people. We are the important people. We are the ones who have to live with it. We are the ones who will benefit by this, or be hurt drastically by this.

Bill C-6, we believe, provides a reasonable, responsible environmental management regime for the mining industry, having been written under the mining acts, with mining experts at the table. It is particularly suited to the realities of mining, and that, we believe, is very important to us. If it wasn't for Yukoners sitting at the table, Lord knows what we would have sitting here today and what we'd be looking at.

Here in the Yukon, our colleagues, neighbours, friends and customers are the mining community. It is the mainstay of the Yukon's economy. Most of us are in some way affected by mining. With Bill C-6, we believe the environment will be better protected than it is today and that industry can survive the new level of regulation without disappearing. It is sad, however, that it is likely to eliminate a few existing or proposed operations. Of course you can see it right at the lower end. It could have some significant impact on the previous group, the Yukon Prospectors Association.

.1445

We can fully understand when mining representatives warn that damaging amendments at this stage could disrupt the careful consensus developed at that Yukon Mining Advisory Committee table.

The Yukon chamber now represents approximately 350 members, excluding Whitehorse, which has another 350 members, which we also believe is representative through the Yukon from a business community standpoint. We fully support the continuation of mining's vital contribution to the well-being of the Yukon Territory, and believe that it, and continued wise stewardship of the environment, are twin goals that can and will be met under Bill C-6 as written.

On behalf of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce and community members' chambers of commerce, we urge you to accept and recommend passage of this bill as written.

Thank you very much. If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them for you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Questions? Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan: In pursuit of what you were saying about some of the smaller operations being affected very negatively by this legislation, and the fact that their primary group speaking to that would be the Yukon Prospectors Association, I was wondering.... I know you didn't make much of a statement about that, but could you describe how those decisions were made and whether they do have, in your view, environmental rationale, or whether they've become a victim through a circumstance that doesn't make a lot of sense?

Mr. Djukastein: My personal viewpoint on that is that as the pecking order goes, the Yukon prospector is certainly at the bottom of the heap, and Cominco and Placer Dome are at the top. These regulations are geared towards affecting the top level, which in all shape and forms will also include those at the bottom - the people who really need it the most from small mining and prospecting.

We think it's going to be very difficult for the prospector or small miner who is going to go out and test some ground to deal with some of the land crossings that are going to be regulated. That would make it unachievable, for these people who want to and can afford to, to cross some of the lands necessary to achieve the goal of where they want to be. And I didn't say seriously negative.

Mr. Duncan: Okay. So what you're talking about is the access provisions. The three things that are kind of critical from a business standpoint I think are free entry, access, and land tenure. The one we're really talking about is access. Do I read you correctly in that?

Mr. Djukastein: Free entry is not on the table, so that's not worthy of discussion; that's not a part of this issue at all. Land use - that's what the bill is about. Access to where you want to be is part of the issue.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you.

The Chairman: Anyone else? Ms McLaughlin?

Mr. Djukastein: Ms McLaughlin has no comment.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

I now invite the Yukon Outfitters Association, if they are present, because they are scheduled at 3:20 p.m. our time, 12:20 p.m. Yukon time. Is the Yukon Outfitters Association present?

.1450

Ms Ione Christensen (Executive Secretary, Yukon Outfitters Association): Yes, there's a representative.

The Chairman: And you're willing to present now, which we appreciate very much.

Are you the president, Lee Bolster?

Ms Christensen: I'm not Lee Bolster.

The Chairman: No, I looked up -

Ms Christensen: I left my cowboy hat at home.

The Chairman: I looked up and realized my error. You must be Edna Hardie.

Ms Christensen: No, I'm not Edna Hardie.

The Chairman: If I miss this one, then I strike out: Ione Christensen.

Ms Christensen: That's right, I'm the third one here.

The Chairman: Thank you. Please proceed.

Ms Christensen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is the presentation of the Yukon Outfitters Association. I am the executive secretary for the association. Because of the time of year, all of the executive of the association are out hunting with clients and are unable to attend. We had hoped that one could be here today, but they're all in the middle of a hunt change and were unable to come.

I must emphasize that I am not an outfitter. I am an administrator and I look after administrative matters for the association. I may not be able to address some of the questions you may have later.

The paper that is being presented is not comprehensive, nor is it exhaustive in its research. We are not quoting chapter and verse of acts. The executive members were able to do some work last fall when the public information sessions were being held. They have updated that paper as best they could in light of the more recent changes, which they feel were minimal in the areas where the association had concerns. We are tabling a paper, so I will give you only a brief summary of those concerns.

