07095
  1          MANITOBA CLEAN ENVIRONMENT COMMISSION
  2          
  3                     VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT  
  4                        Volume 30
  5                             
  6              Including List of Participants
  7                             
  8        
  9                             
 10                      Hearing
 11                         
 12   Wuskwatim Generation and Transmission Project
 13                         
 14                    Presiding:
 15               Gerard Lecuyer, Chair
 16                    Kathi Kinew
 17                  Harvey Nepinak
 18                   Robert Mayer
 19                  Terry Sargeant
 20     
 21                Monday, June 7, 2004
 22                  Radisson Hotel
 23                  288 Portage Avenue
 24                   Winnipeg, Manitoba
 25       
07096
  1                  LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
  2   
  3   Clean Environment Commission:
  4   Gerard Lecuyer        Chairman
  5   Terry Sargeant        Member
  6   Harvey Nepinak        Member
  7   Kathi Avery Kinew     Member
  8   Doug Abra             Counsel to Commission
  9   Rory Grewar           Staff
 10   CEC Advisors:
 11   Mel Falk
 12   Dave Farlinger
 13   Jack Scriven
 14   Jim Sandison
 15   Jean McClellan
 16   Brent McLean
 17   Kyla Gibson
 18   
 19   Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation:
 20   Chief Jerry Primrose
 21   Elvis Thomas
 22   Campbell MacInnes
 23   Valerie Matthews Lemieux
 24   
 25   
07097
  1                    LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
  2                
  3   Manitoba Conservation:
  4   Larry Strachan
  5   Trent Hreno
  6   
  7   Manitoba Hydro/NCN:
  8   Doug Bedford, Counsel
  9   Bob Adkins, Counsel
 10   Marvin Shaffer
 11   Ed Wojczynski
 12   Ken Adams
 13   Carolyn Wray
 14   Ron Mazur
 15   Lloyd Kuczek
 16   Cam Osler
 17   Stuart Davies
 18   David Hicks
 19   George Rempel
 20   David Cormie
 21   Alex Fleming
 22   Marvin Shaffer
 23   Blair McMahon
 24   
 25   
07098
  1                  LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
  2   
  3   CANADIAN NATURE FEDERATION
  4   Gaile Whellan Enns
  5   
  6   MANITOBA METIS FEDERATION:
  7   Dan Benoit
  8   
  9   NCN COMMUNITY CONSULTANTS:
 10   Jimmy D. Spence
 11   Charle James Hart
 12   Waylon Spence
 13   Earl Hart
 14   Charlie Joe Hart
 15   Terry Linklater
 16   Conrad Moore
 17   Donna Moore-Linklater
 18   Keven Hart
 19   Roberta Dysart
 20   Mark Linklater
 21   Joe Moose
 22   
 23           NO UNDERTAKINGS GIVEN
 24   
 25   
07099
  1                             INDEX OF EXHIBITS
  2   
  3   EXHIBIT NO.                                       PAGE
  4   
  5   MH/NCN-1048:  Submission to
  6                 The Clean Environment Commission
  7                 Regarding the Wuskwatim Generating
  8                 Station and Transmission Project
  9                 prepared by NCN Future Development
 10                 Community Consultants, June 7, 2004 7114  
 11   
 12   MH/NCN 1049:  Document entitled Redirect on
 13                 Climate Change
 14                 Science and Global Climate Models    7126
 15   
 16   MH/NCN-1050:  Wuskwatim Generation and Transmission 
 17                 Project EIS's Effect On Metis and 
 18                 Other Aboriginal  
 19                 People                               7188
 20   
 21   CASIL-1012:  DAL Company profile                   7221
 22   
 23   
 24   
 25   
07100
  1                    INDEX OF EXHIBITS
  2   
  3   EXHIBIT NO.                                      PAGE
  4   CASIL-1013:  Graph:  Water
  5                Survey of Canada Gauging
  6                Station-Southern Indian Lake near
  7                South Indian Lake, Water Level
  8                hydrograph                           7221
  9   CASIL-1014:  Clean Environment Commission
 10                Hearing Submission:  Wuskwatim and 
 11                Southern Indian Lake, CASIL,
 12                centre for Indigenous Environmental
 13                Resources, May 2004                  7222
 14   CNF-1026:    Response to Undertaking 59.
 15                Low Wind Speed
 16                Technology Development in the U.S.
 17                Department of Energy Wind Energy
 18                Research Program                     7223
 19   CNF-1027:    Response to CNF Undertaking
 20                62. "Becoming Respectable in Serious 
 21                Circles". Windpower Monthly,
 22                January 2004, pages 39-42.
 23                "The Real Cost of Integrating Wind",
 24                Windpower Monthly, February 2004,
 25                pages 35-46                          7223
07101
  1   Monday, June 7, 2004
  2   Upon commencing at 9:00 a.m.
  3   
  4               THE CHAIRMAN:  Good morning, ladies
  5   and gentlemen.  As we begin this morning, with the
  6   last chapter of the ongoing saga of hearings on
  7   the Wuskwatim projects, we will proceed as we have
  8   in the past with a prayer.  And I will ask Elder
  9   Sam Dysart to come forth, please.
 10               MR. DYSART:  Good morning, everybody.
 11   I'm glad to be here as an elder.  I can see that
 12   we're having a little damp weather, but that's
 13   fine.  It's kind of dry up north.  We already had
 14   a forest fire.  And I hope today we have a good
 15   day.  Hopefully everybody will speak peacefully,
 16   quietly and I hope we'll all behave.  Let us pray.
 17               (PRAYER)
 18               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you, Mr. Dysart.
 19   As our schedule indicates for today, we begin with
 20   Manitoba Hydro/NCN re-examination.  Then we have
 21   closing statements from Canadian Nature Federation
 22   this afternoon and Manitoba Metis Federation
 23   closing statements as well this afternoon and
 24   we'll see what time is available beyond that.
 25               So without further comments, Mr.
07102
  1   Grewar, do you have documents to file?
  2               MR. GREWAR:  Yes, Mr. Chairman,
  3   there's quite a number of documents to file.  I'm
  4   going to propose that we delay that to perhaps the
  5   lunch hour or this afternoon.  I am just going to
  6   get them in order for presentation as exhibits.
  7               We'd like to indicate, though, that
  8   the first part of Hydro's re-examination, they
  9   will be bringing forward the NCN community
 10   consultants, a group which will be making a brief
 11   presentation as part of the Hydro re-examination.
 12   Jimmy D. Spence will be leading that presentation.
 13               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Just to correct
 14   for the record, it's NCN/Hydro.
 15               MR. GREWAR:  My apologies.
 16               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.  Mr. Grewar,
 17   would you proceed with swearing in?
 18               MR. GREWAR:  I wonder if can have
 19   everyone state their name for the record, please.
 20               THE CHAIRMAN:  Jimmy, begin.
 21               MR. J. SPENCE:  My name is Jimmy D.
 22   Spence, Community Consultant, NCN.
 23               MR. C. HART:  Charlie James Hart,
 24   Community Consultant, NCN.
 25               MR. W. SPENCE:  Waylon Spence, Youth
07103
  1   Consultant.
  2               MR. E. HART:  Earl Hart, Community
  3   Consultant.
  4               MR. C. HART:  Charlie Joe Hart,
  5   Community Consultant, Nelson House.
  6               MR. T. LINKLATER:  Terry Linklater,
  7   Nelson House.
  8               MR. C. MOORE:  Conrad Moore, NCN
  9   Consultant.
 10               MS. D. MOORE-LINKLATER:  Donna
 11   Moore-Linklater, NCN Consultant.
 12               MR. K. HART:  Keven Hart, Council
 13   Assistant.
 14               MS. R. DYSART:  Roberta Dysart,
 15   Consultant, South Indian Lake.
 16               MR. M. LINKLATER:  Mark Linklater, NCN
 17   Community Consultant.
 18               MR. GREWAR:  Thank you.  I'll just ask
 19   you all to affirm and perhaps we can take a nod.
 20   Are you all aware that it is an offence in
 21   Manitoba to knowingly mislead this Commission?
 22               MR. J. SPENCE:  Yes.
 23               MR. GREWAR:  All having advised in the
 24   affirmative, do you promise to tell only the truth
 25   in proceedings before this Commission?
07104
  1               MR. SPENCE:  Yes.
  2               MR. GREWAR:  And all have indicated in
  3   the affirmative.  Thank you.
  4               (JIMMY D. SPENCE: SWORN)
  5               (CHARLIE JAMES HART:  SWORN)
  6               (WAYLON SPENCE:  SWORN)
  7               (EARL HART: SWORN)
  8               (CHARLIE JOE HART:  SWORN)
  9               (TERRY LINKLATER:  SWORN)
 10               (CONRAD MOORE:  SWORN)
 11               (DONNA MOORE-LINKLATER:  SWORN)
 12               (KEVEN HART:  SWORN)
 13               (ROBERTA DYSART:  SWORN)
 14               (MARK LINKLATER:  SWORN)
 15               MR. GREWAR:  One additional person.
 16   Your name?
 17               MR. J. MOOSE:  Joe Moose, NCN
 18   Consultant.
 19               THE CHAIRMAN:  Proceed, Mr. Spence.
 20               MR. SPENCE:  Good morning everyone,
 21   Elders, members of NCN in the back there, ladies
 22   and gentlemen.  Good morning, Mr. Chairman.  My
 23   name is Jimmy D. Spence.  I am speaking on behalf
 24   of the 14 community consultants employed by the
 25   Future Development Office of the Nisichawayasihk
07105
  1   Cree Nation to consult with our members about the
  2   Wuskwatim Generating and Transmission Projects.
  3   Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the
  4   Commission.
  5               The next part of our presentation,
  6   we've already done that.  Each of the consultants
  7   have introduced themselves.
  8               Our role is to carry out direct
  9   consultation activities with our members
 10   throughout Manitoba, to keep them up to date on
 11   developments regarding the proposed projects being
 12   considered by the Commission.
 13               We were chosen because we bring a
 14   range of skills to this important role.  Some of
 15   us have lived a traditional life and have gone on
 16   to become graduates of university and other
 17   post-secondary programs.
 18               Some have served the community in
 19   leadership and other capacities for the past 20 to
 20   30 years.
 21               Some of us are traditionalists and
 22   have an understanding of traditional knowledge.
 23   Some are fluent in Cree and some are regionally
 24   and generationally connected.  All of us are
 25   trying our best to help our people understand the
07106
  1   project and communicate their ideas and concerns.
  2               We have approached this task with the
  3   utmost respect for the opinions and concerns of
  4   our members.
  5               The community consultants have been a
  6   part of the Wuskwatim process since 1999.  We have
  7   knocked on doors, attended meetings and open
  8   houses, distributed information and answered
  9   questions relating to the project.
 10               To give you a sense of the scope of
 11   our involvement, I'd like to give you examples of
 12   some of the specific tasks and accomplishments
 13   we've been a part of.
 14               In 2000, we undertook the major job of
 15   formally surveying members in Nelson House, that
 16   survey we called it the Opinion Survey.  We
 17   surveyed members in Nelson House, Thompson, South
 18   Indian Lake and Winnipeg.  This involved another
 19   28 NCN members who acted as surveyors in the
 20   process and included a specialized team of Cree
 21   speakers for elder interviews.  The survey covered
 22   813 residents in Nelson House, which was 68 per
 23   cent of NCN members living there at the time.
 24               As part of the Agreement in Principle
 25   Process, the consultants first had to learn and
07107
  1   understand the AIP and then organized open houses,
  2   community meetings and one-on-one discussions with
  3   members over four months to help them understand
  4   the document before the vote in 2001.
  5               We were also part of the two-year
  6   planning process to identify and compare
  7   alternative routes for the access road to the
  8   Wuskwatim site.
  9               In this regard, we participated in
 10   joint NCN/Hydro committee meetings, offered our
 11   own Traditional Knowledge and helped collect
 12   Traditional Knowledge from others about sacred
 13   sites, use of the land and understanding of the
 14   environment near each of the alternative routes.
 15               We played a similar role in the
 16   process of selecting a transmission line through
 17   NCN's resource management area.
 18               On the issue of managing future access
 19   to the Wuskwatim site, consultants also
 20   participated in the joint NCN/Hydro committee that
 21   looked at how to deal with access into the area.
 22               We coordinated development of a
 23   resource harvest calendar by managing the
 24   collection of information over one year from
 25   resource harvesters about their resource use in
07108
  1   the resource management area.
  2               To gather traditional knowledge,
  3   community consultants undertook a formal process
  4   of interviewing elders, resource harvesters about
  5   their traditional knowledge of the resource
  6   management area and recording the information on
  7   tape, on maps and transcribing it on paper.
  8               We participated in the process of
  9   interviewing key persons on culture and other
 10   socioeconomic topics.  We identified key people,
 11   reviewed interview guides, helped conduct
 12   interviews and provided translation when needed.
 13               We participated in the review of the
 14   Environmental Impact Statements for both the
 15   generation and the transmission projects.
 16               For the public involvement process in
 17   Nelson House, Thompson, Winnipeg and Brandon, the
 18   consultants helped organize and carry out open
 19   houses, community forums, small group meetings,
 20   one-on-one household visits, broadcasts of
 21   information on local access radio in Nelson House
 22   and distribution of materials to members in all
 23   these centres.
 24               And we helped organize and carry out
 25   site ceremonies at Wuskwatim Lake and at Suwanee
07109
  1   Lake for NCN elders, members and others.
  2               As you can see, we've been a central
  3   and we think important part of the project and are
  4   very proud of our involvement and commitment.
  5               Needless to say, this has been a
  6   challenging job.  First, we've had to learn about
  7   and understand the project well enough to explain
  8   it to our members and answer their questions.  A
  9   lot of this information, as you by now appreciate,
 10   is very complex.
 11               We have the added responsibility to
 12   communicate this information in Cree and many of
 13   the concepts and words used to describe this
 14   project don't have any equivalent in Cree.
 15               Second, despite our best efforts to
 16   meet with all our members, we are not always
 17   welcome.
 18               It has been especially frustrating to
 19   communicate to some members who are completely
 20   opposed to any Hydro development project before
 21   even knowing anything about it.  Some people will
 22   not accept the information materials.  They close
 23   the door on us.  They won't attend meetings and
 24   will not visit our office.  And then some of them
 25   claim we have not consulted with them or offered
07110
  1   information.
