Nunavut Impact Review Board awaits increased federal funding

Ryan Barry, executive director of the Nunavut Impact Review Board. The board is meeting in Iqaluit this week to discuss budgetary and housekeeping issues. (PHOTO BY THOMAS ROHNER)

Despite a chronic shortage in core funding for the organization he administers, the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s executive director, Ryan Barry, foresees a busy and productive year ahead.

Barry and the rest of the board are meeting in Iqaluit Feb. 9 to Feb. 11 for closed-door internal budgeting and planning sessions.

Those meetings take place three times a year, Barry told Nunatsiaq News during an interview inside the lobby of the Hotel Arctic.

The NIRB’s to-do list for 2015 includes a two-week final hearing this March in Baker Lake for Areva’s proposed Kiggavik uranium mine, legislation changing the board’s operating rules and conditions, and possible public hearings for three major projects seeking amendments to existing project certificates.

But for the NIRB, created by the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement to screen and review development proposals in Nunavut, it often comes down to money.

“We’ve been really constrained in our core funding for a long time,” Barry said.

That core money, which covers the cost of the review board’s screening of proposed development projects in Nunavut, comes from the federal government, according to a contract negotiated between Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and Ottawa.

But Barry said the limited core funding between 2003 and 2013 is part of the reason why NTI has a lawsuit pending against the Government of Canada.

Funding levels for the NIRB and the other land-claim-based institutions of public government were guaranteed in a 10-year land claims implementation contract between NTI and the federal government that ran from 1993 to 2003.

But talks aimed at renewing that implementation contract broke down, leading to the lawsuit that NTI filed against Ottawa in December 2006, seeking $1 billion in compensation.

The suit alleges Ottawa has not upheld numerous obligations set out in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and is scheduled for a 20-week trial in Iqaluit beginning in March.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development has indicated that an increase to the NIRB’s core funding is imminent, Barry said, but there’s still no timeline yet.

“To give you an idea of our funding shortfall, in our core funding we’re expecting an increase of about 55 per cent,” Barry said.

“We’re expecting that to come into place any time in the near future. That’s quite a significant increase and will help make us more stable as an organization moving forward.”

Barry said funding provided for other board activities — such as review hearings and community meetings — has been sufficient, but other money woes hamper the NIRB’s ability to carry out its mandate.

“We’ve advocated for a number of years the need for establishing a formal participation funding program,” Barry said.

Such a fund, which existed under a federal program until 2008, would allow local community organizations, groups and individuals to get intervener funding.

That helps them pay the cost of participating in the NIRB’s review processes such as environmental impact assessment hearings.

“Being a public process as ours is, we’re always relying on getting outside opinions and even expertise, sometimes,” Barry said.

Since 2008, the federal government considers funding for external participation in NIRB hearings on a case-by-case basis.

But recently a number of requests have been turned down because of “financial constraints and because there’s no formal program,” Barry said.

“We’ve really had difficulty with that because it can’t be offset by any action the board takes,” he said, adding that the board cannot fund participation directly because that would compromise its own, independent mandate.

According to aboriginal affairs minister Bernard Valcourt, a formal program won’t be considered until it becomes feasible, Barry said.

When might that be?

“I can direct you across the street to the aboriginal affairs office to ask them what that means, because that’s not our position — it’s theirs,” Barry joked.

That might mean, Barry said, that there is some interest in recovering some of the costs of Nunavut’s environmental assessment process from industry, as is done in other jurisdictions.

It’s also possible that new legislation expected to come into force this year to change the board’s operating rules and conditions — the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act — will allow for a formal funding program to be set up again.

“But that’s really for the federal government to say, not for us,” Barry said.

That legislation, part of the 2012 bill introduced by the Tories and dubbed the Northern Jobs and Growth Act, could come into force by the summer, Barry said.

But a number of hearings could take place before that, including the Kiggavik hearings in March in Baker Lake.

Also, the proponents of three major developments have filed requests for amendments to their approved project certificates, Barry said: TMAC Resources Inc.’s Doris North mine project, about 100 kilometers south of Cambridge Bay; Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank gold mine, outside of Baker Lake; and Baffinland’s Mary River iron mine in north Baffin.

“It does depend on when submissions come in and how quickly things move… but we are budgeting such that we could be in hearings for each of those this year,” Barry said.