EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
For some time now our hunters, elders, and scientists have been saying that our polar bears are doing well and we know for a fact, the population, overall, has been increasing since the 1970s.
It is a tribute to our wildlife management system that is one of the best in the world today. I believe this information to be solid, as it uses both traditional and scientific knowledge, a fact lost on the naysayer of today’s society.
The people pushing the listing of our polar bears would like the general population to believe that by listing the polar bears in the U.S. will change our hunting and quota system. Let me make it clear that listing polar bears as threatened will do nothing to change our hunting and management practices.
All it will do is deny the rights of U.S. citizens to avail a strictly controlled sports hunt that does not take one extra animal out of the annual polar bear quotas.  Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to summarize the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species based on studies that are limited in scope, speculative in nature, and do not recognize the health of current polar bear populations in Nunavut.
I also want to clarify that Nunavut has, or shares, 12 of the 19 populations, or approximately 65 percent of the polar bears worldwide. That gives the Government of Nunavut direct management of over approximately 16,000 polar bears.
Please note we are not the only area in the arctic that opposes the listing of polar bears that the United States is considering. The U.S. State of Alaska has passed a motion opposing the listing and is asking other legislatures in the U.S. to join them in denouncing this action.
So in solidarity with our circumpolar neighbours, I now ask my colleagues to join me in passing this motion to oppose listing polar bears as threatened.
I’m happy that I’ve seconded this motion and I'm going to make it brief on my statement.
The U.S. debate concerning the polar bear, I’m thinking that we should not even give this to the U.S. for debate in the long run.
The people overseas did not want to buy the seal pelts any longer and this is a similar case; they’re exactly doing the same thing.
They haven’t done any research or studies up here, and their reasoning is concerning the harp seals.
We know the harp seals were debated and discussed. They thought they were over 2 million in population, and this is the same with the polar bears.
We know, as well, the person who moved the motion, we have studied and done the research and our elders have been involved in the research on polar bears.
Since the research was done in Nunavut by Nunavut people, we need to monitor them on exactly where they are in the land.
We need to stop, maybe, inviting those people from America and the quota for the sports hunting for polar bears in the U.S. will not change.
It’s a matter of earning wages for the people that don’t have job opportunities and also for the young people.
We also utilize the meat in the communities and are spread throughout the communities.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to support the mover of the motion.
We need to really consider this because we’re just going to be used again by the U.S. Government. And, also, Al Gore has been really trying to possibly give us a bad name throughout the world, and we want to consider how we are going to work with them.
I’m looking at the American Government and they are not even up in this area. They’re trying to control the whole world themselves.
They’re trying to control and run our issues even if we don’t belong to the U.S., in the same country, and for this reason I’m going to support the motion.
I will be supporting the motion.
I’ve been making statements in the House in regard to polar bears. I make those statements with my traditional knowledge.
The Inuit know and I think it’s in every community; this is part of our wage economy for all the Nunavut communities.
What the United States is trying to do is not right.
We conserve the harvesting of our animals; we consume what we catch and we share with our family and the community members.
Just before one of the sessions, I had caught a polar bear and we had a feast with the members here in Iqaluit.
The Member for Kugluktuk also brought the meat back home, which was caught in Sanikiluaq.
We manage our wildlife very well and we are not depleting the population.
As I said earlier, we don’t over-harvest because we manage them well. I do know that polar bears are thriving. They can live in the water and on the land.
Since I am from the Belcher Islands, we don’t have polar bears year round. At times, the ice doesn’t freeze over and the ice doesn’t freeze around Churchill and Ontario.
The polar bears go up the coast to the James Bay area.
Polar bears can live on land, ice, and water, and they are doing very well.
As the mover stated earlier, the hunters in our communities know very well in what stage the polar bear population is at.
We do things that we are concerned about, but we have no concerns about the polar bear. The only thing that is of concern to us is the polar bear in the zoos. They do not belong there.
We also see fish that are caught and then put back in the water, which is not hunting. It does not make any sense.
It is just playing around with the wildlife. It is not something that we would begin to practice any time soon.
I would also like to thank the Minister of Environment for making the motion.
I would also like to state that I will be supporting the motion.
I represent the High Arctic area of Nunavut and there is a large polar bear population up in that area.
The people of the High Arctic say that they sight polar bears in open water with no land in sight. They are sighted by people in boats and the polar bears are hunted everywhere.
They will hunt even if there is no more ice out there.
The Inuit take polar bears very seriously.
There was one show that I was watching, America’s Funniest Videos, where there was a polar bear and he was shown dancing and being made fun of.
We see polar bears that are in zoos that can no longer think for themselves, who don’t know what to do with themselves because they’ve been in one little spot for a very long time.