  2               In reality, this is the most
  3   comprehensive and inclusive consultation ever
  4   undertaken by our First Nation.  By any standards,
  5   anywhere, this has been an intensive process.
  6               A further frustration is that some of
  7   these same people who will not accept our sincere
  8   efforts to bring them balanced information have
  9   generated damaging and divisive misinformation
 10   about the project.  And those who have already
 11   made up their minds accept this misinformation as
 12   truth.
 13               Despite this, we believe there is
 14   quiet a number who are looking at this project
 15   objectively and seeing the potential benefits that
 16   will be both economic and cultural.  But they
 17   remain silent in their support, partly out of
 18   respect for their elders who cannot move forward
 19   from their experiences and losses and partly
 20   because they do not easily express their views in
 21   public.
 22               Over the past five years, we have seen
 23   an increasing understanding of the Wuskwatim
 24   project by our members, including some of the
 25   elders who experienced the flooding of the 1970s.
07111
  1               They are looking down the road at the
  2   potential for the project to provide a sustainable
  3   income and opportunities for our people, our
  4   culture and environment.
  5               We have also explained the project to
  6   our youth who will be the primary beneficiaries of
  7   this proposed project.  You heard from some of
  8   them last month.
  9               I want to make it clear we are not
 10   promoters for the project.  This is not our role.
 11   We are trying to present the information in a
 12   balanced way.  In fact, if you ask the community
 13   consultants, you will find many are still
 14   undecided themselves.
 15               Everyone wants the right outcome for
 16   our community and we are all weighing the facts
 17   and the evidence as it is discussed.  Like voters
 18   everywhere, there are those who have made up their
 19   minds and those who will only decide when they
 20   cast their ballot.
 21               Overall though, we have seen something
 22   new happening in our community in the midst of the
 23   scepticism and that is a growing hope that there
 24   can be a brighter future for us in the north, not
 25   only for the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation but for
07112
  1   other northerners.  And some people are planning
  2   for this brighter future.  They are enrolling in
  3   trades and preparing for the jobs that will come
  4   with this project.
  5               We are also receiving questions about
  6   the business opportunities as this project sparks
  7   the imagination and the entrepreneurial
  8   aspirations of our people.  We can see that our
  9   people have a lot to learn about this because the
 10   opportunities for business run by our members to
 11   this time have been few and far between.  But our
 12   people are starting to believe they can do this.
 13   That alone is worth a lot.
 14               In the days, weeks and months ahead,
 15   we will continue to meet with our members, to give
 16   them the best information we can as we approach
 17   the critical vote on the Project Development
 18   Agreement later this year.
 19               Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, your
 20   objective and independent recommendations will
 21   have a role in determining whether the Wuskwatim
 22   projects go ahead.  When it is public, we will
 23   make a genuine effort to convey the meaning,
 24   intent and recommendations of your report to our
 25   people.  It will help shape their decision on
07113
  1   whether to support this project.
  2               Our future depends on the right
  3   decision and we are earnestly and honestly trying
  4   to help ensure our members have everything they
  5   need to decide.
  6               With respect, that's the end of our
  7   presentation.  We would prefer not to answer any
  8   questions.  Thank you.
  9               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you, Mr. Spence.
 10   In spite of your last sentence, and I don't plan
 11   to ask you questions on the work you have done,
 12   but I do want to know if your group is still
 13   operating as a consultant group for NCN?
 14               MR. SPENCE:  We're all still working
 15   for NCN as community consultants.
 16               THE CHAIRMAN:  Is that a role that you
 17   will continue to carry on until and while the
 18   project is being built?
 19               MR. SPENCE:  I guess we'll all be here
 20   till it's decided whether the project goes or not.
 21               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.  Thank you
 22   very much.
 23               MR. GREWAR:  Mr. Chairman, if we might
 24   just enter this as an exhibit then as OTH-1040.
 25               MR. MAYER:  It's Hydro/NCN.
07114
  1               MR. GREWAR:  So it is a Hydro/NCN
  2   exhibit?
  3               THE CHAIRMAN:  It's NCN anyways.
  4               MR. GREWAR:  Okay.  One moment.  Then
  5   it will be MH/NCN-1048.
  6   
  7               (EXHIBIT MH/NCN-1048:  Submission to
  8               The Clean Environment Commission
  9               Regarding the Wuskwatim Generating
 10               Station and Transmission Project
 11               prepared by NCN Future Development
 12               Community Consultants, June 7, 2004)
 13   
 14               MR. SPENCE:  Maybe just before we
 15   leave, I'd just like to mention not only the
 16   consultants but there's a lot of people sitting
 17   out there that have been a tremendous help to us
 18   in our work as consultants in the community, not
 19   only in Nelson House but in all the communities
 20   that we've gone to.  And I think the people
 21   sitting out there know who I'm talking about.  And
 22   we'd like to thank you for your help throughout
 23   the process.  And to our Elder Sam Dysart who has
 24   been tagging along with us and there's a lot of
 25   other people out there that have been a tremendous
07115
  1   help to us in being able to do the work we were
  2   given to do.  I'd like to just mention those
  3   people.  Thank you.
  4               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you again.  All
  5   right.  You may begin the process of
  6   re-examination, Mr. Bedford.
  7               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Adams, in his
  8   presentation before this Commission on May 27th,
  9   2004, Mr. David Martin, on behalf of the Manitoba
 10   Building and Construction Trades Council, was
 11   asked a series of questions by several parties
 12   regarding the hiring preference currently in the
 13   present Burntwood/Nelson Collective Agreement.
 14               Could you please clarify for all of us
 15   what the current agreement provides for?  As I am
 16   aware that there is a concern that Mr. Martin's
 17   recollection of the current terms of the agreement
 18   was regrettably inaccurate.
 19               MR. ADAMS:  Yes.  The hiring procedure
 20   and referral system in the current
 21   Burntwood/Nelson Agreement is governed by a Letter
 22   of Agreement, number one, dated September 15th,
 23   1989.  In Article 3.1, this stipulates that as
 24   long as certain employment goals on targets have
 25   not been reached, the referral sequence shall be
07116
  1   (A), firstly, any northern residents of Native
  2   ancestry.  And these are all defined terms in the
  3   agreement.  (B), secondly, if job vacancies
  4   remain, any northern residents not of Native
  5   ancestry who are members of the appropriate local
  6   union of the council.  That's the Allied Hydro
  7   Council.  (C), thirdly, if job order vacancies
  8   remain, any other northern residents not of Native
  9   ancestry.  (D), fourthly, if job vacancies remain,
 10   the union is requested to refer its members.  And
 11   finally, or fifthly, if there is still not enough
 12   employees, the contractor may recruit its own.
 13               So there's a very very clear
 14   preference in this Letter of Agreement for any
 15   northern person of Native ancestry and then the
 16   hierarchy down to where the contractor can scour
 17   the world to find somebody.
 18               There are also corresponding
 19   preference clauses for the layoff procedure in
 20   reverse.
 21               MR. MAYER:  Can we get some
 22   clarification, please?  You talk about hiring.
 23   Does this include construction and maintenance?
 24               MR. ADAMS:  No, this is just for the
 25   construction contracts.  The maintenance is under
07117
  1   Manitoba Hydro's internal collective agreement
  2   which is a wholly different thing.
  3               Mr. Martin was correct when he said
  4   that a new agreement is currently being
  5   negotiated.  And I'd like to share his optimism as
  6   to how quick we can negotiate it.  But we
  7   anticipate that we'll be able to successfully
  8   negotiate comparable clauses in the new agreement.
  9   Thank you.
 10               MS. AVERY KINEW:  I wasn't clear on
 11   whether you're negotiating now or when you might
 12   start because earlier testimony, it sounded like
 13   you were already at the table.
 14               MR. ADAMS:  We have been at the table
 15   for about, help me here, John, but probably over a
 16   year and a half.  We've actually suspended
 17   negotiations, probably about three months ago, for
 18   two reasons.  One is there's a large portion of
 19   our energies are involved in this proceeding.  And
 20   the second one is we needed to take time out with
 21   our Aboriginal partners and clarify exactly what
 22   we wanted to get in the new agreement.
 23               But our expectation is that we will
 24   probably next week contact the Allied Hydro
 25   Council and try to set up dates to complete the
07118
  1   negotiations.
  2               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Thank you.
  3               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Wojczynski, during
  4   the course of questions she posed to the Panel,
  5   Ms.  Phare, on behalf of the Community Association
  6   of South Indian Lake, suggested to the Panel, and
  7   to you in particular, that you were unwilling to
  8   look at global climate models.  Would you please
  9   clarify the response that was given to Ms. Phare
 10   when she raised that subject?  And I have given to
 11   Mr. Grewar, and I see that he has now circulated,
 12   a document which I am aware you are going to
 13   address when you provide the answer to the
 14   question I have just posed to you.
 15               MR. WOJCZYNSKI:  Yes, I would like to
 16   clarify our response to Ms. Phare and also the
 17   kind of implication echoed in an allegation
 18   earlier from Ms. Elizabeth May, who is a witness
 19   for the Canadian Nature Federation Wildlands, when
 20   she stated that from what she had seen, and she
 21   hadn't read the whole EIS I don't believe, but
 22   that Manitoba Hydro is not aware of and does not
 23   believe in the science of climate change or the
 24   application of the modern sophisticated climate
 25   change models.
07119
  1               Nothing could be further from the
  2   truth.  Manitoba Hydro has a sophisticated
  3   understanding of the science of climate change and
  4   applied that when assessing Wuskwatim.  And
  5   actually for us, water flows, temperatures, the
  6   whole range of issues associated with those are
  7   critical to us, never mind Wuskwatim.  Just for
  8   our day-to-day operation, for our long-term
  9   planning, water is the life blood of our
 10   generation system.
 11               And so we have been very involved in
 12   trying to understand climate change and what's
 13   happening with it and what the future
 14   possibilities do, even aside from Wuskwatim.  But
 15   clearly with Wuskwatim, we made a special effort
 16   to apply that to Wuskwatim.
 17               And I just wanted to briefly review
 18   the hand-out.  I won't read it to save some time
 19   but I will just very briefly walk us through that,
 20   if we could.
 21               And first of all, the EIS, both the
 22   generation and transmission EISs, did contain some
 23   extensive material on climate change and reference
 24   to modelling.  And there's even additional
 25   material that wasn't in the EIS but there was
07120
  1   material in the EIS that we actually haven't
  2   actually presented earlier in the process, because
  3   given the vast volume of material, it had never
  4   come up as a priority.  But given that there were
  5   those concerns expressed by a few people, we
  6   thought we should draw people's attention.
  7               And you can see there's a few chapters
  8   in sections in the Generation EIS, Volume 4,
  9   Volume 10, the Cumulative Effects.  To some
 10   degree, we treated climate change as a cumulative
 11   effect kind of issue.  And also in the
 12   Transmission EIS Volume 5.  And there's some of
 13   the references contained and I won't repeat those
 14   right now.  But just generally speaking, we have
 15   been and continue to work closely with scientists
 16   and climate change experts using primarily global
 17   climate models but also now regional models.  And
 18   we are looking at the entire Nelson River basin
 19   because that's again, as I said, our life blood.
 20   But we also specifically looked at the Wuskwatim
 21   region for the Wuskwatim EIS.  And one of the
 22   things we looked at was the impact of the various
 23   climate scenarios on precipitation and to the
 24   degree it's possible so far, on run-off.
 25               Generally climate change models, the
07121
  1   worldwide models, there is a consensus from all
  2   those models that temperatures are going to
  3   increase.  However, these models vary in their
  4   projections of long-term precipitation trends with
  5   most of the models and scenarios projecting an
  6   increase in precipitation.  We're talking about
  7   globally here.
  8               For the Wuskwatim region, we looked at
  9   around 20 models and I'll briefly get into that
 10   right away.  Most of those models indicated
 11   increased precipitation, not decreased
 12   precipitation, in the Wuskwatim region.
 13               However, that is different than
 14   run-off.  And there's other factors in run-off
 15   than just precipitation.  Obviously temperature is
 16   a factor.  The seasonality of it, wind, land
 17   cover, evapotranspiration, evaporation.  So the
 18   global models can't really deal with those and the
 19   regional models are trying to.  But the
 20   precipitation is well-modeled, the run-off is not
 21   yet well-modeled.
 22               And there is uncertainty about the
 23   intensity, duration and seasonal variability, the
 24   precipitation in the Wuskwatim region under the
 25   climate change conditions.
07122
  1               There's a little figure on page 2 that
  2   was embedded in the Volume 5 of the Transmission
  3   EIS that just gives an indication of what some of
  4   the models have indicated and the impacts might be
  5   on the ecosystem.  And again, I'm not going to go
  6   into that here, but this is just to indicate that
  7   these kind of considerations were made by our team
  8   when assessing Wuskwatim.
  9               In terms of the models themselves,
 10   Manitoba Hydro has been investigating the various
 11   models and this includes an ongoing analysis by
 12   the IISD, the International Institute for
 13   Sustainable Development, which we initiated in the
 14   fall of 2002.  And that work is still under way.
 15   It's a long-term effort with them.  But we,
 16   ourselves, have been doing some work and
 17   extracting information earlier including for the
 18   Wuskwatim EIS.
 19               We have been monitoring the
 20   development of these models ourselves, going to
 21   workshops and working with others.  One that's
 22   particularly important for us is the University of
 23   Victoria.  The Canadian Institute for Climate
 24   Studies has a web-based tool that's picked up,
 25   where it uses a database, all the global climate
07123
  1   models current in use worldwide and summarized the
  2   results.  And so we have used that.  And many
  3   others in the field use that as a main database.
  4   And we use that in the assessment of climate
  5   change impacts on Wuskwatim and in preparation of
  6   the EIS.
  7               Now, if you turn the page, you can see
  8   there's a figure, figure 1, where we have
  9   summarized -- if you turn the page.  We don't have
 10   page numbers, I apologize.  I think it's the
 11   fourth page.  The fourth page, there's a
 12   scattergram there.  And what we've done is this is
 13   the information we used when we were preparing the
 14   EIS for Wuskwatim.  And the top one is for the
 15   year 2020.  And what it is on the left hand axis,
 16   it's the change in precipitation in the Wuskwatim
 17   region as a percentage.  And the bottom axis is
 18   the change in temperature.  And the precipitation
 19   goes from minus five per cent to zero up to 15 per
 20   cent.  Temperature from zero degrees to plus three
 21   degree temperature change.
