2009 Council of the Federation meeting Regina, Saskatchewan, August 5, 2009

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here today … and to see some new faces as well as some familiar ones.

We have four items on our agenda for this afternoon and I will take the opportunity to speak to each one:

Aboriginal Engagement with the Federal Government

As National Inuit Leader, I welcome this opportunity to meet annually with provincial and territorial leaders.

I am hopeful that the dialogue that results from these meetings resonates with federal and all other levels of government – and that we put in place a mechanism to track our collective success in implementing our discussions and recommendations.

All of us here this afternoon were, I think, impressed with the sincerity of the Apology offered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on June 11th 2008 to the survivors of the residential school experience.

All of us, I trust, were anxious to see what significant follow-up actions would be taken by the federal government to ensure that this Apology was not simply rhetoric.

I cannot think of a more inclusive and constructive way to fulfill the promise of this Apology than to bring all of the parties together to construct the road map.

How best to do that?

All governments should agree to a comprehensive, transparent, meaningful federal/provincial/territorial and aboriginal process and agenda to explore the place of aboriginal peoples in our federation in the next 25 years.

I think an FPT&A meeting of ministers/leaders responsible for aboriginal affairs might usefully draft an agenda for the wider FPT&A FMM.

This initial meeting should be held in January 2010 in Ottawa, leading to an FMM on the future of aboriginal peoples in the federation in June 2010.

H1N1 flu virus

As we know, aboriginal and remote communities are particularly vulnerable to this frightening illness.

It is the inadequacy of basic infrastructure in so many aboriginal communities – overcrowded and poorly ventilated housing, unreliable drinking water, congested schools and medical facilities – that create this vulnerability.

H1N1 seems to be affecting young, healthy individuals and pregnant women. The Inuit population is likely to be affected disproportionately as it is a young population with a high pregnancy rate.

Immunization will require special consideration for communities with few or no professional health-care workers able to administer the subcutaneous injections and monitor and address the side effects.

Consideration should be given to the idea of an immunization team that could travel to communities in regions that may not otherwise have the resources to immunize the population.

Inuit communities are simply not prepared for an H1N1 outbreak. For these reasons, we are calling on Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada to involve Inuit in developing an Inuit-specific annex to the Canadian Pandemic Plan.

Education and Skills Training and Economic Development

I am addressing these topics together as there is no doubt in my mind that the most promising form of expedited economic development for Inuit is an ambitious program of expanded education and skills training.

When only one in four Inuit students complete Grade 12, our collective attention is needed to change these results.

Last year, the CD Howe Institute called the gap in education levels between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginals “one of the great social policy challenges facing Canada.”

As a step in closing that gap, I am happy to report that earlier this year Inuit signed an Inuit Education Accord with the governments of Canada, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec.

The Accord marks the beginning of a process that – for the first time ever – will establish national goals and develop a national strategy for Inuit education.

We also know that one of the critical factors in closing the education gap is graduating more Inuit educators and childcare workers, and committing to their ongoing training and development.

Currently, we have a labour shortage of trained Inuit teachers, administrators and service providers.

We need to double the output of our teacher education programs and childcare training programs to have an impact on today’s students.

A new era of investment in Aboriginal education is needed, not just to operate our existing education systems but to provide impact programs that will accelerate the number of graduates.

It is my hope that I can count on the support of all provincial and territorial premiers in the development and implementation of a National Strategy on Inuit Education.

While education and skills training should take pride of place on any economic development agenda, I would invite Premiers to lend their support to a number of other initiatives.

These include:

Securing appropriate investment funding, not just an operating budget, for the new Northern Economic Development Agency announced by the federal government;

Pushing the federal government to include northern Quebec (Nunavik) and Nunatsiavut in Labrador as integral parts of new Arctic economic development efforts;

Insisting on full and timely implementation of all land claims and self-government agreements signed by Aboriginal peoples and the Crown;

And ensuring that appropriate regulatory review of major resource development projects is not hampered by excessive or duplicative processes and procedures.

In closing, I would like to bring to your attention a recent document titled “A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic.”

I have brought copies of this document with me and commend it to your reading, both for the sake of what it says about the Arctic and its future, and as an illustration of how old concepts of international law are having to make space for the rights of self-determination and other human rights of indigenous peoples.

Thank you.