First, I would like to tell you who the Yukon Outfitters Association is. This will give you a clearer idea of why they do have concerns. They are one of those industries that do work in the bush, and they have first-hand knowledge of what is happening and how it affects them.

The Yukon is divided into 20 concession areas, which are used for guiding hunters from around the world. Each concession is operated and run by a Yukon outfitter that is licensed by the Government of the Yukon Territory. That licence is renewed yearly and the industry is regulated by a number of acts, both territorial and federal. All 20 outfitters are members of the association.

There are certainly many similarities between Yukon Outfitters Association and say the Klondike Placer Miners Association. The outfitters are small family-run operations. They hire a total of 210 persons each year to work in the field. The association employs one part-time person - me - to carry out their administrative work.

The association is self-funded through an annual levy on the members. The window during which an outfitter can work is regulated and is further affected by weather. If a dry summer, forest fires or an early winter comes along, the operating season is reduced. There is a spring bear hunt that is approximately six weeks in duration. Then from August 1 to October 31, depending on the zone, bears and other species are hunted. It's a rare season when the outfitter is able to hunt past October 15. All of the wild meat that is harvested by non-residents is used. It is used in the outfitters' camps and given to communities and charitable organizations. A percentage is taken home by the clients and the outfitters, and their employees use the rest for their year-round family consumption.

The industry has been in continuous operation since 1912. It is a renewable resource and its success depends on a healthy wilderness environment. While perhaps not large by mining standards, it does contribute $5 million to the Yukon economy each and every year. The hunters who come to the Yukon spend, per capita, more than any other visitors in the tourism industry.

When the outfitters are not actively hunting with clients, they're upgrading their facilities and equipment and attending industrial shows both for promotion and for booking clients in the winter. The fiscal rewards are not large, but the lifestyle, much like that of the placer miner, is unique and is highly valued by those who are in the industry.

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As the above demonstrates, there is a shortage of both time and funds to meet all of the demands governments place on small business to respond to legislative changes. In the last year our members, on their own time - our industry is not unique in this, as other small industries have the same problem - have been trying to respond to 11 pieces of legislation. Some is new legislation and some amendments, but they're all important to the industry. The requests to review these pieces of legislation in Yukon usually come in July, when everybody's out getting ready for their hunting season, and the responses are usually asked for by the end of September.

You can appreciate the impossible position this puts an industry in: do you leave your job in the middle of the only working season you have, or do you just ignore the requests and trust to luck that the government won't legislate you out of business? It's not much of a choice.

Certainly this industry is not alone in these types of concerns. We share many of the environmental concerns that have been put forward by others in this hearing. It's amazing what types of legislation and what strange bedfellows it can make. For the sake of brevity we will only elaborate on those that we feel are key to our industry, the concerns that reflect the bread and butter of the industry.

It's felt that Bill C-6 must apply to all mineral activities conducted on crown lands in the Yukon, not just to those lands where claims have been made. The industry feels there are problems with the proposed classification system. In class one, work that can proceed without a permit, inspections that are done after the fact and reports that are required only after the work is completed, the industry does not feel this is acceptable as it does not provide environmental protection.

Compared to other jurisdictions, the Yukon allows more flexibility in this legislation. For example, in classification one, where 20-tonne vehicles can be used, as opposed to the 2.5-tonne vehicles in other jurisdictions, and the 40,000 litres of fuel that can be kept on site as opposed to the 4,000 in other jurisdictions, it appears to be more lenient in the Yukon. The industry questions why this should be. There is no provision for recognition of other commercial users in the area.

In class two, the 25-day application, where applications can go ahead if there is no response from government, with the cutbacks in government and other areas, and when the chief at the government level is receiving a lot of applications during the busy part of the season, it would be very difficult to meet that 25-day condition, and work could proceed by default. This is too short a period to seek input from the affected parties.

In class four, under proposed legislation, the government only has to advertise under class four, and this does not allow enough public comment. The method of advertising should be clearly defined and should have a maximum public coverage.

In setting out the criteria in classifications two and three, it should read per program and not per claim. Compliance with the operational conditions should be mandatory for all activities, not just in classification one activities.