 22               And you can see that the vast majority
 23   of the models -- well, all the models show an
 24   increase in temperature and the vast majority of
 25   the models, 18 out of the 20, show an increase in
07124
  1   precipitation.
  2               If you go out further in time, out to
  3   2080, there you get a more dramatic effect.  The
  4   temperature range now is up to 11 degrees increase
  5   with most of the models showing around a five
  6   degree increase in temperature.  This is an annual
  7   average.  And the precipitation, with only one
  8   model showing a decrease and with other models
  9   going up to nearly 35 per cent increase in
 10   precipitation with most of them being 5 to 15 per
 11   cent increase in precipitation.
 12               So this information was the basis for
 13   our conclusions in the EIS.
 14               We did look at regional climate models
 15   which were modeled better but they are not as
 16   advanced right now, and so we had to rely on the
 17   global models mainly.
 18               We were involved in other climate
 19   change research activities.  We funded over half a
 20   million dollars in research and contract work over
 21   the past 10 years of better understanding climate
 22   change, whether it's drought, looking at drought
 23   of record, looking at tree rings and lake
 24   sediments to get a better idea of what happened
 25   hundreds of years ago.  We're currently funding
07125
  1   projects on the upper Churchill River, Winnipeg
  2   River and Red River basins.
  3               We just recently decide to fund two
  4   climate change research areas, one at the
  5   University of Winnipeg and one at the University
  6   of Regina, for a total of funding of a quarter
  7   million dollars.  We've been very involved in a
  8   range of other climate change efforts.  And I
  9   won't repeat them, they are down on here.
 10               You might recall I bragged one day
 11   about being on the Board of Directors for
 12   ArcticNet Research Project.  That's a four year,
 13   $25 million project in investigating the impacts
 14   of climate change on the Arctic in the Hudson's
 15   Bay watershed.  But we've been involved not just
 16   in studying the impacts of climate change but in
 17   what should be done to reduce emissions and manage
 18   emissions.  And so we've been very active in that
 19   and there has been discussion in our hearing
 20   earlier.  And I won't repeat that.
 21               And also, we have discussed in our
 22   interrogatories and our various climate change
 23   impacts.  And for instance, we've got our VCR
 24   report that we have talked about previously that
 25   summarized that, so I won't repeat.
07126
  1               So we are very active and very
  2   knowledgeable in the area of climate change and
  3   are continuing to do so.  Thank you.
  4               MR. GREWAR:  Mr. Chairman, if we might
  5   add as Exhibit MH/NCN 1049, the Redirect on
  6   Climate Change Science and Global Climate Models.
  7   
  8               (EXHIBIT MH/NCN 1049:  Document
  9               entitled Redirect on Climate Change
 10               Science and Global Climate Models)
 11   
 12               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Wojczynski, it's
 13   appropriate that you bring this information.  And
 14   perhaps a lot of the misunderstanding or
 15   misinformation is very little of that information
 16   relates to the overview volumes which is the EIS
 17   on the generation and the transmission lines.  I
 18   personally didn't find much, if anything, in
 19   regards.
 20               And I recall when the presentations
 21   were made by Mr. Remple and Mr. Hicks in regards
 22   to climate change, very little was said in those
 23   presentations of the EIS.
 24               So going to Volume 4, you do indicate
 25   specific sections where that is addressed.  And
07127
  1   perhaps it's timely that it's brought forth at
  2   this time.
  3               MR. WOJCZYNSKI:  Yes, Mr. Chair.  And
  4   we recognize that in our presentations themselves,
  5   we did not focus very specifically on climate
  6   change modelling.  Our presentations some people
  7   thought were lengthy as it was and we had to make
  8   decisions as to what to priorize.  And so we did
  9   not priorize this in our presentations, although
 10   it was in our work.  Well, that's why we're
 11   bringing it up today when we see that there was an
 12   interest and a concern in that, we've taken this
 13   opportunity to address it.  But thank you.
 14               THE CHAIRMAN:  Ms. Avery Kinew.
 15               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Go ahead, Mr. Adam.
 16               MR. ADAMS:  I was just going to
 17   comment.  I appreciate the horrendous task that
 18   the Commission has in plowing through that 10 feet
 19   of material.
 20               I think, though, as a proponent we do
 21   have a right to expect that expert witnesses
 22   engaged to participate in the process would take
 23   that effort and do it.
 24               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Mr. Wojczynski, I
 25   think part of the problem was in that Volume 10,
07128
  1   climate change was dismissed, 3.4.6 general
  2   scoping, because it's neither a project nor an
  3   activity, it doesn't qualify for CEA analysis.
  4   Climate change was explained in a high degree
  5   uncertainty in science.  And you yourself are on a
  6   board and you understand where things are at.  And
  7   I think this was written in a very dismissive way.
  8   I think you were called to account by CNF and
  9   others, CASIL.  So I appreciate this information
 10   today.
 11               MR. WOJCZYNSKI:  Maybe I could just,
 12   it might be helpful if I elaborated for a minute.
 13   I think what the difficulty here is that when we
 14   looked at the science and these diagrams depicted,
 15   there's a wide range of results.  This is for
 16   precipitation.
 17               The next step is the run-off.  And
 18   there aren't good models yet that have been made
 19   to take all of this and translate it into run-off.
 20   So there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of, well,
 21   will the precipitation increase or not?  What will
 22   happen to local ecosystem?  There's such a huge
 23   variety of possibilities with no consensus on what
 24   will happen that we didn't feel that we could
 25   reliably provide any further indication than we
07129
  1   had.  And I think that's the difficulty.  There's
  2   such a huge range of uncertainty.  I don't know if
  3   anybody else in the team -- Maybe that covers it.
  4   Does anyone else have anything to add?
  5               MR. DAVIES:  In Volume 10, it does say
  6   that climate change is neither a project nor an
  7   activity, and therefore, it could be excluded.
  8   But in fact, it is actually addressed in both the
  9   aquatic and terrestrial assessments for the
 10   generation component.  And there's specific
 11   statements on the potential effects of climate
 12   change, particularly in regards to increased
 13   temperatures in the area.
 14               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Yes, I understand
 15   that.  I did see that.  But it's just the way it
 16   was written in this particular chapter.
 17               MR. WOJCZYNSKI:  And we recognize the
 18   concern.  That's why we decided we should, today,
 19   clear up the record on that.
 20               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Thank you.
 21               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Remple, moving on
 22   from the particular subject of climate change
 23   models.  There are, as we all know, there have
 24   been, as we all know, suggestions at this hearing
 25   that the proponents have failed to consider the
07130
  1   effects of climate change on the project.  How do
  2   you respond to that suggestion?
  3               MR. REMPEL:  Well, participants such
  4   as CASIL and CNF appear to have made the
  5   assumption that climate change will result in
  6   decreased flow into Wuskwatim Lake.  In fact, for
  7   the Wuskwatim region, as just discussed by Mr.
  8   Wojczynski, most of the models actually project an
  9   increase in precipitation.
 10               The net effect of the increased
 11   precipitation on run-off and river flow remains
 12   uncertain.  And while there is no clear indication
 13   that stream flows in the Wuskwatim basin will
 14   increase or decrease, Manitoba Hydro and NCN
 15   undertook a sensitivity analysis of a 10 per cent
 16   flow reduction in the Wuskwatim project.  And that
 17   economic assessment was discussed in the Need For
 18   and Alternatives To submission.  And we won't
 19   discuss that at this time.
 20               But in addition to the economic
 21   sensitivity, an assessment of the environmental
 22   effects that were described in the EIS was
 23   undertaken and it concluded that if the flows were
 24   reduced by say 10 per cent, there would be no
 25   change in the physical facilities.  The immediate
07131
  1   forebay and Wuskwatim Lake would stay at the same
  2   level as described in the EIS.  The mode of
  3   operation would not change.  There would still be
  4   daily flow balancing.  In a 24 hour period, the
  5   flow into the reservoir would equal the flow out.
  6   But the cycling of operation between two and three
  7   turbines would increase.
  8               And as you recall, the changes in
  9   downstream water levels occur when there's a
 10   change in the number of units operating.
 11               So the magnitude of the change in the
 12   downstream water levels would not increase.  The
 13   change in water levels downstream would stay
 14   within the range that was assessed in the EIS.
 15   The changes in all those downstream water levels
 16   would not change in magnitude.  And the zone of
 17   downstream water level influences would not
 18   change; ie, it would still extend to Birch Tree
 19   Lake.
 20               We also looked at what would happen if
 21   those flows were to increase due to climate
 22   change.  And it was concluded that, again, the
 23   physical facilities would not change.  The
 24   forebay, including Wuskwatim Lake, would stay the
 25   same as described in the EIS.  And again, the mode
07132
  1   of operation, the daily flow balancing would not
  2   change.
  3               In this case, with the increased flow,
  4   all three turbines would be running more often.
  5   So there would be less cycling between two and
  6   three turbines.  And this would result in less
  7   frequent downstream fluctuation in water levels.
  8   The magnitude of those fluctuations would still be
  9   the same although they would be less frequent.
 10   And again, the hydraulic zone of influence, both
 11   upstream and downstream, would be the same.
 12               On this basis, the overall conclusions
 13   of the assessment of environmental effects in the
 14   EIS would not change if the flows, as a result of
 15   climate change, were to reduce or increase by a
 16   nominal 10 per cent.
 17               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Osler, if anyone
 18   here continues to have some interest in the
 19   subject of cumulative effects analysis, I know I
 20   heard recently that there is little point in one
 21   spending one's time on that subject in reading
 22   Volume 10 of the EIS.  However, what
 23   recommendations would you make to a reader
 24   regarding the subject of cumulative effects
 25   analysis and where one might find important
07133
  1   information on that topic in the EIS volumes?
  2               MR. OSLER:  The cumulative effects
  3   subject and how it's covered in the EISs was
  4   reviewed in response to the CEC first round
  5   question number 103(a) and (b) if somebody wants
  6   to review it again.  In essence, we would focus on
  7   the summary chapters in Volume 1 of each EIS,
  8   Section 2.3 in the Volume 1 of the GS, and Section
  9   2.4 in Volume 1 of the Transmission.
 10               Although I would suggest that to
 11   understand the subject, you should probably look
 12   at those sections in the context of the entire
 13   Section 2 in each case, the approach taken for
 14   doing the EIS.
 15               In order to get at the details of how
 16   it's addressed for each subject, which is how this
 17   was done integrally with each of the components of
 18   the environment, you would go through the physical
 19   and the aquatic and the terrestrial, et cetera,
 20   sections to see how it was actually handled as
 21   part of the analysis.
 22               There is an overview provided of where
 23   those sections are throughout the two EISs and the
 24   backup volumes.  There's a table provided in
 25   response to CEC 100 that does tell you where all
07134
  1   those can be found if you wanted to have a
  2   cross-reference.  But it's designed in essence to
  3   be an integral part of the analysis.  And it is
  4   overviewed well in the chapter 2 of each volume --
  5   main Volume 1.
  6               The background Volume number 10 is a
  7   methodological background.  It is not
  8   unfortunately the place where someone should start
  9   this review.  And it probably isn't essential
 10   either in terms of reading it to understand the
 11   approach taken.
 12               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Davies.
 13               THE CHAIRMAN:  Can I ask a question,
 14   please, of Mr. Osler?  I recall the very beginning
 15   of the hearings when you elaborated on the
 16   distinctions between the Canadian approach to EIS
 17   and Manitoba.  Just a matter of perhaps expressing
 18   an opinion for people who like you are involved in
 19   doing consultant work in the EIS area.  Would it
 20   be your opinion that perhaps there could be a
 21   greater degree of harmonization between the
 22   various EIS or cumulative approaches basically
 23   between the province and the federal approach,
 24   would make it perhaps a task even clearer and
 25   easier to abide by?
07135
  1               MR. OSLER:  I think it's an evolving
  2   area and it causes -- it isn't crystallized yet as
  3   to how everybody would expect what a cumulative
  4   effects would look like.  I'm not sure I would
  5   characterize it as necessarily a conflict between
  6   the provincial and the federal only.  It sometimes
  7   is between different jurisdictions though.
  8               So as practitioners, we try and help
  9   get more harmonization and also get people's
 10   expectations as to what they think they are going
 11   to find when they look into this, batching closer
 12   to what they do find when they get there.
 13               I think part of the trouble is people
 14   approach the subject for the first time.  Most of
 15   us deal with our own expectations of what we think
 16   we're going to find when we start to read it, and
 17   we get into it and we find what we find.
 18               But the Canadian Environmental
 19   approach through the CEAA, we've referenced it
 20   many times here, their guides right up to the more
 21   recent ones, and I don't think the province is
 22   consciously, sir, in a different mode of -- I
 23   think they are trying to be in step or we're all
 24   trying to be in step together, it doesn't always
 25   come out that way.  And it's a subject that each
07136
  1   practitioner takes a little bit different approach
  2   to.  Each discipline has their own problems in
  3   dealing with it, as you've heard.  And I think
  4   different types of projects, through their
  5   experience, tend to approach it differently.
  6               We have got two different types of
  7   projects here, a generation project and a
  8   transmission project.  So it isn't
  9   federal/provincial only disharmony that you're
 10   seeing here.  It's just trying to bring all of
 11   this together for one integrated package.
 12               THE CHAIRMAN:  I didn't want to go and
 13   I didn't mention that they were conflicting but I
 14   do recall when you went through addressing the CEA
 15   and the Canadian/Manitoba cumulative effects
 16   approach, that you did indicate a number of times
 17   in your responses where, and rightly so perhaps
 18   because we're talking here about a cooperative
 19   assessment approach?
 20               MR. OSLER:  Right.
 21               THE CHAIRMAN:  And yet we are having
 22   to go by or live by two processes that are, I'm
 23   not saying in conflict, but not necessarily the
 24   same.  And my question was basically the greater
 25   similarity there is and you're saying they are
07137
  1   evolving towards a greater level of similarity,
  2   and I suppose that's your answer.  But that's the
  3   opinion of seeking whether that would not in
  4   itself, with a greater harmony between the two or
  5   similarity, would not make the task, your task
  6   especially easier.
