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Opening Statement to the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples

Inuvialuit Final Agreement

(Chapter 3 - October 2007 Report of the Auditor General of Canada)

11 December 2007

Sheila Fraser, FCA
Auditor General of Canada

Honourable Senators, thank you for this opportunity to discuss my Office’s work related to comprehensive land claim agreements, and Chapter 3, the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, of my October 2007 Report. I am accompanied by Ronnie Campbell, Assistant Auditor General, and Frank Barrett, Principal, both of whom are responsible for our work on Aboriginal Issues.

Modern comprehensive land claim agreements are complex. They generally contain a land transfer plus a cash settlement. They can also address, among other things, the roles, responsibilities, and obligations of each party.

To date, Canada has signed 22 comprehensive land claim agreements. The first was with the James Bay Cree in 1975 and the most recent was with the Tsawwassen First Nation in BC last week, on December 6. Many others are under negotiation. I wish to stress, Mr. Chair, that the party to these agreements is not just the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, but Canada itself.

Comprehensive Land Claim agreements are not designed to end relations between governments and Aboriginal groups; they are designed to change those relationships. Some of Canada’s obligations entail specific, one-time activities, while others involve changing processes, such as environmental reviews and federal contracting practices.

Since 1998, my Office has completed several audits on the implementation of comprehensive land claim agreements. In 1998 we audited the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs’ role in reaching and implementing these agreements. We examined the progress made to address our recommendations in follow-up audits in 2001 and 2006. In 2003 we audited the Department’s implementation of land claim agreements with the Inuit of Nunavut and the Gwich’in of the Northwest Territories. In my October 2007 Report, Chapter 3 presents our audit of the federal implementation of the 1984 land claim agreement with the Inuvialuit—the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

At the time of its signing, the Inuvialuit Final Agreement was the first of its kind north of the 60th Parallel and only the third to be finalized in Canada. As with all comprehensive land claim agreements, it is protected by the Constitution.

We found that the federal government has not met some of its significant obligations. This is often because it has not established the necessary processes and procedures to do so nor has it identified who was responsible for taking various actions. For example, it has not yet established a process to remove restrictions on use, called encumbrances, from 13 parcels of Inuvialuit land that are no longer required by the federal government—in some cases for more than a decade. As a result, the Inuvialuit still do not have control and use of these parcels of land. 

Furthermore, 23 years after the Agreement came into effect, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada still has not developed a strategy for implementing it. INAC never formally identified federal obligations under the Agreement or determined which federal departments were responsible for which obligations. It has not developed a plan to ensure that federal obligations are met. The Department does not have a strategic approach to identify and implement Canada’s obligations, nor does it monitor how Canada fulfills them.

We also found that INAC—the federal lead—has taken no action to ensure that progress toward achieving the principles of the Agreement is monitored. As a result, the Department does not have a comprehensive picture of progress made in meeting the three fundamental goals of the Agreement. During the audit, officials stated that they do not view this as the Department’s responsibility.

Some of the obligations under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement are being met. For example, Canada has paid almost $170 million and transferred approximately 91,000 square kilometres to the Inuvialuit in accordance with the Agreement. Moreover, federal organizations have collaborated with joint management boards and committees established under the Agreement. They have also provided advice to environmental screening and review bodies when requested to do so.

Mr. Chair, some of the deficiencies we found in this audit were similar to those we found in previous audits. I would like to focus on three of these.

First, as I just mentioned, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has still not developed a strategy for implementing the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. This is similar to what we found in our 2003 audit of land claims with the Gwich’in and the Inuit, where we found that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada was not effective in coordinating federal responsibilities.

Second, we found that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada does not monitor how Canada fulfills its obligations. Although the Department publishes an annual implementation report, this report only lists the activities of federal participants, not the extent to which Canada’s obligations are being met. We made similar observations in our audits of 1998 and 2003, in which we noted that the Department did not have a system for tracking whether obligations were met by other federal departments.

Finally, we found that the Department has taken no action to monitor progress toward achieving the principles of the Agreement. This mirrors what we found in our 2003 audit, where we noted that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada had focused on the letter of its obligations, but that it had not taken into account the spirit and intent of the agreements.

The committee may wish to invite the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to discuss the challenges it faces as the lead Department responsible for implementing comprehensive land claim agreements and to table an action plan that would address the recommendations we made in our audit of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer your Committee’s questions.