Talks crumble around parks agreement

Plans for the development of three federal parks are on hold because government and Inuit negotiators can’t agree on details of an Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement (IIBA).

“We’ve hit a brick wall,” Malachi Arreak, the Qiqiqtani Inuit Associations’s chief negotiator said this week.

Negotiators have stumbled on the interpretation of Article 8 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, which says that the impact and benefits agreement must give Inuit a stake in the development of parks. The IIBA should outline Inuit training and employment opportunities at the parks as well as local involvement in park management.

But Parks Canada has been reluctant, says Arreak, to give communities more than just lip service when it comes to management.

Parks Canada’s chief negotiator Bob Gamble says that granting any more authority to Inuit in the management of national parks would interfere with the federal government’s existing powers.

“We’ve put them on notice,” says Gamble. “This is the government’s bottom line.”

Talks, which have been suspended until next September, have so far centred on Ellesmere, North Baffin and Auyuittuq National Parks.

If negotiators fail to reach a consensus soon, the issue of the impact and benefit agreement may have to go to mediation.

Negotiations for a proposed new national park at Wager Bay on the west coast of Hudson Bay, meanwhile, are set to begin the end of May in Repulse Bay.

David Aglukark, chief negotiator for the Kivalliq Inuit Association, has been following the stalemate in the Baffin with interest.

The impact and benefits agreement of the Baffin parks was supposed to serve as the model for future negotiations with Parks Canada.