  7               MR. MAYER:  Arising out of the Chair's
  8   question, I'm just a hick town country lawyer, but
  9   I can't believe that the whole concept of
 10   cumulative effects is so new that we can't have
 11   worked something out by now.  How long have people
 12   been trying to assess cumulative effects in
 13   environmental impact statements?
 14               MR. OSLER:  I can't give you a date
 15   but it's certainly through the nineties has been
 16   part and parcel of the dialogue.  The 1994 guide,
 17   the reference guide doesn't emphasize it at great
 18   length, whereas the more recent guide, the
 19   practitioner's guide you referred to of course
 20   talks about it at great length.
 21               But when we were doing the uranium
 22   joint panels work in Saskatchewan in the
 23   mid-nineties, certainly cumulative effects were
 24   part of the guidelines frame of reference and
 25   everything else.  So it's not brand new by any
07138
  1   means.
  2               MR. MAYER:  I've heard the seventies.
  3               MR. OSLER:  Well, I think that people
  4   have been talking about it for a long long time.
  5   But you know, you're talking about environmental
  6   law in the sense of this hearing being in place
  7   some people say until a bit later.  So I mean I
  8   can't give a lecture on the subject at the moment.
  9               The concept of looking at the thing
 10   properly, so you're taking into account all of the
 11   things that are affecting the environment without
 12   the project, I would submit has been there from
 13   the first time anybody thought about the subject.
 14               The problem is practitioners have to
 15   evolve their techniques to deal with it and deal
 16   with it in a sort of standardized way.  And I
 17   guess people thought that they weren't dealing
 18   with it well enough so they started to talk about
 19   something called cumulative effects.
 20               And when we are doing a project
 21   specific analysis, not anything more than that, I
 22   think our submission is, and the people who have
 23   advised us, Peter Duinker who has been around from
 24   the seventies and eighties, it's nothing more,
 25   Cam, he says than doing an environmental
07139
  1   assessment properly.  And it's been there from day
  2   one, damn it.  And don't get hung up on all the
  3   fancy details, just do the darned thing properly.
  4               That's the message that I've received
  5   over and over again and I think it's probably the
  6   core for a project specific cumulative effects as
  7   distinct from a regional planning approach.
  8               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.
  9               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Davies, on April
 10   6th, 2004, Mr. Abra, on behalf of the Commission,
 11   inquired whether or not Dr. Peter Duinker had
 12   given any advice regarding the EIS.  And you
 13   advised that Dr. Duinker had participated in two
 14   workshops and had read the EIS after it was filed.
 15               Mr. Abra then proceeded to ask you,
 16   "Okay.  And he was satisfied with it?"  And your
 17   immediate response to Mr. Abra was, "I think
 18   overall, he felt that the process that was used
 19   was correct."  Shortly thereafter, Mr. Abra asked
 20   you, "And Dr. Duinker, as you say, did review it
 21   after it was filed?  He didn't give you any
 22   response in writing but he did, to the best of
 23   your knowledge, indicate an acceptance of the
 24   format, not the format that was used but the
 25   methodology that was used and the conclusions that
07140
  1   you came to and so forth."  And you answered Mr.
  2   Abra at that time with the words, "That's
  3   correct."
  4               Now, I know you've had a chance to
  5   review the transcript of the evidence you gave on
  6   April 6th and I understand that you've also had
  7   occasion to review those answers with Dr. Peter
  8   Duinker and you wish to clarify the response you
  9   gave to Mr. Abra to the last question that I
 10   quoted which was whether or not Dr. Peter Duinker
 11   approved both the methodology and the conclusions
 12   in the EIS.  Would you please clarify for us?
 13               MR. DAVIES:  All of the statements
 14   that you read are correct but I want to make sure
 15   that it's clear that Dr. Duinker was asked
 16   specifically to look at the cumulative effects
 17   assessment process and the conclusions that were
 18   reached in regards to the process and its
 19   participation in the workshops is all correct as
 20   stated.  I don't, however, want to leave the
 21   impression that Dr. Duinker agreed with all of the
 22   conclusions in the EIS.
 23               Dr. Duinker was not asked to review
 24   the entire EIS, therefore he did not agree or
 25   disagree with the conclusions.  His role was again
07141
  1   specifically in regards to the cumulative effects
  2   assessment process.  And the statements on record
  3   in regards to that are correct.
  4               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Davies, moving to a
  5   different topic.  Given your experience with past
  6   and current monitoring programs conducted by my
  7   employer, Manitoba Hydro, and others in Canada,
  8   and your knowledge of the draft plans regarding
  9   the Wuskwatim Projects, can you tell us, please,
 10   what focus, if any, is given to issues that are
 11   important to local communities in these monitoring
 12   programs?
 13               MR. DAVIES:  The monitoring programs
 14   that I am familiar with, including the proposed
 15   Wuskwatim Monitoring Program, all focus on issues
 16   that were identified either by the local
 17   communities or by the regulators.  Some examples,
 18   the long-term monitoring program at Cross Lake
 19   focuses on fish populations which are harvested
 20   both commercially and domestically by the
 21   community.  The monitoring program at South Indian
 22   Lake on Southern Indian Lake currently focuses on
 23   commercial fish species because of the importance
 24   of the fishery to the community.  At Churchill,
 25   the focus is slightly different.  It focuses on
07142
  1   birds, beluga whales and the sports fishery which
  2   were identified as important by the community.
  3               In all of the studies, community
  4   members are hired to assist in all of the
  5   monitoring work and both science and traditional
  6   knowledge are incorporated into those programs.
  7   The majority of the community members that are
  8   involved generally assist in the field work but
  9   we're now also starting to see and have hired some
 10   younger individuals from those communities who
 11   have chosen Environmental Studies as their work
 12   and they are working in Winnipeg with us now.
 13               MR. BEDFORD:  Which leads me, Mr.
 14   Davies, to my next question.  I have had the
 15   pleasure of visiting your lab in Winnipeg and of
 16   watching technicians analyzing and studying water
 17   and aquatic samples that I was told were taken
 18   from northern lakes and rivers.  Tell us, tell me,
 19   please, what becomes of the data that's analyzed
 20   and the raw studies that I saw being undertaken in
 21   that lab.
 22               MR. DAVIES:  The information that's
 23   collected is assembled and it's published either
 24   in daily reports or technical reports.  The
 25   reports are provided to the communities that we
07143
  1   are working with us on these studies.  It's also
  2   provided to regulatory authorities to meet licence
  3   and permit requirements.  In addition, a large
  4   number of reports have been provided to libraries
  5   both locally and nationally and to other
  6   researchers in the general public when requested.
  7               MR. BEDFORD:  Now, if, as some have
  8   suggested during the course of this hearing, some
  9   other party, remote or independent of the owner
 10   say of a hydroelectric project, were to be created
 11   to monitor that project, how would that affect, in
 12   your opinion, the monitoring process?
 13               MR. DAVIES:  First of all, independent
 14   monitoring agencies aren't very common.  When it
 15   is used, the agency generally reviews the work
 16   that's conducted by the proponent, provides
 17   comments to the regulators and the general public.
 18   It doesn't actually conduct the studies itself
 19   normally.
 20               This type of process is currently
 21   being conducted in the Northwest Territories.
 22   There's a monitoring agency called the
 23   Environmental Monitoring Advisory Board which is
 24   being used to monitor some of the developments
 25   such as the diamond mines.
07144
  1               The proponent, in this case it was
  2   Diavik Mines, generally hires an independent
  3   consultant to conduct the monitoring studies.  The
  4   reports are then given to the agency which reviews
  5   the reports and that agency provides comments to
  6   the regulators and the general public.  If the
  7   environmental monitoring advisory board doesn't
  8   have the expertise within that board, sometimes it
  9   also goes out and hires an independent consultant
 10   to provide that technical assistance that they
 11   require.
 12               In Manitoba, it's slightly different.
 13   Communities are directly involved in all of the
 14   monitoring programs and the regulators receive the
 15   reports and ensure that the monitoring and licence
 16   requirements have been fulfilled.
 17               MR. BEDFORD:  What do you say, Mr.
 18   Davies, to well-meaning citizens who fear that no
 19   owner of any facility which can have significant
 20   effects on the environment can be trusted to
 21   monitor the ongoing effects that its facility is
 22   having on the environment?
 23               MR. DAVIES:  The majority of
 24   environmental monitoring for proponents, because
 25   of its technical nature, is generally conducted by
07145
  1   independent companies.  Some of the staff in those
  2   companies has spent more than five to 10 years in
  3   universities, getting the training and background
  4   to enable them to conduct those studies.  That
  5   commitment was made by those individuals because
  6   they care about the environment.  If they didn't,
  7   they would have gone into a different line of
  8   work.
  9               Same holds true for the professionals,
 10   biologists and other professionals in other fields
 11   who work for the proponents.  They also went into
 12   that line of work because they care for the
 13   environment.
 14               In addition to that, the studies are
 15   conducted with the involvement of the regulatory
 16   agencies and the full participation and
 17   involvement of the communities that are affected.
 18               MR. BEDFORD:  Thank you.  Mr. Osler,
 19   on May 14th, 2004, I'm sure we all still recollect
 20   that representatives of the Manitoba Metis
 21   Federation stated during the course of their
 22   presentation that the proponents of the Wuskwatim
 23   projects had failed to meet certain requirements
 24   in the guidelines set down by the Minister of
 25   Conservation of this province on the subject of
07146
  1   considering the effects of the projects on
  2   Aboriginal peoples, specifically the Metis people.
  3   And as a consequence, the Clean Environment
  4   Commission had no choice but to recommend to the
  5   Minister that the projects not proceed because of
  6   this apparent deficiency.
  7               With reference to the guidelines, Mr.
  8   Osler, is that indeed correct?
  9               MR. OSLER:  No, it is not correct.
 10   There is nothing in the EIS guidelines saying that
 11   the EISs must or should provide information on the
 12   Metis per se or that the guidelines assume that
 13   the Metis are to be assessed as a separate
 14   Aboriginal community.
 15               Looking at it in more detail, the EIS
 16   guidelines merit review, and we certainly have
 17   gone through that in light of their testimony, but
 18   when you go through it carefully, the choice of
 19   words is very careful.  And it does not get into
 20   us having to assess the effects on different
 21   Aboriginal peoples as such.
 22               They talk about resource use by
 23   Aboriginal or other groups, not peoples, which we
 24   took to be specific resource users who are
 25   Aboriginal persons.
07147
  1               They talk about the need to assess
  2   effects on the economy and on culture which is
  3   part of the personal, family and community life
  4   part of the socioeconomics.  And they talk about
  5   having to assess these effects on "affected
  6   Aboriginal and other communities," which we took
  7   to be a focus on affected overall communities,
  8   including the Aboriginal communities, and not a
  9   specification to discuss specific First Nation,
 10   non-status or Metis groups within those
 11   communities as a specific assessment task.
 12               Further, the guidelines are very clear
 13   in each case about the need to collect information
 14   on the existing environment and the need to focus
 15   this requirement on understanding the information
 16   that is required in sufficient detail to
 17   understand effects of the project, when and where
 18   they occur.  Many people think that we should go
 19   and study everything but the guidelines require us
 20   to focus on those areas and those time periods
 21   where there will be effects of the project and
 22   collect existing information on those matters and
 23   to do it in a way that meets the specifications in
 24   the guidelines as to what they require us to
 25   provide them in terms of information.
07148
  1               Finally I would say that our ultimate
  2   focus, following from the guidelines, is on all
  3   types of effects, but we're really charged to come
  4   up with information in the end about those that
  5   are adverse and significant and likely.  And that
  6   is an important perspective.  And to do that,
  7   taking into account what we can do to mitigate and
  8   the mitigation is an important element as well.
  9   So we keep that in mind.
 10               MR. BEDFORD:  Now, given that you
 11   quite obviously read the guidelines differently
 12   than the representatives from the Manitoba Metis
 13   Federation, but given also that you and they have
 14   a similar concern that effects of these projects
 15   on Aboriginal people and Aboriginal communities be
 16   considered, tell us, briefly please, how you went
 17   about doing what you believe the guidelines
 18   required the proponents to do?
 19               MR. OSLER:  Very briefly, on that
 20   material we pulled together to try and assist on
 21   this.  Our approach, in this case dealing with the
 22   issues that the Manitoba Metis Federation raised,
 23   focuses on the aspects of the guidelines and our
 24   work to deal with people and the effects on
 25   people.  And the way in which we go about doing it
07149
  1   is, first of all, through scoping and then through
  2   the methods and sources of information and finally
  3   through our public consultation involvement.
  4               When we start off, before we even get
  5   going, we take the guidelines.  And I've been
  6   looking at the Manitoba Metis issues.  I would say
  7   we're talking about resource use because the issue
  8   of land and waters and how people use them is very
  9   important to the Metis and other Aboriginal
 10   people.  We are probably talking about economy
 11   because of jobs and training issues.  And we're
 12   talking about personal, family and community life
 13   which, as the Commission knows, includes culture,
 14   the way in which these guidelines are set up.
 15               Separately, heritage resources are
 16   dealt with as a separate topic but they are
 17   probably also relevant to the Metis issues.
 18               When we had addressed the EIS
 19   guidelines, we have said from the outset we do not
 20   interpret them to get us into the job of
 21   describing Aboriginal or Treaty rights or
 22   interests.  We're trying to describe the effects
 23   of the project on people.  And we respond to this
 24   in interrogatories such as CNF S56 and CNF EIS
 25   round 1 96(a).
07150
  1               We also defined communities in a way
  2   that our understanding of the guidelines was
  3   concentrations of people in separately governed
  4   areas.  And Aboriginal communities, we defined in
  5   the glossary which you can find in Volume 1,
  6   Section 12.  "A community where most of the
  7   residents are Aboriginal."  We said, "(ie, Indian,
  8   Metis or Inuit) and that as a separate form of
  9   government provides some level of service to its
 10   residents and has clear community boundaries."