Public notice and comment: in all classes there should be a requirement for other commercial users in an area to be notified and allowed to provide input. This should be the responsibility of the company that is doing the work, and it should be done well ahead of the work that is proceeding. Conflicts can be avoided by working with the outfitting industry. This is something that happens almost yearly where companies are going in and staking. If the companies had met with the outfitting industry prior to that, there could have been scheduling. The outfitters could have been hunting in another area when the staking was taking place, and there wouldn't be this conflict.

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When a client pays top dollar to come in for a wilderness experience, he does not consider helicopters, flagging, staking, or camps with dogs running loose and no game in sight to be his idea of a wilderness experience that he has spent a considerable amount of his savings to enjoy.

In reclamation, this needs clearer requirements. It is too vague as it is now written. The user sets the requirements, and the department approves the proposal.

Perhaps the greatest of all of the concerns of the outfitting industry is road access because of its long-term implications. I feel very strongly that exploration roads and trails should be restricted and very closely monitored. It is one of the activities that have a long-term negative effect on the industry. Any kind of equipment, especially heavy equipment, which can do extensive damage, provides access to all comers in the loss of wilderness and wildlife.

Road access damage can be mitigated somewhat by restricting to winter access with blades up. Trenching exploration on site can also result in heavy damage to a fragile terrain and wildlife habitat. Outfitters can give examples to clearly illustrate the damages that can be done by routes and exploration to sensitive areas. Those in the room here will certainly be familiar with the Killermun Lake area. The outfitter who did his hunting in that particular area has seen considerable damage done. That was in 1994 and 1995.

The proposed regulations should require reclamation and the closure of roads built during exploration and mining activities.

With respect to enforcements, we feel that fines should be realistic. They should serve as a deterrent and not as something that is cheaper than not doing the work. The costs of reclamation should not be passed on to taxpayers, bonding should be considered as a requirement, and companies causing the problem should be financially responsible.

Reclamation should be ongoing as both exploration and mining proceed, and failure to meet these requirements should result in closure until the work is done.

We feel that the area of inspection and monitoring is very weak. With departmental cutbacks in manpower, one must question how effective inspections and monitoring programs can be carried out. It should be made clear in the legislation how it's to be done; it should not just be assumed that it will happen.

With regard to enforcement provisions, there should be a minimum fine set for all violations, and maximum fines should be raised so they serve as a deterrent. Any revenues gained by a company as a result of a violation should be included as part of the fine process.

Representation work has caused numerous hillside cuts and cat roads to nowhere, and all with no purpose other than to meet the representation requirement. The mining industry has had no choice in this particular matter, and there should be an option for the claim holder to make payments rather than to have to go out and dig a hole in the ground just to satisfy a government requirement.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act should apply to all decisions under the two acts. Compared with other jurisdictions, this proposed regime is weaker than both Alaska and the Northwest Territories or British Columbia. These jurisdictions require permits for any mechanical exploration activities. In the Northwest Territories mining certainly faces the same high costs as in the Yukon, but at the present time they are flourishing despite the stringent guidelines.

While the majority of mining operations are very responsible, a weak regime can attract undesirable elements that in fact reflect badly on the industry as a whole.

We feel that the free-entry system should be addressed and the practice eliminated. Mineral exploration should be regarded in the same manner as other resources, both renewable and non-renewable. We no longer give away homesteads to encourage settlers to open up the west. The free-entry system was implemented at the turn of the century when it was assumed that all lands in the west and the north were not used - and aboriginal use was certainly ignored. But those times have changed, and so should the regulations to meet those changes.

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We do have other concerns. The Yukon outfitters campaigned long and hard in past years for environmental guidelines for mining and for a repeal of section 3.(3) of the Territorial Lands Act of Canada, yet they were not included in the YMAC committee. They were directly affected by mining exploration, along with wilderness guides and the trapping association.

The health of the industry depends on the maintenance of healthy wildlife herds. As persons who work in the area, outfitters have knowledge about the wildlife population habitat and know what factors will affect those populations. By their working and planning with the mining industry, both can mutually benefit. The information is there, although it may not be on paper.

At the present time, mining has priority over all other users of the land. Yet renewable resources provide long-term revenue and employment, where mining is world-market-driven and can be very cyclical. The Yukon needs small, ongoing business to smooth out the boom and bust cycles that are inherent in the mining industry.

Each year we see more and more of the Yukon's wilderness destroyed by indiscriminate use of modern machinery. The habitat is fragile and does not regenerate as quickly as in more southern parts of Canada. The wildlife herds cannot easily relocate to new areas, particularly sheep, which tend to keep to the same areas for centuries because of habitat and weather conditions where there are particular chinooks coming in and providing winter relief.

