Aboriginal groups question federal commitment to environment
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 12/01) - Aboriginal groups are protesting a lack of federal commitment to the Northern environment by refusing to participate in the development of a new system for managing cumulative effects.
"Based on the wretched amount of money they've allocated to it, I don't think there's any commitment at all," said John Bainbridge, implementation co-ordinator for the Gwich'in land claim.
Gwich'in, Inuvialuit and Sahtu leaders have abandoned their seats on the committee overseeing the development of a system for measuring and managing the combined environmental effects of development in the North.
The Sahtu were the last to drop out. In a Jan. 30 letter to the committee, Sahtu Secretariat chairman Edwin Erutse said his organization would not be part of the process "until such time that the leadership of the Sahtu, Gwich'in and Inuvialuit have consulted and clarified the concerns expressed by the Gwich'in Tribal Council and the land claimant groups."
Chief among those concerns is federal disinterest in implementing the final part of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act.
Part VI of the Act would require the federal government to fund an independent environmental audit at least once every five years. Bainbridge said such an audit would cost $2 million.
Federal funding for federal environmental commitments was slashed this year. Initially no federal money was earmarked for the development of the framework, implementation of Part VI or the Protected Areas Strategy.
Halfway through the financial year, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development provided $100,000 toward the implementation of Part VI, $450,000 of the $780,000 requested by its local office for the framework and $225,000 of an anticipated $750,000 for the Protected Areas Strategy.
An insider said the cuts are the result of an old school view that prevails at DIAND's Hull offices that funding environmental initiatives is "feeding the enemies" of development.
Bainbridge said DIAND Minister Robert Nault has sacrificed environmental commitments to add $75 million to the aboriginal economic development fund. Another $100 million will be added next fiscal year.
As of last week, DIAND was scrambling to find ways to spend $30 million left in the fund for this fiscal year.
When Nault made the commitment to develop a cumulative effects assessment management framework as part of the 1999 federal environmental approval of the Diavik diamond project, he set March 31 this year as its completion date. Because of a lack of funding, that has now been pushed back a year.
Though the Sahtu Secretariat has opted out of the development of the framework, some Sahtu land use planning board members attended meetings of the steering committee in Yellowknife last week. At the meeting, Akaitcho Treaty 8 representative Patrick Simon hinted his group could also opt out.
"In terms of actual political will, our political commitment is strongly related to what the departments do in the coming fiscal year," said Simon. "If things are not as we think they should be, we'll have to focus on other things."