 11               So with that in mind and those
 12   approaches, we scoped the socioeconomic
 13   assessments to look at the effects pathways from
 14   the project to each of the groups of people in the
 15   area.  And we looked at the regions and
 16   communities who could be affected and we looked at
 17   the nature of the types of effects so we could
 18   know what type of questions to discuss with these
 19   people so we can become properly informed from
 20   them as to the concerns and issues they might
 21   have.
 22               Focusing on the Wuskwatim Generation
 23   Project, the Commission has heard us talk about
 24   the effects pathways, the pathways that come from
 25   the physical changes to the land, to the site, the
07151
  1   falls, to the physical and access issues due to
  2   the access road, to the biophysical changes to
  3   resources used by Aboriginal people for commercial
  4   or domestic purposes, to the presence of
  5   construction workers to the opportunity for work,
  6   et cetera.
  7               And when we looked at those pathways,
  8   we ended up scoping the project into certain
  9   regions.  And we talked about a local region and
 10   we talked about a project region in the north.
 11               And in the material I've handed out,
 12   the back of I guess the second page, there's a
 13   table 1.  And it summarizes, looking at the
 14   generation project, the regions that I've just
 15   talked about where we are dealing with
 16   communities.  And we also summarized the different
 17   sectors of the socioeconomic analysis that I've
 18   talked about, resource use, economy,
 19   infrastructure, et cetera.
 20               And the point at the table is to sort
 21   of just focus our mind on pathways and the
 22   interactions that could be relevant to the MMF and
 23   Metis issues.
 24               If we are talking about resource use,
 25   the evidence we had given you in our EIS is that
07152
  1   resource use effects, the generation project, are
  2   focused not only in the local region but within
  3   the local region within that part of it that is
  4   within the Nelson House resource management area
  5   where the access road is and generation station
  6   affects the water regime.  It does not extend into
  7   the South Indian Lake trapline area, it does not
  8   extend even into the whole of the Nelson House
  9   resource management area.
 10               When we're looking at resource use
 11   effects, we don't see material effects or
 12   detectible effects beyond that area for the
 13   generation project.
 14               When we are looking at economy, jobs,
 15   businesses, this type of thing, the whole of the
 16   north, and indeed Manitoba and Canada, can be
 17   potentially affected, that's what the diagram is
 18   showing, and we've said that.  And the
 19   opportunities for people to be employed are
 20   material within not just the local area but also
 21   the project region because of what we assumed to
 22   be the preference for employment and construction.
 23               The effects are very construction
 24   period focused.  They don't tend to extend into
 25   the operation period unless you get into the
07153
  1   participation in the opportunity of ownership for
  2   the NCN First Nation.
  3               When we get to infrastructure and
  4   services, I don't think that's an issue coming out
  5   of the Metis evidence.  I'm not going to dwell on
  6   it.  But it is again focused on the Nelson House
  7   resource management area and some issues to do
  8   with Thompson, to do with just road issues, road
  9   safety.
 10               Personal family and community life where 
 11   we're dealing with culture, we have said over and 
 12   over again that it is focused on the pathways which 
 13   can affect culture and that is the resource use 
 14   pathways.  And we see that being focused again in the 
 15   Nelson House resource management area, in the 
 16   communities at Nelson House, both the non-status and 
 17   the status community.  We do not see it being 
 18   detectable even in South Indian Lake in terms of 
 19   material issues and we certainly have not seen the 
 20   cultural change issues in other parts of the northern 
 21   area.  
 22             Some aspects of personal family/community 
 23   life in Thompson to deal with travel and safety and 
 24   outdoor recreation are the ones that are noted in the 
 25   EIS but they don't go to the cultural issues.  
07154
  1               And finally heritage resources are 
  2   similarly focused in the Nelson House resource 
  3   management area affected directly by the project. 
  4               So that is our scoping approach.  That 
  5   tells us which people we need to talk to in order to 
  6   get information and become informed and to deal with 
  7   what types of issues.  We have to talk about the 
  8   issues I've talked about.  And if we go towards 
  9   culture, you can see very heavily a focus on resource 
 10   use pathways and the Nelson House resource management 
 11   area and the Nelson House community status and 
 12   non-status. 
 13               If we look at the same types of issues in 
 14   terms of pathways to the transmission project, the 
 15   focus is very much on preferred route, station sites. 
 16   The issues arise out of land and resources along 
 17   these routes and adjacent buffer areas and the users 
 18   of these resources.  They look at mitigation by 
 19   selecting the routes so they don't have adverse 
 20   effects, and mitigation with respect to how they are 
 21   developed. 
 22               There are very limited employment and 
 23   business benefit effects pathways with respect to 
 24   transmission, not enough to get into any discussion 
 25   about cultural implications.  And the whole process 
07155
  1   for selecting preferred routes that we've gone 
  2   through involves planning and mitigation by its 
  3   nature so that they mitigate the effects of 
  4   importance who local people, including Aboriginal 
  5   people who use the land and resources, and we involve 
  6   them in identifying mitigation measures regardless of 
  7   whether they are Metis or non-status or First Nation 
  8   people. 
  9               So the scoping in that sense in the 
 10   transmission area informs us who we've got to talk 
 11   to, the people who are using these resources along 
 12   these routes, in the areas adjacent to the routes and 
 13   the communities that these people live in.  And 
 14   that's the type of focus that we derive from the 
 15   scoping there.  And there was not an intensive 
 16   cultural discussion of effects on community culture 
 17   arising from that type of effects pathway analysis. 
 18               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Osler, help us all out. 
 19   Moving beyond the subject of scoping and charts and 
 20   tables summarizing these things, with specific 
 21   reference to the generation project, what happened 
 22   when consultants went out into the field, into the 
 23   communities, meeting with Aboriginal peoples to 
 24   inform themselves about the culture and lifestyles of 
 25   those Aboriginal peoples and to inform them about the 
07156
  1   projects?  How was that, in very practical terms, 
  2   accomplished?  What happened?
  3               MR. OSLER:  In terms of the cultural 
  4   linkage, the key focus was on resource use in the 
  5   Nelson House area.  You've heard the discussions 
  6   about how intensive the discussions were on resource 
  7   use, on the community involvement process through the 
  8   community consultants, through the interview 
  9   processes.  We described in some detail and we went 
 10   over in this hearing and some cross-examination from 
 11   OPCN in some detail the definition of culture, the 
 12   nine indicators that we thought professionally were 
 13   important.  And we got ourselves informed through the 
 14   discussions that I've just described with elders and 
 15   other people about how the Nelson House communities 
 16   and NCN community would be affected through all of 
 17   the pathways we've talked about by this project and 
 18   their culture.  And it's all reported and we 
 19   discussed it.  
 20               So that was essentially the focus and the 
 21   method of doing it.  And we did the same thing in 
 22   essence with the transmission project in terms of the 
 23   interviews that were done by the transmission team 
 24   but also key person interviews done by the 
 25   socioeconomic people.  
07157
  1               I didn't do them personally but Janet 
  2   Kinley and her team did it.  We've listed in Table 2 
  3   here, the same page, the type of key person 
  4   interviews we did there to inform ourselves about 
  5   socioeconomic issues in respect to transmission.
  6               MR. BEDFORD:  Can you add a little bit 
  7   more when Ms. Kinley and the people working with her 
  8   went north and met with people, how did the 
  9   conversations unfold?  What sorts of things are you 
 10   aware that people said to Ms. Kinley and those who 
 11   were with her?
 12               MR. OSLER:  Well, there are guides put 
 13   out in the EIS background volumes.  And I know if 
 14   you're interested in the transmission one in Volume 
 15   7, there's an Appendix 2 that gives an outline of the 
 16   interview guides that were relevant to the 
 17   socioeconomics.  We would be seeking out not only 
 18   elected people, because they do know the area, but 
 19   other people who would be key knowledgeable resource 
 20   people or effective people viewed by the community as 
 21   very knowledgeable about their history and everything 
 22   else.  The types of questions that we'd go through 
 23   would be listed in that appendix but they include 
 24   questions on culture, questions on their community 
 25   background, questions on resource use and history and 
07158
  1   this type of thing as well as the questions on 
  2   economy and infrastructure. 
  3               Interviews are usually done face to face 
  4   and they can easily take an hour.  I think a few of 
  5   them were done by phone because the people in the 
  6   transmission side, we couldn't always arrange the 
  7   interviews to work out when people were in the area.  
  8   But they are not short.  And you know, I give an 
  9   example.  If you're trying to get information about 
 10   people affected let's say near The Pas, everybody is 
 11   dealing directly with OCN and there's lots of 
 12   information there.  
 13               But in terms of Metis interests, for 
 14   example, there's a community called Umperville next 
 15   to The Pas and next to OCN wherein this transmission 
 16   line passes through.  And we are very interested in 
 17   understanding their perspectives.  So not only did we 
 18   talk to the RM of Kelsey, some key people, the Chief 
 19   Administrative Officer and one of the Reeves, but 
 20   they pointed out to us a key person to talk to in 
 21   Umperville and that helped inform us about some 
 22   perspectives on Umperville including the extent to 
 23   which the people there are now largely treaty and yet 
 24   still have different points of view than OCN, et 
 25   cetera, and other things like that.  
07159
  1               So sometimes the only way you can get at 
  2   information of the type we're talking about is 
  3   through this type of a process.
  4               MR. BEDFORD:  During the course of their 
  5   presentation on May 14, the representatives of the 
  6   Manitoba Metis Federation suggested that as much as 
  7   10 per cent of the population in the area affected by 
  8   the Generation Statement are Metis.  
  9               With reference to the 2001 census 
 10   population information, which is included in the 
 11   package that I have distributed, what are the facts?
 12               MR. OSLER:  Census population, we put 
 13   material together with all the usual caveats about 
 14   dealing with the census.  But in simple terms, 
 15   looking at the combined Wuskwatim projects, 
 16   transmission and generation, about 60 per cent of the 
 17   people in that area, according to the 2001 census, 
 18   were about 22,000 people out of 38,400 were 
 19   Aboriginal.  The Indian element they self-identified 
 20   was about 80 per cent of that Aboriginal population, 
 21   the Metis, more than 16 per cent, about 3,700 people. 
 22   That's both generation and transmission combined.  
 23   And so it includes not just Thompson area but going 
 24   down to The Pas. 
 25               About 60 per cent of those Aboriginal 
07160
  1   people that I just talked about or about 2,200, 
  2   2,300, self-identifying Metis people resided in 
  3   Thompson and The Pas.  A lot of the rest, about 600 
  4   of the remaining Metis resided in other parts of the 
  5   local generation region beyond Nelson House and South 
  6   Indian Lake, such as Wabowden, Thicket Portage, 
  7   Pikwitonei, Gillam, Norway House and Cross Lake. 
  8               If we're looking at the generation local 
  9   region as defined in the EIS, the 2001 census 
 10   population approximates 2,600 people which is 
 11   probably understated because it doesn't fully state 
 12   the NCN population.  But over 95 per cent of these 
 13   are self-identifying as First Nation or Indian people 
 14   and about 40 people or less than 2 per cent as Metis. 
 15               Within areas affected by the preferred 
 16   transmission routes beyond the Nelson House resource 
 17   management area and the Thompson area and excluding 
 18   the OCN reserve and the affected Kelsey RM, because 
 19   that's really Umperville and these are mostly Treaty 
 20   Indians as I've just discussed, the self-identifying 
 21   Metis in the 2001 census approximates 1,260 people, 
 22   including Metis residing in Cormorant about 235, Snow 
 23   Lake 125, and The Pas 900.  
 24               In each of these three communities, the 
 25   self-identifying Metis population is equal to or 
07161
  1   greater than the self-identifying Indian population.
  2               Another issue that was raised just in 
  3   passing was about mobility.  The census for 2001 
  4   indicates how many people moved in the last year.  
  5   When we look in this region and we look at the 
  6   Aboriginal population, which is the numbers we can 
  7   readily get, the numbers are lower than the Canadian 
  8   average.  About 16 per cent of the Aboriginal 
  9   population in this region moved in the year before 
 10   the census.  
 11               And if you look at a community like 
 12   Cormorant, which is more Metis than otherwise, it was 
 13   as low as 8 per cent and Wabowden was 13 per cent.  
 14   Both of them were significant Metis, had Metis 
 15   components.
 16               MR. BEDFORD:  At the conclusion of their 
 17   presentation, the representatives of the Manitoba 
 18   Metis Federation tendered a book to the Commission 
 19   entitled Aboriginal Plant Use in Canada's Northwest 
 20   Boreal Forest wherein it was suggested the authors 
 21   distinguish plant use by Metis peoples from that of 
 22   First Nations peoples.  Can you tell us all, please, 
 23   what our botanist has advised us regarding this 
 24   publication?
 25               MR. OSLER:  The publication was used in 
07162
  1   the preparation of both the EISs and is referenced 
  2   and listed in the bibliographies.  It lists numerous 
  3   plants that are used in similar ways by the Dene and 
  4   the Cree as well as noting some cases where they were 
  5   used by the Metis. 
  6               I am advised that the Metis people 
  7   interviewed about these uses were from Alberta.  But 
  8   I think the main point that we're told is that we 
  9   look through the uses of plants by Metis in there and 
 10   the material we filed will go through the detail -- 
 11   goes through the detail at Attachment "C".  But some 
 12   of them don't exist in Manitoba.  Those that do, we 
 13   are aware of.  The uses are not of plants that are 
 14   rare or endangered or threatened.  And the mitigation 
 15   measures that we take for plants that are at all a 
 16   special interest are outlined and take account of all 
 17   interests in those plants or trees, be they Metis or 
 18   other.  
 19               So we welcome the opportunity to focus on 
 20   that and to help the Commission draw out from the 
 21   material we had what we can provide.
 22               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Bedford, I hate to 
 23   slow down your train here, but it is 25 to 11:00.  
 24   Perhaps timely that we should have a break and we 
 25   reconvene again in 15 minutes, 10 to 11:00 or 
07163
  1   thereabouts and we can continue with the 
  2   re-examination at that time.  
  3   
  4               (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 10:39 A.M. and
  5               RECONVENED AT 11:00 A.M.)
  6   
  7               THE CHAIRMAN:  I realize this is Monday 
  8   morning and the sun is still not out but we still 
  9   have to keep going.  So I ask everyone to find their 
 10   place.  
 11               I understand, Mr. Spence, you have a 
 12   clarification on a point.