It is essential that we protect these sensitive areas through regulations not just for mining but for all users of modern machinery, both commercial and recreational, who encroach on the valued natural resource.

Certainly it can be argued that these activities - and it was just recently, prior to this presentation - have been going on since the turn of the century. While this is true, certainly prior to the 1940s all industry operators were driven by nature in the way they could operate. Certainly my grandfather, when he came in 1898, did not prospect in the same way as they are prospecting today.

For industry, the way you can access areas, the way that water can be stored and pumped, and the moving of large quantities of earth can be accomplished very quickly. Legislation should reflect these kinds of changes; and we argue that the amendments to this 70-year-old act do this.

In conclusion, we would recommend that a sunset clause be put in to the amendments, and this would guarantee that the legislation would come back for review at a reasonable time for amendments to meet the changing times and the changing needs. We feel that there is room for all of us to work cooperatively, but that there must be legislative recognition of existing renewable land users, and that such users should receive equal consideration and protection.

This, Mr. Chairman, is the presentation the outfitters have asked me to make for them. I thank you for allowing us to express the concerns of the industry.

The Chairman: I thank you very much for your presentation.

Questions from members.

Mr. Finlay: I must apologize, because I was out for a good deal of your presentation. I'm sorry. But I want to say hello to Mr. Lee Bolster, who doesn't seem to be there. Maybe he's out in the bush somewhere. We had a nice evening when he appeared before the environment committee a couple of years back.

I think your point about a review is well taken. Whether that will be included in legislation, I'm not sure. I, for one, would vote for such an amendment, or for such an inclusion.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Finlay.

Ms McLaughlin, did you wish two minutes?

Ms Christensen: Ms McLaughlin does not have any comments at this time.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. This completes our public hearings. We will take a ten-minute break, if nobody disagrees too emphatically.

I want to tell you that upon our return we plan on going clause by clause. If the committee wishes, I will ask Mr. Keith Byram, chair of YMAC, to be available to make clarifications. I will make that request only upon your permission. I will also ask you if you wish to have Mr. John Hodgkinson, chief of the mining legislation and resource management division, to sit at the table in order to clarify any questions you may have.

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We have with us Madam Paulette Nadeau, the legal legislative clerk, who will be sitting with us for the clause-by-clause. The procedure for the clause-by-clause is the same I've used in the past. If you have objections you tell me. I will ask that we react to clause-by-clause. I shall say ``shall clause 1 carry'', and if you have problem with clause 1 you just yell out ``stand'' or ``pull'' or do something. This way without debate I will pull it out and we will go on. If I don't hear that ``stand'' or ``pull'' I call for the vote. Once we've voted we don't come back to it.

I'm not dictating this; this is what I'm suggesting as a procedure. It worked in the past. If committee members have problems with this we have ten minutes to think about it and discuss it, and we will clear those things up before we start dealing with the bills.

Mr. Finlay: Mr. Chairman, what document are we going to work from?

The Chairman: Your agenda.

Mr. Finlay: That doesn't tell me what clause 1 is.

The Chairman: Clause 1 is the clause in the bill that you've had since June or May.

We'll adjourn for ten minutes. I've been in Ottawa long enough to know that ten minutes is fifteen minutes but no more.

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The Chairman: Thank you, and welcome back.

To our friends in the Yukon I will mention that we want to keep the system live so that you are aware of the deliberations, at least for today.

To the committee members, I will first ask you if you want the committee to request or askMr. Keith Byram, who is chair of the YMAC, to be available to respond to clarifications by members. We don't need debate, I just need a show of hands, a majority.

Some hon. members: Yes.

The Chairman: Mr. Byram, do you agree to participate if we should need your services?

Mr. Byram: I had said that I would stay until the end of the various presentations. I can't stay for the whole afternoon, though. If anybody has certain questions now relating to those last three presentations, I can speak to that, but I can't stay for the whole session.

The Chairman: I suspect that there may not be any inquiry, but if we see you on the screen and members want clarifications from you, we will ask you, and if you have to leave, we understand. Thank you.

The other question I had of the committee members is that we invite Mr. John Hodgkinson to sit at the table to clarify any queries from any of the members. Mr. Hodgkinson is chief of the mining legislation and resource management division.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Please join us at the table.