They are kept in jail.
The Americans were laughing at things like that because they don’t know anything about polar bears and what their natural environment is.
We live with the polar bear; we know a lot more about the polar bear than any American, especially. We do not want to be run by another country, like the United States for example.
Speaker (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Barnabas. (interpretation ends) To the Motion.
I would also like to state my support to the motion, and I would like to thank the minister for making that motion.
One comment that I wanted to make is that all Canadians do not agree all at the same time.
Like the Americans, the federal government does the polar bear count and the Canadian Wildlife Service is saying that the population is depleting.
We hear that, and every year there is an increase in the Davis Strait population, and then a decrease; it’s never the same.
I can also say that we hear that the Hudson Bay population has decreased. A few years ago they were 1,200 and now they’re under 500.
Since Rankin Inlet is in the middle of Nunavut, they say that we can only hunt in the Foxe Basin area.
When you look at the passport of a polar bear it just says ‘From Nunavut’, it doesn’t say that it’s from Foxe Basin or Hudson Bay; it’s a Nunavut polar bear.
Mr. Speaker, if we’re going to do something about it and if we want to put the polar bear on the threatened or endangered species list, the decision will have to come from Canada first and not from an outside country.
I would like to tell the department that the Inuit are saying that there is an increase because they’ve known the polar bear population for about 100 years, following the information that they got from their grandfathers.
A long time ago they weren’t able to put the sliders on their Qamutiks, so what they used in order to put the sod and ice as sliders on the Qamutik, they had to use polar bear skin, which is perfect for smoothing out the ice.
They didn’t have any of that material because there were no polar bears.
For the Canadian Wildlife Service, they don’t think anything about the polar bear in the spring. The cubs and the mothers move away because they don’t want to be in the moving ice.
They want to look for baby seals so they move to another area.
The polar bear and their cubs move from the moving ice to solid ice so they can find the baby seals.
They go from one hunting area to another depending on the season.
Mr. Speaker, when the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board was having a meeting in Rankin Inlet, the CWS wanted to tag 50 in the Hudson Bay and Davis Strait area.
We were telling them not to drug polar bears on the moving ice because some of them don’t survive since they’re on dangerous ice.
The Canadian Wildlife Service’s response was that if they don’t get approval, the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit portion would not go into their report. So I’m sure they got their license at this time.
In closing I would like to say that the World Wildlife Fund, who we assume work for us, are given the license by us and they are the ones who are supporting and doing some fundraising using that dancing polar bear.
So we’re going to do something about that to hinder their process in order to help the people of Nunavut.
I, too, would like to add my voice in support of this motion, and when you look at it, at what they’re trying to do in the States; they’re saying that the polar bears are dying, we need to save them, and so we’ll put them on the endangered list.
Well who put them on that list? You go back in time, not too far back for us, when the whalers used to come up here, who killed all the whales?
The Americans came up here, helped themselves, took everything they wanted, left the bones here to just be here, the carcasses were just left, and went back.
And when they got back, similar to two years back, one incident with Mary nets, they have this Marine Mammal Protection Act that says, “Oh, you can’t bring those things into the States.”
They left it behind, they took all the rest of it to their country and they don’t want that part of it to go there, too.
It seems like a very hypocritical thinking on their behalf in doing something like this. Even though it may be a well intentioned thing to protect and preserve polar bears, it’s a very ill thought out approach to doing it, you know, “Oh yeah, why are they dying?”
They are saying that the ice disappearing, their habitat is disappearing. Why is it disappearing?
Global Warming.
Again, if they’re so concerned down there about the polar bears and protecting them and wanting to preserve them, why the hell don’t they sign onto the Kyoto Accord? That’s what’s killing the bears.
That’s what’s taking away their habitat - it’s all the greenhouse gases that they’re pumping out into the atmosphere and we’re suffering from it.
You look back, again, to these animal rights activist groups that are out there and look at what they did when they basically killed the sealing industry up here, they took a perfectly healthy people from a traditional lifestyle that had forms of making their own living through that lifestyle of harvesting seals in the harvesting season, and then they banned that, and then these groups, they killed that, and what does it do?
Again, well intentioned, but what’s the effect on us? It devastated a lot of our communities, a lot our people.
It took away their self reliance.
It’s just frustrating when you hear stuff like this come out of some people that are supposed to be, who call themselves world leaders. If they’re truly a world leader, lead by example.
Do something to stop what’s destroying the world: the Kyoto Accord.
Their senate actually rejected that report, “We’re not going to sign onto it.”
So maybe they feel guilty now, saying, “Well, we can try and cover up our guilt by saying, ‘We’re going to protect these animals and we’re going to put them on the species-at-risk list.”