 13               MR. SPENCE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  At 
 14   the end of our presentation, you directed a question 
 15   to us as to whether we're still working on something 
 16   within that line.  Like the presentation that we made 
 17   was made on a decision by all community consultants 
 18   to do it.  Like we've been, as our spectators, 
 19   throughout this whole process, listening to the 
 20   different presentations, different comments, opinions 
 21   that have been made throughout this whole process and 
 22   we figured that it was a time when we can make 
 23   ourselves heard to the Commission and to the other 
 24   people in this hearing.  
 25               And like the decision to do it was made 
07164
  1   by ourselves.  The contents of the presentation came 
  2   from us as a group.  And we did it first of all as 
  3   NCN members, sort of looking at it that way.  And 
  4   then, you know, secondly, as the community 
  5   consultants for NCN in this process, the whole 
  6   development process.  
  7               I just thought that I'd like to clear 
  8   that up, that nobody thinks that we were told to do 
  9   it.  And like I said, we did the presentation on our 
 10   own based on the knowledge that we have had of what 
 11   we've gone through the past three, three and a half 
 12   years.  And everything that was covered in the 
 13   presentation is what we did and how we were involved 
 14   as NCN members and as community consultants.  
 15               So I just thought I'd like to make that 
 16   clear to everybody so that nobody in the room thinks 
 17   that we were told to do it or anything.  It was our 
 18   own decision as a group to do it and I was picked to 
 19   be the spokesman for the group and that's why I came 
 20   up just to make that clarification, that that 
 21   presentation was done by us, the community 
 22   consultants.  Again, I emphasize, as NCN members and 
 23   secondly as community consultants.  Thank you.
 24               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you, Mr. Spence.  
 25   And it gave us the opportunity, having heard so many 
07165
  1   times that your group was involved, to see who all 
  2   the bodies and faces were associated with that 
  3   process.  So again, I thank you.
  4               MR. SPENCE:  Okay.  Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
  5               THE CHAIRMAN:  We carry on, Mr. Bedford, 
  6   with the questions that you were eliciting from your 
  7   Panel.
  8               MR. BEDFORD:  Thank you.  Mr. Osler, to 
  9   return to you on May 14th, Ms. Jean Teillet, asked if 
 10   the proponents had revisited the subject of the Metis 
 11   as a consequence of the Supreme Court of Canada's 
 12   decision in the Powley case which was delivered by 
 13   the Supreme Court of Canada in September of 2003, 
 14   some five months after the EIS in this proceeding was 
 15   filed.  Your answer on May 14th to Ms. Teillet was 
 16   that you had in fact read the Powley decision and you 
 17   did not expect that it would have or did change the 
 18   approach followed in the EIS.  Have you, since May 
 19   14th, 2004, done anything more?
 20               MR. OSLER:  Yes.  We have reviewed 
 21   carefully what the MMF referred us to and said.  We 
 22   have reviewed what we've done ourselves in light of 
 23   that, some of which you've heard today in terms of 
 24   reviewing the scoping and the methods of approach 
 25   that we took.  We reviewed information on population 
07166
  1   that I've gone through.  We reviewed the reference to 
  2   plant use.  We reviewed our consultation approach 
  3   which the point I want to get across is informing 
  4   ourselves, we don't do it just by sending out a 
  5   notice for an open house.  
  6               When we're talking about public 
  7   involvement and consultation, that may sound like 
  8   that, but there's a lot more to doing an EIS and 
  9   socioeconomic portion of that than holding an open 
 10   house.  In fact, an open house in that process is an 
 11   avenue for making sure that people, who otherwise 
 12   wouldn't know what's going on, get access to 
 13   information in communities.  And we get the 
 14   opportunity to talk to those people with their 
 15   questions and concerns. 
 16               So there's a lot more to this process 
 17   than just the open house process.  And we didn't use, 
 18   although we contacted local officials, we didn't use 
 19   them as gate keepers, we used them as resources and 
 20   we didn't rely on them only.  So we have attached to 
 21   your appendix, Attachment "E", sort of a summary of 
 22   the context that we did try and make with MMF.  And 
 23   the record there speaks for itself. 
 24               The final thing we did to try to inform 
 25   ourselves coming out of their presentation is to 
07167
  1   refer to some of the heritage and history of the 
  2   Metis.  They referred the Commission and others to 
  3   Volume 4 of the Royal Commission of Aboriginal 
  4   Peoples.  So we reviewed the relevant sections there. 
  5   Plus we had our heritage person update the background 
  6   for the Aboriginal peoples in this area historically 
  7   to include more information on the Metis, which is 
  8   provided here as Attachment "D". 
  9               And this information indeed confirms the 
 10   extent to which the term Metis, as Ms. Teillet 
 11   explained, is confusing.  And if it's confusing in 
 12   general, it's particularly confusing in this region 
 13   where communities, such as the Nelson House 
 14   non-status community next door, has been referred to 
 15   as the Metis community or the Umperville has been 
 16   referred to as the Metis community.  
 17               And yet today, the information is that 
 18   most of the people there, courtesy of Bill C-31, have 
 19   gone back to status themselves.  So the term and the 
 20   history since the First World War in this area is 
 21   listed in there and it's quite informative and it 
 22   tells us that in this particular part of the world, 
 23   there are Metis today and there have been a lot of 
 24   other people who called themselves Metis not that 
 25   long ago and they may or may not be connected in many 
07168
  1   meaningful ways to the Red River Metis. 
  2               One of the pieces of information in the 
  3   background is the extent to which these communities 
  4   evolved in this area after the contact with the 
  5   Europeans and during the period up to the point of 
  6   control by the Europeans in terms of laws and stuff.  
  7   Also for contextual information, the history in the 
  8   Red River has also brought forth where the Metis 
  9   nation, very clear in terms of its origins and its 
 10   power and its importance to the history of this 
 11   province.  
 12               The disbursals of what's documented in 
 13   the background is just to remind us all of this 
 14   province of ours, how its boundaries changed between 
 15   1870 and 1912 and didn't come to be what we see today 
 16   until that latter time period.  The Metis who moved 
 17   out of Manitoba moved out of a postage stamp province 
 18   in response to some of the problems they encountered 
 19   after 1870 and again after the 1885 rebellion.  And 
 20   many Metis moved up to the area around The Pas as a 
 21   result of these disbursals.  
 22               But our information in the background 
 23   here is that the building of the Hudson Bay Railroad 
 24   had a very important effect on Metis communities such 
 25   as Cormorant's evolution and the Metis at Wabowden.  
07169
  1               Now, how all of that would change what 
  2   we're doing is a different issue.  I don't think 
  3   it -- it informs us its useful background in 
  4   retrospect.  I think it's a good idea to have it 
  5   included.  We probably should have included it in our 
  6   material just to be complete and respectful.  But the 
  7   cultural differences between the Metis and the 
  8   Aboriginal people other Aboriginal people in this 
  9   area is there's no published studies, similarities 
 10   and differences.  When we go through the information 
 11   we have and the cultural indicators that we would use 
 12   such as language or kinship ties, there's not clear 
 13   divisions we're dealing with Metis in the area of 
 14   South Indian Lake versus NCN or in the area of Nelson 
 15   House non-status or Umperville versus OCN.           
 16               Traditional knowledge, as I have agreed 
 17   in discussions with people from OPCN, can have a very 
 18   specific nature to the community and the people and 
 19   their resources in that area and it would apply, I 
 20   presume, to the Metis members of the community.  But 
 21   Metis and other Aboriginals in these communities work 
 22   together in resource harvesting councils, in fur 
 23   trappers associations and fishers associations, that 
 24   you don't tend to be getting the Metis association 
 25   versus the Cree association.  
07170
  1               And also the agreements that Manitoba 
  2   Hydro has done and Manitoba and Canada have done or 
  3   Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro have done with 
  4   communities in this area, as documented in this 
  5   hearing, has been with associations and groups for 
  6   fishers, trappers and others or the people of 
  7   Cormorant.  And I think that is important to have in 
  8   mind.
  9               So what I said to Ms. Teillet when she 
 10   asked me the question in looking at all of these 
 11   things, the same answer I think is that the approach 
 12   I would think we would like to have flushed out more 
 13   information to be respectful, but the ultimate 
 14   conclusions will remain the same.
 15               MR. MAYER:  Let me interrupt.  I'm 
 16   looking at attachment, I think it's "E", yes.  And I 
 17   note with interest the letter addressed to Mayor 
 18   Judy.  Our people tell us that it is in fact Judy 
 19   Mayer, a letter signed by Mr. Wojczynski and Mr. 
 20   Thomas.  Did anybody ever correct that little 
 21   problem?
 22               MR. OSLER:  I'd have to look into it.  I 
 23   don't know.
 24               THE CHAIRMAN:  It is Judy Mayer.
 25               MR. OSLER:  I know it is.
07171
  1               MR. MAYER:  Dear Mr. Judy doesn't cut it.
  2               THE CHAIRMAN:  Are you moving onto a 
  3   different area?  
  4               MR. BEDFORD:  To a different witness, not 
  5   to a different area.
  6               THE CHAIRMAN:  I'm sorry, carry on. 
  7               MR. BEDFORD:  Ms. Hicks, I understand 
  8   that you took the lead with respect to the 
  9   transmission project when it came to travelling in 
 10   the north and meeting with those people who will be 
 11   affected by this project; is that correct?
 12               MS. HICKS:  That is correct, in terms of 
 13   transmission.
 14               MR. BEDFORD:  And included in the 
 15   materials which I distributed a short while ago, I 
 16   know that there is a map.  Would you please turn to 
 17   it and explain briefly to us what is being 
 18   illustrated in that map?  
 19               MS. HICKS:  Basically I think the map is 
 20   attached to Appendix "D" in what was handed out 
 21   there.  And it basically illustrates the registered 
 22   trapline holders along the proposed transmission line 
 23   routes that were contacted during the public 
 24   involvement program.  The proposed route for the 
 25   transmission lines is shown in purple.  You can 
07172
  1   basically see at the top right-hand corner of the 
  2   map, the proposed Birch Tree Station.  You can see 
  3   Herblet Lake Station in Snow Lake in the middle of 
  4   the map.  And at the bottom left-hand corner is the 
  5   existing Rall's Island Station at The Pas.  
  6               That's just sort of to orient you in 
  7   terms of the map.  And as I indicated, the proposed 
  8   transmission line route is shown in purple 
  9   starting all the way at Thompson Birch Tree Station. 
 10               MR. BEDFORD:  Ms. Hicks, if I can be so 
 11   rude as to interrupt.  It's always easier for Court 
 12   Reporters if you talk kind of real slow like I tend 
 13   to do.
 14               MS. HICKS:  As you can see, the proposed 
 15   transmission line route comes from Birch Tree 
 16   Station, which is south of Thompson, down to 
 17   Wuskwatim.  From Wuskwatim down to Herblet Lake 
 18   Station and from Herblet Lake Station down to Rall's 
 19   Island Station at The Pas.  
 20               So as you can see from the map, the 
 21   proposed transmission line routes cross through a 
 22   small portion of the Thicket Portage registered 
 23   trapline district, which is south of Thompson.  They 
 24   actually cross also through the Nelson House 
 25   registered trapline district as well as the Nelson 
07173
  1   House RMA, which is the same thing.  The Snow Lake 
  2   registered trapline district, the Cormorant 
  3   registered trapline district and a portion of the 
  4   Summerberry special trapping district.  
  5               If you look at the legend on the map, the 
  6   yellow shading actually illustrates registered 
  7   trapline holders that were contacted by letter during 
  8   rounds 2 and 3 of the Public Involvement Program.  
  9   And basically, round 2 of the PIP was alternative 
 10   routes for the transmission.  Round 3 was actually 
 11   the preferred route.  And what these letters  were 
 12   letters of invitation to public open houses for a 
 13   transmission during round 2 and round 3.  
 14               The next category on the legend are the 
 15   brown stripes and these indicate registered trapline 
 16   holders along the proposed route who were sent 
 17   letters, as I indicated previously, and who we also 
 18   met with during the Public Involvement Program.  
 19               The third category on the map is shown in 
 20   the blue striping, the blue diagonal striping.  So 
 21   what basically this means is subsequent to our 
 22   submission of the Environmental Impact Statements, 
 23   Manitoba Hydro initiated a number of meetings with 
 24   registered trapline holders regarding its trapline 
 25   compensation policy.  So the blue striping indicates 
07174
  1   trapline holders who were contacted in letter and by 
  2   person during the Public Involvement Program and who 
  3   we have also had discussions with regarding the 
  4   Trapline Compensation Program.  
  5               I should actually also note that with 
  6   respect to the latter, that's the trapline 
  7   compensation discussions, that those discussions are 
  8   basically still ongoing.  So they haven't been 
  9   completed for all of the area yet. 
 10               MR. BEDFORD:  Can you tell us, please, 
 11   how many of the trappers who will be affected did you 
 12   actually meet with, and if possible, how many times?
 13               MS. HICKS:  Okay.  The best way to 
 14   understand this I think is to also keep looking at 
 15   the map.  And you can actually see from the map in 
 16   the Nelson House RMA or Nelson House registered 
 17   trapline district, there's three traplines at the 
 18   bottom that are non-allocated and vacant.  They were 
 19   not allocated and vacant during our PIP process and 
 20   they are still not allocated and vacant and those 
 21   would be Traplines 41, I think 64 and 65.  So 
 22   obviously as they are not allocated, we didn't meet 
 23   with those people.  
 24               The other two trapline holders that were 
 25   not met with during the PIP Program are in the Snow 
07175
  1   Lake area.  And those are Snow Lake traplines number 
  2   18 and 19.  And you can see that they are highlighted 
  3   in yellow here.  And we did send letters to both of 
  4   those trapline holders during the PIP with 
  5   invitations to our public open houses.  But we 
  6   actually had talked to some of the other trappers in 
  7   the Snow Lake area.  And apparently, these trappers 
  8   live out in the land basically and don't come into 
  9   the community very often.  So we didn't have the 
 10   opportunity to meet with them in person.  
 11               Although I do note that Manitoba Hydro 
 12   has now made plans to go out and visit these trappers 
 13   and talk about the project and the Trapline 
 14   Compensation Program in the near future. 
 15               Essentially, our PIP, when we talked to 
 16   the trappers, extended from the fall of I believe 
 17   2001 to the spring of 2003.  So discussions with 
 18   these trappers were ongoing throughout the PIP 
 19   process. 
