New Nunavut national park bill gets speedy passage

The World Wildlife Fund and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association each welcome the creation of Qausuittuq National Park in the High Arctic. (PARKS CANADA HANDOUT PHOTO)

(Corrected June 23, 5:40 p.m.)

With unanimous support from all parties, a bill to create a new 11,008 square-kilometre national park around Nunavut’s Bathurst Island breezed through the House of Commons in minutes June 19, and is now set for first reading in the Senate.

If the bill gets speedy passage through the upper house and receives royal assent, Qausuittuq National Park of Canada would likely become legal Sept. 1, 2015, just a few weeks before the Oct. 19 federal election.

“As the bill makes its way to the Senate, I would like to encourage all senators to support the Qausuittuq National Park of Canada Act for our environment and for northerners,” Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq said June 19 in a statement, four days after tabling the bill June 15.

The World Wildlife Fund and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association each welcomed the creation of the new park.

“I’m excited for the potential cultural and socio-economic opportunities this will bring to Inuit and I look forward to going up to Resolute Bay to celebrate the event with the community,” QIA president P.J. Akeeagok said in a statement.

Through provisions contained in their Inuit impact and benefit agreement, the QIA will share management duties with Parks Canada.

And Inuit will continue to exercise their right to hunt, set up outpost camps and to remove carving stone within the park’s boundaries.

Each party will name three people, one of whom must be a member of Resolute’s Hunters and Trappers Organization, to serve on a six-person park management committee.

That committee will make decisions related to tourism, research, hiring and contracting.

Calling it a ”unique and ecologically sensitive area,” the WWF also welcomed the new park and urged Parliament to pass and implement the bill quickly.

“As part of the last ice area, this national park — Nunavut’s fifth — would safeguard an area that will become increasingly important to northern wildlife and peoples as our climate continues to warm,” Paul Crowley, WWF-Canada’s Arctic vice-president, said in a statement.

The park, which will become Canada’s eleventh largest, takes up a large chunk of Bathurst Island north of the Polar Bear Pass National Wildlife Area and includes some islands to the west.

But it excludes Cameron Island, where small commercial quantities of crude oil were extracted in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Bill C-72 establishes the park’s boundaries and adds it to a list attached to the National Parks Act.

But the national park’s real blueprint is set out in the 64-page Inuit impact and benefit agreement between Ottawa and the QIA.

Though it’s not clear if the deal’s been signed, the IIBA says the deal took effect this past April 1.

In it, Parks Canada commits itself to spending $21.9 million over seven years to develop and run the park, and to spend about $2.6 million a year thereafter.

They also promise to hire and train an Inuk park manager within five years.

Under the IIBA, Parks Canada may hire a non-beneficiary parks manager, but only as a term position that would end when the beneficiary trainee is ready to take over.

To pay for the training of the park’s Inuk trainee manager, the IIBA requires that Ottawa spend $175,000 over five years, for on-the-job training and post-secondary education.

The park creates only four full-time jobs:

• the term job of park manager;

• an indeterminate job for the park manager trainee;

• an indeterminate job for a resource management and public safety specialist; and,

• an indeterminate job for an administrative assistant.

They’ll be augmented by what appear to be six part-time or seasonal jobs: two patrollers, an interpretation officer, a maintenance worker, a public outreach and education officer and a half-time resource management and public safety specialist.

Staff will work out of a visitor and interpretation centre that Parks Canada will set up in Resolute. The IIBA also commits Parks Canada to supply necessary staff housing.

Businesses owned by Inuit or joint venture firms that include Inuit will get preferential treatment in the awarding of contracts.

Parks Canada will also give a $3 million grant to QIA for the Qausuittuq National Park of Canada Inuit Initiatives Fund.

The QIA is supposed to use that money to help beneficiaries living in Resolute and elsewhere in the Qikiqtaaluk region take advantage of economic opportunities arising from the creation of the park.

The QIA also has the right to sit in on all processes related to the hiring of parks staff.

An earlier version of this story, based on information from 2012, reported the size of Qausuittuq National Park as about 20,000 square kilometres and Canada’s ninth largest. It is now at 11,008 square kilometres and is Canada’s 11th largest national park.

Bill C-72, Qausuittuq National Park of Canada

The Qausuittuq National Park will comprise 11,008 square kilometres, and take in a large chunk of Bathurst Island and some smaller islands to the west. (PARKS CANADA HANDOUT PHOTO)