Well, that’s not really doing anything. If they were serious about doing something, they shouldn’t act like a bunch of hypocrites and do something; do the right thing.
That would be my message going out to them, and I’m sorry to paint the United States with one brush.
Alaska, for one state, has said that this doesn’t make sense. And I’m sorry if they’re getting painted with this brush.
But, generally speaking, the American mentality, I don’t know if they think that they can, just because they’re one of the largest country’s in the world, wealthiest, and that they’re the world leader that they can act like bullies and just push their way onto other people and other countries.
I don’t think that that’s acceptable. I really think the message that’s sent out to them is ‘give your head a shake,’ you know, ‘wake up and smell the coffee,’ all these different things here.
If you really serious and sincere about what you’re talking about, tackle the problem itself.
Don’t come up with these side things that say, “Oh, look, we’re doing something,” you know, say, “We’re protecting them by putting them on this list, but we won’t sign onto the Kyoto Accord, or won’t do anything to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that’s causing the global warming.”
I like my colleagues’ comment the other day, instead of banning the hunting of polar bears, ban weapons of mass destruction.
Look at what they’re doing throughout the world. It’s just very frustrating to just sit there and watch, and be affected by that type of thinking, and them just doing what they want anyway.
I think more people need to stand up and tell them that. I mean we’re not going take that. A bully keeps being a bully as long as you let him.
I think that’s the message that should go down to them.
And again, I thank the minister for bringing this motion forward, I whole heartedly support it, and I’m sure all members here will.
Hopefully, through some of our comments, they will get the message.
At this time I don’t have anybody else on the list.
I will get the mover to make his final comments.
I would like to thank the members for voicing their concerns.
At this time I request that we have a recorded vote.
The member is asking for a recorded vote.
For all those members who support the motion, please stand up and stay standing up until I call your name.
And we’ll start with the mover.
All those in favour please stand. (interpretation ends) Mr. Netser.
I would like to inform you that the motion is unanimously carried, 15 agreed.
Back to the Orders of the Day. Item 16.
Bills 10 and 11, and Tabled Document 49 – 2(4), with Mr. Barnabas in the Chair.
I ask that you remain seated at this time so you can proceed with the Committee of the Whole with Mr. Barnabas in the Chair.
Chairman Mr. Barnabas (interpretation): I would like to call the committee meeting to order.
In Committee of the Whole we have the following items to deal with: Bill 10, Bill 11, and Tabled Document 49 – 2(4).
Mr. Evyagotailak: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
We wish to continue with the review of Bill 10, and the supporting budget detail, followed by Bill 11.
Does the committee agree that we will proceed with Bill 10, Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act?
We were posing questions to the Minister of Finance. I would like to ask the Minister of Finance Mr. Simailak if he wishes to go to the witness table with his officials.
Hon. David Simailak (interpretation): Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Sergeant-at-Arms, can you escort the witnesses to the witness table?
Thank you, Sergeant-at-Arms, for escorting the officials.
For the record, Mr. Simailak, can you introduce your officials, please?
Peter Ma is on my left, and to my right is Mr. Roy Green.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Simailak. (interpretation ends) Before we proceed (interpretation) I think we were on page 9 and 10. (interpretation ends) Supplementary Appropriation (Capital) Act #1, 2007-08.
I’m sure that the minister has an explanation for us that I would like to hear before we proceed any further on this item as far as the substantiation sheets indicated that these two particular projects did not meet financial administration manual’s criteria for a carryover project.
However, in the bill, it says that these are all carryover projects.
I’m just wondering if I could get an explanation from the minister on that.
Hon. David Simailak: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, I do have comments on that, and I actually have a copy for all members.
We’ll get the copies first.
I believe everybody received a copy.
Minister Simailak, you can proceed.
If I am able, I would like to take a few minutes to clarify the issue of non-FAM compliant capital carryovers.
One of the objectives of the Department of Finance is to prove disclosure practices in a manner that enhances the Legislative Assembly’s ability to review and consider the government’s supplementary appropriation rules.
That is why we have followed up on our commitment to provide capital projects substantiation sheets to members, as part of the capital carryover process.
At this sitting you have had the opportunity for the first time to review capital projects substantiation sheets during the capital carryover process.
Mr. Chairman, to ensure that processes are transparent, the department should have provided members with a listing of non-FAM compliant capital projects that the government would like carried forward into the 2007-08 fiscal year. We have provided that information today.
The total amount of non-FAM compliant capital projects are formerly $4,338,000, which encompasses 13 projects, ranging in value from $56,000 to $1.5 million.
Members should note that the term “non-FAM compliant” is a misnomer. In the prolongs of the department, it means the capital project that has not started, or where no contractual or financial commitments exist, or where no funds have been expanded, then thus the capital project must be brought back to the Financial Management Board for approval again.