 20               I would say in terms of the number of 
 21   meetings that we had with the trappers, I would say 
 22   during the PIP Program, that we met with the majority 
 23   of the trappers along the proposed route at least 
 24   twice.  There's a couple of exceptions to that. 
 25   There's one of the Cormorant trappers we didn't meet 
07176
  1   with twice.  We met with him once and actually took 
  2   him on a field trip.  We went to his house.  We 
  3   tracked him down and we went on a field trip and 
  4   looked at the route in his area.  And there were a 
  5   couple of other exceptions where we didn't actually 
  6   physically meet with the person twice.  
  7               As noted on the map by the blue striping 
  8   again, there have been subsequent discussions with a 
  9   number of the trapline holders with respect to the 
 10   Trapline Compensation Policy.  And in addition, I'd 
 11   also like to note that I believe Dave Hicks had 
 12   talked about the Access Management Plan for 
 13   transmission and the construction powerline.  
 14   Actually I believe as evidence, a draft table of 
 15   contents for that Access Management Plan was 
 16   submitted to the Commission.  As part of that process 
 17   of getting that trap table of contents together and 
 18   working on that plan, we had a number of meetings, I 
 19   think two meetings with the NCN trappers about access 
 20   management for the construction power line.  As well 
 21   as we subsequently met with the trapline holders from 
 22   Thicket Portage.  That would be Thicket Portage RTLs 
 23   I believe 29 and 32.  We've actually also met with 
 24   them recently in Thompson about access management 
 25   issues. 
07177
  1               MR. BEDFORD:  When you met with the 
  2   various trappers, can you assist us, please, and tell 
  3   us a little bit about the things you talked about 
  4   when you met with them, particularly the things they 
  5   told you?  And if you can touch upon as well how long 
  6   the meetings would last, I would like to hear that. 
  7   And I can assure you, we've got lots of time and 
  8   we're going to finish in good time, so you can go 
  9   slowly and take your time.
 10               MS. HICKS:  Okay.  It's a kind of a bit 
 11   of a difficult question but I will answer it to the 
 12   best of my abilities because throughout the process, 
 13   we actually had a number of meetings with trappers 
 14   but we had different sorts of meetings depending on 
 15   which communities we're at.  The meetings varied from 
 16   individual meetings with trappers, like one-on-ones 
 17   to actually group meetings with trappers or, in odd 
 18   occasion, we met trappers at actual open houses and 
 19   talked to them there and maybe went on field trips 
 20   after.  
 21               In terms of the special trapper meetings, 
 22   particularly this was in the case of OCN, Opaskwayak 
 23   Cree Nation, and in the case of Cormorant when we 
 24   first went to these first communities for the first 
 25   round of the PIP, both elected officials, elected 
07178
  1   councils from both, suggested that we needed to have 
  2   special trapper meetings.  So we actually had two 
  3   meetings, one at the alternative when we had routing 
  4   options and one at the preferred route stages of the 
  5   process with the Cormorant trappers.  
  6               So once we had alternative routes, we met 
  7   with Cormorant trappers.  And once we had preferred 
  8   routes, we again had a meeting with Cormorant 
  9   trappers, just the trappers with mayor and council 
 10   there at the request of Cormorant.  
 11               We actually also had three meetings with 
 12   the OCN Fur Council and Trappers and we had two 
 13   meetings with the OCN Resource Council which 
 14   overlooks the Fur Council.  It's sort of the umbrella 
 15   of all the resource users.  And actually we also met 
 16   with a number of the NCN trappers at a variety of 
 17   meetings as well as public open houses. 
 18               As I indicated previously, we also had a 
 19   number of individual meetings with trappers.  For 
 20   example, as I noted earlier, a small portion of the 
 21   construction power line route crosses through the 
 22   Thicket Portage registered trapline district.  So we 
 23   met with the president of the Thicket Portage 
 24   registered trapline district of the Fur Council for 
 25   the Thicket Portage registered trapline district and 
07179
  1   actually took him on an overflight to look at the 
  2   alternative routes as they crossed through their area 
  3   of concern.  
  4               We also met individually with the 
  5   president of the Snow Lake Fur Council and his line 
  6   is actually also crossed by the proposed route.  And 
  7   we also met with another group in Snow Lake called 
  8   the Snow Lake Resource Enhancement Group and 
  9   discussed wording options with them. 
 10               We held two meetings with a trapper of 
 11   registered Trapline 13 in the Snow Lake registered 
 12   trapline district at his request.  In one instance, 
 13   he couldn't actually make the open house.  We 
 14   accommodated his request to have a special meeting.  
 15   We undertook a field review with the registered 
 16   trapper from Thicket Portage, RTL-32, to look at the 
 17   route through his trapline subsequent to an open 
 18   house.  
 19               We actually, through our process with 
 20   Cormorant, again we had the special Cormorant 
 21   trappers meetings, and we also sent out letters of 
 22   invitation to open houses.  We came to realize that 
 23   one of the Cormorant trappers, we hadn't actually met 
 24   him at any of the meetings or any of the open houses. 
 25   And he has a cabin that is in proximity to the 
07180
  1   proposed route.  So we managed to get his telephone 
  2   number from the Cormorant Mayer and Council and we 
  3   contacted him and visited his house and took him, 
  4   again at his request, out for a field visit to look 
  5   at where the proposed route would be through his 
  6   trapline.  
  7               We also met individually with the trapper 
  8   that owns the Clearwater Lake Lodge close to The Pas. 
  9               One other thing that we also did with 
 10   trappers throughout the length pretty much was we had 
 11   overflights of the alternative routes.  And this was 
 12   in order to gain their input into how to or which 
 13   would be the best route in their area.  So we had 
 14   overflights with representatives of the Cormorant 
 15   trappers and the Cormorant Resource Management Board. 
 16   We had overflights with NCN resource users and elders 
 17   and others.  And actually subsequent to those 
 18   overflights and open houses at that particular point 
 19   in time, the NCN community consultants actually 
 20   interviewed all the trappers and elders that were on 
 21   the flights. 
 22               And we actually, as I mentioned before, 
 23   had a meeting with the president of the Thicket 
 24   Portage registered trapline district and an 
 25   overflight with him.  And we also did similar with 
07181
  1   the OCN Fur Council and trappers.  
  2               In the case of OCN as well as our 
  3   proposed route crosses along the edge of the youth 
  4   trapline for OCN, in our overflight, we actually 
  5   included the person that's in charge of the youth 
  6   trapping program at the Joe B. Ross School at OCN and 
  7   we actually included two of the youths that actually 
  8   trap that line on our overflight to gain their input 
  9   into the process. 
 10               In terms of the meeting structure and 
 11   length, that really depended on again what type of 
 12   meeting in terms of the actual trapper meetings that 
 13   we had where we had a large group of trappers.  And 
 14   in each case, NCN, Cormorant and OCN, we had a good 
 15   turnout at our trapper meetings.  These were usually 
 16   a couple hours in length and we like to have our 
 17   meetings a little bit more informally than some.  So 
 18   we would roll out maps on the tables showing either 
 19   the alternative or preferred routes, give a little 
 20   bit of description about the project, answer any 
 21   questions that the trappers might have with respect 
 22   to the project and then solicit their input into 
 23   anything that might be important in routing the 
 24   transmission line.  Again with routing the 
 25   transmission line, you're trying to route to balance 
07182
  1   or minimize impacts.  
  2               So we asked trappers all sorts of 
  3   questions about any local issue or knowledge that 
  4   they might have that would actually help us route the 
  5   transmission lines.  And actually in our EIS 
  6   Transmission Volume 1, Appendix (E), there are 
  7   questionnaires that had questions about the routes 
  8   that were asked and there's also the, I believe 
  9   there's two sets of interview questions that the NCN 
 10   community consultants asked the NCN trappers when we 
 11   had the overflights and public open houses in Nelson 
 12   house. 
 13               As one would expect, just given the 
 14   length of the process, as I said, the PIP Program 
 15   began, I think the first round was in the fall of 
 16   2001 and we extended basically almost up until when 
 17   we submitted in terms of actual meetings and things 
 18   like that, given the length of the process and the 
 19   number of times we did meet with the trappers, one 
 20   really gets to know people.  Like we heard in a 
 21   number of instances about how the traplines had 
 22   remained in people's families for many many years.   
 23               For example, I offer up the example of 
 24   the registered trapper in Trapline 32.  When we 
 25   started the process, it was his dad that I believe 
07183
  1   trapped the trapline.  And then his dad basically 
  2   died and he was handed that trapline.  The Cormorant 
  3   trapper that I talked about earlier that we did a 
  4   field visit, basically he and his brother have 
  5   trapped that trapline for a number of years.  There 
  6   is other examples, you know, just in travelling the 
  7   Nelson House, the NCN members that are trappers, you 
  8   learn the history and you learn the history of the 
  9   traplines. 
 10               MR. BEDFORD:  I know that you've had the 
 11   benefit of reviewing the additional material that's 
 12   been gathered relevant to issues raised by the 
 13   Manitoba Metis Federation which were addressed by Mr. 
 14   Osler.  Given that you've had the opportunity to 
 15   review that material, can you tell us whether you 
 16   would change any of the substantive conclusions in 
 17   the volumes dealing with the transmission project now 
 18   having the benefit of that additional work?
 19               MS. HICKS:  The simple answer to that 
 20   question is no.  We've done a lot of or helped 
 21   project manage a lot of site selection environmental 
 22   assessment projects for transmission lines throughout 
 23   Manitoba for probably close to 15 years.  And when I 
 24   think about the process that has gone on and I think 
 25   about other projects than this one, I think about it 
07184
  1   as a very inclusive process in terms of one that we 
  2   really don't leave people out.  
  3               For example, when I was talking about the 
  4   registered trapline holder from Snow Lake there that 
  5   we had two meetings with, we never turn people down 
  6   in terms of meetings.  We will meet with anybody that 
  7   wants to meet with us.  In terms of this process and 
  8   this project, we did an awful lot of consultation.  I 
  9   think we were basically in Northern Manitoba every 
 10   week for almost three years just talking to people 
 11   that wanted to talk to us.  
 12               So in hindsight, knowing what I know 
 13   today, I would not change.
 14               MR. BEDFORD:  Thank you.  Mr. Osler, 
 15   before I depart from this topic area, I'm going to 
 16   return to you and to the guidelines.  I want you to 
 17   bring to bear the expertise that you have in 
 18   conducting a consulting practice in this field and 
 19   designing consultation processes for proponents such 
 20   as my client and the Nisichawayasihk Cree.  And I'd 
 21   like you to give us one last opinion.  
 22               I want you to assume that instead of 
 23   doing what you've told us was done and what we can 
 24   read what was done and what Ms. Hicks has told us was 
 25   done and what we can read what was done with respect 
07185
  1   to the transmission project, that instead of going 
  2   into communities and meeting with individuals and 
  3   conducting key person interviews and meeting with 
  4   trappers and taking them on overflights of their 
  5   traplines, instead of doing all of that so far as the 
  6   Metis people are concerned, that the proponents had 
  7   chosen instead to consult solely with the Manitoba 
  8   Metis Federation on the subject of the Metis people 
  9   and how they will be affected by these projects. 
 10               In your opinion, had that course been 
 11   followed, would that have met the terms of the 
 12   guidelines?  And if your answer is yes, why?  And if 
 13   your answer is no, why not?
 14               MR. OSLER:  It would not meet the terms 
 15   of the guidelines because the guidelines require us 
 16   to deal with Aboriginal groups who do resource 
 17   activities in the full communities.  I'm not sure 
 18   that there's anything in the guidelines that prevents 
 19   us from meeting the Manitoba Metis Federation.  
 20   Indeed, our approach was never an either/or.  But if 
 21   you give me a hard question that says do one or the 
 22   other, good practice and the guidelines require us to 
 23   deal with the people that could be affected directly. 
 24   Good practice also means you talk to anybody else 
 25   who's got an interest.  And you give them the 
07186
  1   opportunity to talk to you.  And we tried to do that 
  2   with the Manitoba Metis Federation as well as with 
  3   their members or others of all Aboriginal groups 
  4   including non-status, et cetera, that are in the 
  5   project areas.
  6               MR. BEDFORD:  Thank you.  I'm about to 
  7   move to a different topic area.
  8               THE CHAIRMAN:  I gathered that, Mr. 
  9   Bedford.  And I just wanted, for the record, to ask 
 10   whether what we have heard before I believe to the 
 11   effect that the consultation meeting between Mr. 
 12   Brennan, Mr. Sale and Mr. Chartrand was going to take 
 13   place.  And the input that's just been provided, I 
 14   just want to, for the record, confirm whether that 
 15   changes or that is still happening.
 16               MR. ADAMS:  I know that Minister Sale has 
 17   at least talked to Mr. Chartrand.  I am not too sure 
 18   if they have actually met.  And there is a meeting 
 19   planned between Mr. Brennan, Mr. Chartrand and 
 20   Minister Sale I think later this week.
 21               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.
 22               MR. WOJCZYNSKI:  If I could perhaps, I'm 
 23   not totally sure if your question was asking this or 
 24   not, but the meetings that have been held and are 
 25   planning to be held are not changing our general 
07187
  1   approach in the sense that we have been, and as you 
  2   heard, are continuing to consult with the local 
  3   communities, the individuals, the trappers 
  4   associations, that we are continuing to carry on with 
  5   that.  And we hadn't invited MMF previously and so we 
  6   are now doing that more intensely.  But our 
  7   fundamental approach of consulting with the 
  8   individuals directly affected and the other 
  9   communities, the local communities, is still part and 
 10   parcel of our consultation approach.  
 11               So we haven't displaced those other 
 12   consultations with the MMF when we're continuing with 
 13   the idea of meeting with many different parties.
 14               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.  I fully 
 15   realize the input is meant to clarify with 
 16   individuals and individual groups.  The point beyond 
 17   that that was made by the MMF was that one of their 
 18   prime requests was to officialize MMF's role as 
 19   spokesperson, as the official organization 
 20   representing Manitoba Metis, and as such, wanting to 
 21   be involved in the process.  And you've confirmed 
 22   just now that the slated meeting will be taking 
 23   place, has been announced and that's what I wanted to 
 24   make sure it was on the record.  Thank you.
