QIA lawyers allege consultation on mapping project was inadequate

The Polarstern off east Greenland in an earlier research voyage. In 2001, the Polarstern conducted seismic testing in Nares Strait between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. (PHOTO BY HANNES GROBE, ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE)

Lawyers representing the Qikiqtani Inuit Association accused Ottawa Aug. 5 of acting in bad faith and failing to do “meaningful consultation” in relation to a ship-borne geo-mapping project in Baffin Bay.

The QIA lawyers, who seek an injunction from the court to stop the project, said that a June 23 email from Canada-Nunavut Geosciences chief Donald James to several QIA executives suggested the unpopular Eastern Canadian Arctic Seismic Experiment would be revised in response to complaints from North Baffin resdients

But the ECASE project is set to start Aug. 9, with only one alteration made since community consultations in five communities revealed determined opposition from local hunters and the QIA.

That alteration is the addition of one more wildlife observer aboard the German research vessel Polarstern, a job worth $300 a day for Inuit from the region instead of two.

Unless Nunavut justice Sue Cooper decides otherwise, Polarstern’s seismic testing apparatus would begin operating in Baffin Bay on Aug. 9.

QIA’s lawyer Peter Jervis, a full partner with the more than century-old law firm Davis LLP, said James’ assurances came out of a consultation process that did not meet the requirements of its application to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, nor the NIRB’s approval of the project.

He said the five consultation meetings did not constitute “meaningful consultation” as required under the project description and approval.

The one-day meetings amounted to little more than a chance for communities to “blow off steam” rather than a “meaningful” dialogue with project leaders, he argued.

The need for “meaningful consultation” is especially significant, Jervis submitted, because community concerns are so dire.

If the project’s impacts are as big as the local Inuit traditional knowledge alleges, it could adversely affect marine mammal harvests for years, he said.

According to affidavits from local residents that QIA’s lawyers introduced as evidence, seismic testing in the 1960s and 1970s in the region drove the marine mammals away after it was conducted.

QIA’s lawyers’ position is that the worst-case scenario for the ECASE project is the eradication of the traditional Inuit hunting culture in the five nearby communities.

The Polarstern, operated by the Alfred Wegener Insitute of Germany in a joint project with Natural Resources Canada, will spend about two days doing this work in Lancaster Sound.

Ralf Roechert of the Alfred Wegener Insitute told Postmedia News Aug. 3 that the Polarstern does not do oil and gas exploration, and the work is related to basic science.

“[O]il-and-gas exploration is neither the business of the Alfred Wegener Institute, nor of our research vessel Polarstern,” Roechert said.

The vessel has done similar work in the Arctic and Antarctic for years.

Jervis preemptively dismissed arguments that government lawyers might make doubting the scientific value of Inuit traditional knowledge because the ECASE project application promised to incorporate such knowledge into the project’s final shape.

Lawyers for the territorial and federal government were to have presented their case Aug. 6.