If the Financial Management Board approves a particular capital project again, then the associated monies from the previous fiscal year are carried forward with the capital project into the new fiscal year.
In accordance with the provisions of FAM directive 302-5, these 13 projects were presented to the Financial Management Board for approval, again, as capital carryover projects.
All of these projects are eligible for supplementary appropriation as new projects in the 2007-08 fiscal year because the project funding associated with these capital projects lapsed in the 2006-07 fiscal year and have not been used for other purposes.
As such, there are no new monies, I repeat, no new monies associated with these capital projects. For the purposes of the FAM, these capital projects have been re-classified as new projects in order to fund them in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
The lapsed monies, though, need to be carried forward from the 2006-07 fiscal year.
It is the belief of this government that these capital projects provide a benefit to Nunavummiut and should be carried over. These capital projects also impact a number of our smaller, non-decentralized communities.
I would like to thank members for the opportunity to clarify the events of yesterday and for your patience today, and attach the listing of the new projects brought forward for capital carryover.
I still do not understand it all. I would like to ask if we would get some legal advice on that interpretation from the member.
I am not saying that the member said that there was new money.
I am not saying that I do not disagree with any of the projects. My concern strictly is that these are new projects approved by FMB. It has never been before the House, and it has not been here for approval through a supplementary appropriation.
It is the listing part that concerns me.
These are carryovers for the following carryovers of the project that has never been in here before. How can it be a carryover? That is the part I am having a hard time struggling with.
Maybe it should show as a separate… you know where it says on the bill itself it says that these are new projects and this money is being brought forward from other projects in the past, and to all just carry it over to the capital project, it would imply that all those projects have been approved before in the House, when actually they haven’t.
It is more of a layout issue. I am still thinking that this doesn’t accurately reflect what’s actually there in that format.
I’m not convinced that it’s okay to be like that and it’s fine but I want to make sure that it’s done right and that by just doing it like that, then I am saying okay to something that isn’t right.
So that’s what I’m talking about.
I do not know if our Law Clerk can expand on that, or take a look at it and give us her interpretation of it or advice or something like that, if you can help here.
Let us welcome our Legal Counsel. She shall speak to the request made by Mr. Tootoo.
Our Law Clerk, if you are ready.
I think that some of issues that the members are concerned about are really accounting issues which perhaps the Auditor General or her staff might be better positioned to comment on because they deal, to some extent, with the way in which the estimates are being presented.
I can advise the members that subject to section 34 of the Financial Administration Act, any appropriation that is not expended during the fiscal year for which it is approved, the authority for expending that money lapses at the end of the fiscal year, and the only exception to that are situations where the liability or the financial obligation was accrued during the fiscal year, then the ability to pay that liability would continue.
So those are the restrictions that the government is working under, and the House is working under, under the Financial Administration Act.
How those monies are characterized as carryovers, or lapsed funds, are perhaps an accounting issue.
But if the liability or the financial obligation was not accrued during the fiscal year than the ability to spend that money would require the authorization of the House and an appropriation bill.
Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, our Law Clerk.
Mr. Tootoo, you still have the floor. Mr. Tootoo.
I’d like to thank the Law Clerk for that.
I’m not sure if it’s any clearer.
If an appropriation is needed for any new projects, it says that there are going to be new projects, and then technically, that’s never happened.
I guess that’s where I’m caught; projects that have never been approved by the House in any way, shape, or form.
Although, I am not disputing the Financial Management Board’s and the government’s ability to approve new projects and put new funding forward to new projects.
You have the right to do that, and we trust you to do that.
My concern, again, here is to how it looks on here.
It doesn’t look like those projects have ever come here before the House for an appropriation.
To just lump them as carryover capital projects, when those projects have never been before the House… I don’t know, maybe we should get a better understanding from someone from the Auditor General’s Office, or something, just for accounting purposes.
My concern is I don’t want to say, “Oh yeah, that’s okay,” and then find out after that it’s okay that Ms. Fraser is going to outline in her report that that wasn’t done properly.
I don’t want to do that to myself.
That’s how I feel. I don’t know how other members feel about it.
Maybe if I can get a little more clarification on exactly that before I feel comfortable and know for myself before approving any of this.
Could we have Mr. Ma respond to that, please?
I’m going to try to explain, or answer the member’s question, I guess, in non-accounting terms.
It is quite right as the Law Clerk said: there’s accounting terms and then there’s other terms that are floating about here.
So I want to see if I can simplify it. In actual fact, the projects that are listed “new” on the list that was provided to members this morning were in fact capital projects approved by Members in this House for the 2006-07 fiscal year.