[Translation]

Mrs. Paulette Nadeau will help us with the procedure if need be, isn't that right?

[English]

I have suggested a method of operating and you have had a few minutes to think about it. Does anyone have problems with it? We've done it like this in the past. I'll try to go slow; if I go too fast please stop me.

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Ms McLaughlin, you heard the procedure that we have. If there is any clause that you would like to stand, you indicate it, but the request will have to come from one of the committee members. Is that fair enough?

Ms McLaughlin (Yukon): Yes, thank you.

The Chairman: It will be done without debate on a show of hands. We shall proceed.

Clauses 1 through 21 inclusive agreed to

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The Chairman: Shall the title carry?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Shall the bill carry?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Shall I report the bill to the House?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: That completes Bill C-6. Thank you very much.

I hope I wasn't too strict with minutes or too picky. When I say a minute and three-quarters.... But we got the job done. Thank you very much.

Committee members, I would like to suggest - if we can deal with this now, I think it would be appropriate - that we invite the department to brief us on Bills C-39 and C-40 next Tuesday. As you know, this committee has slotted Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. We would like to deal with Bill C-39 from 11 a.m. to noon, and if it doesn't take all that time, Bill C-40 from noon to 1 p.m.

Do we have a consensus on that? Any objection?

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand: You are saying that Tuesday next, we would go through both bills, C-39 and C-40?

The Chairman: Only the presentations from the departments.

Mr. Bachand: The department briefing. If the briefing on Bill C-39 was to be longer than anticipated, I suppose we would then make arrangements to hear the one on Bill C-40 at a later date.

The Chairman: Absolutely. Agreed?

[English]

I have discussed with Mr. Harper the need to bring witnesses.

Mr. Harper, can I ask you to comment on that? If we need to invite a large number of witnesses, we should know now. If there's no need for it, if there's any protocol that you think we should follow, please brief us on that.

Mr. Harper: I've asked my staff to contact the two first nations - Nelson House and York Factory, the signatories - and have the chiefs come and make a presentation. My staff is working on that, and they will probably get back to me by the end of the day. I've told them Thursday the third, if possible. I don't know what time - maybe 11 a.m.

The Chairman: Mr. Harper, I shouldn't impose on you this way, but I will. You're a friend. And I know that you do what is good for all. Do you think we would be doing justice to these bills by inviting those two chiefs? Should there be others? We want to do justice to the bill. Do you think it would be sufficient? It seems pretty straightforward. Do you think it would be sufficient?

Members, if you think there should be other witnesses, I'd like an indication now. What I'm searching for is whether we can complete this next week.

Mr. Harper, how do you feel?

Mr. Harper: I haven't had any feedback.

The Chairman: Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Stinson (Okanagan - Shuswap): Mr. Chairman, could I confirm that with my colleague, Mr. Duncan?

The Chairman: Okay.

Do you agree that on Tuesday with the briefing we should try starting now to invite these two witnesses for Thursday of next week? And if you want to go beyond.... We want to plan the work and get it done. Do you accept that we do this without a steering committee, that this decision has been made now?

An hon. member: Hear, hear.

The Chairman: Mr. Harper.

Mr. Harper: To clarify, if we are inviting those two individuals, do we take on the responsibility for their transportation and hotel?

The Chairman: I need a motion to that effect.

Mr. Harper: Sometimes they bring councillors, but....

The Chairman: What are you recommending? Let's do it now, because we don't want surprises later. Are you recommending that we invite two persons per bill, and paid for from the committee budget?

Mr. Harper: I would maybe budget for two people. If they have people who come on their own....

The Chairman: So anyone else is welcome, but they pay their own expenses. Or do you want video-conferencing? Are we close?

Mr. Murphy (Annapolis Valley - Hants): Where do they live?

Mr. Harper: In northern Manitoba. They have no access to video-conferencing. Unless they go to Winnipeg, there's no access.

The Chairman: If we're going to set it up for next Thursday, I need to know. Do you agree that we cover expenses for two persons per bill for now? If you want more witnesses later, you can make that decision. That will get us some work for next week.

I hear the bells. Is that a vote?

The Clerk of the Committee: They're trying to defer it until 5:30.

The Chairman: So we just continue until you give us orders.

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That being done, is there anything else for the good of the club? We're done.

We're busy from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday. Ms McLaughlin, I'll see you there. Thank you very much for participating.

We have bells ringing, so it's time to move on. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Thank you.

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