 25               MR. GREWAR:  Mr. Chairman, I am wondering 
07188
  1   if before you move on, Mr. Bedford, could we enter 
  2   this document as an exhibit, MH/NCN-1050 Wuskwatim 
  3   Generation and Transmission Project EIS's Effect On 
  4   Metis and Other Aboriginal People.
  5   
  6   
  7               (EXHIBIT MH/NCN-1050:  Wuskwatim         
  8               Generation and Transmission Project EIS's 
  9               Effect On Metis and Other Aboriginal     
 10               People)
 11   
 12               MR. MAYER:  Can we confirm that on that 
 13   map that was culled, the Trapline 18 that's shown 
 14   immediately to the left of the indication Wabowden, 
 15   that is the Trapline 18 we have heard so much about 
 16   during these proceedings?
 17               MS. HICKS:  That is correct.
 18               MR. MAYER:  Thank you.  It appears to be 
 19   a lot farther from Wuskwatim Lake than we might have 
 20   been led to believe.
 21               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Bedford.
 22               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Hicks, Dr. Schaefer, 
 23   who appeared before the Commission on behalf of the 
 24   Boreal Forest Network, left some of us with the 
 25   impression that these projects pose an imminent 
07189
  1   threat to the woodland caribou.  Do you agree?  
  2               MR. HICKS:  No, I do not.  And I think 
  3   we've tried to make that point as best we can in the 
  4   course of our testimony.  I should preface my remarks 
  5   by saying I'm quite comfortable that Dr. Schaefer is 
  6   a highly qualified individual who certainly is 
  7   well-acquainted with the generic literature on 
  8   caribou.  And as long as he stuck to that particular 
  9   aspect of his presentation, I had no qualms at all 
 10   about what he was saying.  
 11               We began to get a little uncomfortable in 
 12   two areas.  One had to do with the status of caribou 
 13   in Manitoba and it's sort of an implicit invitation 
 14   on the part of Dr. Schaefer for the panel to assume 
 15   that experience elsewhere could be readily 
 16   transferred to Manitoba.  
 17               And the second had to do with the 
 18   so-called plausible scenarios that he described as, 
 19   in his mind, offering you some guidance as to the 
 20   level of impact that might be associated with these 
 21   particular projects and specifically the transmission 
 22   project. 
 23               In the first respect, Dr. Schaefer 
 24   described the progressive northward regression of 
 25   woodland caribou and the concurrent population 
07190
  1   decline.  He indicated the latter to be confirmed by 
  2   virtually all caribou studies with the corresponding 
  3   rate of population decline being as high as 20 per 
  4   cent annually.  
  5               But a point of fact, over the course of 
  6   his own presentation and in questioning of him, he 
  7   modified that position quite considerably to the 
  8   point that finally in the transcript at pages 4741, 
  9   4742, he stated, 
 10                  "It certainly seems that Manitoba 
 11                  probably seems to have done 
 12                  proportionately better than other 
 13                  provinces."  
 14               I would remind the Commission that in the 
 15   course of the questioning, you heard evidence that 
 16   three of the four herds that might directly have 
 17   their ranges affected by these transmission 
 18   facilities do not seem to be a threat.  That in fact, 
 19   the Wabowden herd is increasing in population.  The 
 20   Wapisu herd, which is the herd associated with the 
 21   Nelson House and the NCN lands, appears to be 
 22   increasing in population.  And the Kississing Naosap 
 23   herd, this came out in questioning from Mr. Soprovich 
 24   of Mr. Schaefer, the observation made that Metsaranta 
 25   had found that that particular herd seemed to be I 
07191
  1   think fairly stable was the quote that he used.  
  2               So again, I'm not suggesting for a moment 
  3   that we oughtn't be concerned about caribou.  We 
  4   should.  In fact, NCN instructed us to be very 
  5   concerned about caribou.  But I do believe that an 
  6   impression was left that I think describes the 
  7   Manitoba circumstances in larger global circumstances 
  8   that may not be applicable and evidence heard by the 
  9   Commission suggested in the case of Manitoba is 
 10   probably not currently applicable. 
 11               The second point that I wanted to talk 
 12   about was the so-called plausible scenarios.  Now 
 13   you've heard evidence both from Dr. Schaefer, who at 
 14   one stage made the point that avoidance need not be 
 15   absolute.  And he was referring to the extent to 
 16   which caribou may avoid a linear disturbance.  He 
 17   said again, avoidance need not be absolute.  He also, 
 18   I think, implied, and certainly Dr. Bayne made it 
 19   quite clear, that different kinds of corridor have 
 20   different effects in relation to avoidance.  That 
 21   roads tend to be significantly more adverse in their 
 22   effect on movement of caribou than do transmission 
 23   lines or seismic lines or other less intrusive 
 24   facilities.  
 25               But when he came to do his so-called 
07192
  1   plausible scenarios, he seemed to forget his own 
  2   evidence.  He suggested that you would have a total 
  3   loss, a total loss of habitat within, in this extreme 
  4   case, five kilometres on either side of the 
  5   transmission lines.  
  6               Now that, I suggest to you, is 
  7   inconsistent with his own testimony, inconsistent 
  8   with the research that we have done with the 
  9   scientific literature that both he and Dr. Bayne have 
 10   quoted to you.  And not incidentally, happened to be 
 11   the one particular piece that was picked up in the 
 12   media.  And he described what is, in essence, 100 
 13   times more effect than our specialists believe there 
 14   to be on caribou habitat by virtue of having ignored 
 15   his own evidence.  Thank you.
 16               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Hicks, my recollection 
 17   is that Dr. Schaefer, like all good academics, 
 18   offered, in support of his opinions, the results of 
 19   studies done by yet other academics as found in 
 20   articles in learned journals.  And it is my 
 21   recollection that several of Dr. Schaefer's key 
 22   conclusions were based upon studies done of reindeer 
 23   in Norway.  
 24               Could you please comment for us on the 
 25   usefulness of such studies and what research guided 
07193
  1   you and our caribou experts in preparing the EIS and 
  2   in reaching the conclusion therein of no significant 
  3   effects on woodland caribou?
  4               MR. HICKS:  First of all, I think we made 
  5   the point clear in cross-examination of Mr. Soprovich 
  6   that literature studies and looking at the scientific 
  7   evidence are but one tool in the box, one of about 10 
  8   that we have applied.  They are a very important 
  9   tool.  And as a coordinator for the transmission 
 10   project, I was frankly gratified that all, and I 
 11   repeat, all of the caribou related research, in fact 
 12   all of the cites that were offered up by Dr. Bayne 
 13   and Dr. Schaefer were included in the review done by 
 14   our people.  The only exceptions that come to mind 
 15   were two studies cited by Dr. Bayne which he himself 
 16   described as confidential unpublished works.  
 17   Everything else is in our report.  Everything else 
 18   has been studied at length.  
 19               And our experts, in making their decision 
 20   as to significance, in making their decision as to 
 21   how to conduct field research, how to incorporate 
 22   traditional knowledge, what questions to ask about 
 23   behaviour of caribou of the elders and other 
 24   resources harvesters were guided by that research.  I 
 25   would have to say that we are principally guided by 
07194
  1   research that we see as being directly relevant.  
  2               Now the Alberta Research, which was 
  3   described both by Dr. Bayne and by Dr. Schaefer, we 
  4   think is relevant.  It involves the same sub-species, 
  5   woodland caribou.  It involves a boreal ecology which 
  6   is not entirely dissimilar to that of northern 
  7   Manitoba.  It's an ecology that in the case of 
  8   Northern Alberta has been somewhat more disturbed 
  9   because of the active oil and gas exploration and 
 10   production activity and the network of roads, 
 11   all-weather roads that go along with that kind of
 12   activity.  
 13               But in essence, we were comfortable with 
 14   that the Alberta research seemed to describe issues 
 15   that would be applicable here and behaviour that 
 16   would be relevant to what we saw here.  
 17               We were nowhere near so sanguine about 
 18   the Norway experience.  And I can offer you some 
 19   ideas about that.  The Nellemann research, the 2001 
 20   research, was based on a portion of Norway that's 
 21   above the 60th parallel.  The 60th parallel is the 
 22   northern boundary of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and 
 23   Alberta.  So that may put some perspective for you.  
 24          It's a mountainous terrain and it deals with 
 25   the subspecies reindeer which is a different 
07195
  1   subspecies than woodland caribou.  Now, I'll offer 
  2   you some quotes from the particular paper which were 
  3   used by Nelleman to characterize the study area he 
  4   was dealing with.  
  5                  "Nearly 17 per cent of the area in 
  6                  altitudes between 1,000 and 1,500 
  7                  metres constituting a main winter 
  8                  habitat was located within two and a 
  9                  half kilometres from powerlines and 
 10                  another 61 per cent of the area was 
 11                  located within five kilometres from 
 12                  combined types of development or 
 13                  tourist resorts." 
 14   Next, 
 15                  "Most of the area lies between 1,000 
 16                  metres and 2,000 metres.  Nearly 50 
 17                  per cent of the area is generally 
 18                  unvegetated and dominated by snow, 
 19                  rocks and gravel." 
 20   Third, 
 21                  "Tourist ski trails and cabin resorts 
 22                  dominate in the southeastern part of 
 23                  the study area."   
 24                  "The reindeer population is regulated 
 25                  mainly through hunting.  A few low 
07196
  1                  quality gravel roads open during a few 
  2                  months in summer and early autumn 
  3                  ensure access by hunters to central 
  4                  parts of the range."  
  5                  "In the northern central, western and 
  6                  southern parts, the winter ranges are 
  7                  traversed by 300 and 420 kilovolt 
  8                  powerlines or powerlines in 
  9                  combination with roads and railroads." 
 10   And then finally,
 11                  "The main cabin resorts are located in 
 12                  the southeastern portion of the study 
 13                  area giving rise to many ski trails in 
 14                  that area."   
 15               Now, I would suggest to you that that 
 16   describes a study area that is substantially 
 17   different in nature than the study area that we're 
 18   dealing with.  And in particular, is dramatically 
 19   different than the study area between Wuskwatim and 
 20   Snow Lake which I think is the area that's been of 
 21   greatest concern to the Commission.  That would be 
 22   the powerlines from Thompson to Wuskwatim and from 
 23   Wuskwatim to Snow Lake. 
 24               I've lost my train of thought here for a 
 25   moment.  Perhaps if you ask me another question, 
07197
  1   Doug.  
  2               MR. BEDFORD:  Well, I have one more on 
  3   this topic before we move to the last topic.  
  4   Academic debates can be interesting.  But at the end 
  5   of the day, we are all going to have to live with 
  6   what actually happens if these projects go forward, 
  7   not with whether or not the predictions of the 
  8   academics prove to be accurate.  
  9               What comfort, Mr. Hicks, can we draw out 
 10   of the EIS regarding the Wuskwatim projects and the 
 11   future of those herds of woodland caribou in the 
 12   vicinity of the projects?
 13               MR. HICKS:  Okay.  I'm back on the train 
 14   by the way.  The five kilometre distance that 
 15   Nellemann used or the five kilometres, rather, that 
 16   Schaefer used to characterize his so-called plausible 
 17   scenarios seems to have derived from the Nellemann 
 18   work.  That's the five kilometre distance.  
 19               The numbers from Alberta ranged from 100 
 20   metres in the case of seismic lines to 250 metres in 
 21   the case of roads.  And again, describe not total 
 22   avoidance but an area of partial avoidance. 
 23               Now to Mr. Bedford's question.  We're 
 24   quite comfortable with all of the comments that Dr. 
 25   Schaefer offered in respect of the need for adaptive 
07198
  1   management, the need for monitoring, the need to keep 
  2   track of this.  And in fact that's, I think, clearly 
  3   part of the proposal that's been made.  I'll read a 
  4   bit here.  
  5                  "Continued monitoring during 
  6                  construction and operation as planned. 
  7                  The results of these programs will be 
  8                  used to identify the need for and type 
  9                  of any additional mitigation that may 
 10                  be required.  Results of the 
 11                  monitoring program will address 
 12                  uncertainties with respect to the 
 13                  responsive caribou to disturbances 
 14                  such as construction and operation of 
 15                  the access road and transmission lines 
 16                  and thus provide information useful 
 17                  for assessing the effects of future 
 18                  developments in Northern Manitoba.    
 19                  Monitoring results will 
 20                  also be used by NCN to support their 
 21                  ongoing caribou conservation awareness 
 22                  program which provides information on 
 23                  the sensitivity and status of the 
 24                  species to resource users to allow for 
 25                  the community to adjust harvest levels 
07199
  1                  as required."  
  2               And I think that really does go to the 
  3   spirit of what Dr. Schaefer was looking for.  And I 
  4   am absolutely comfortable that that will continue on. 
  5               I am reminded as well that Manitoba 
  6   Hydro, quite apart from this particular project, 
  7   funds generic research of caribou on an ongoing basis 
  8   throughout Manitoba and is in fact I think one of the 
  9   major contributors to the funding of research in that 
 10   area.  
 11               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Hicks, I'm moving now 
 12   to my last area.  
 13               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Can I ask first? 
 14   Thanks, Mr. Bedford.
 15               THE CHAIRMAN:  Ms. Avery Kinew.  
 16               MR. AVERY KINEW:  Mr. Hicks, Dr. Schaefer 
 17   provided two references, Site Fidelity of the Female 
 18   Caribou and Multiple Spatial Scales and Fuzzy 
 19   Structure and Spatial Dynamics Over Declining 
 20   Woodland Caribou Population.  Did you review those 
 21   since he tabled them?
 22               MR. HICKS:  I have not, no, but our 
 23   caribou specialists have.  And I am assured that the 
 24   contents of those is consistent with the content of 
 25   the other scientific literature we have reviewed.
07200
  1               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Were those two 
  2   referenced?
  3               MR. HICKS:  The first one was I believe. 
  4   I'm not sure of the second one, the Fuzzy -- 
  5               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Fuzzy Structuring.
  6               MR. HICKS:  Fuzzy Structuring, I'm not 
  7   certain of that one.  But the question of female 
  8   fidelity was looked at in some detail and this is 
  9   something we actually discussed at great length 
 10   following Dr. Schaefer's evidence.
 11               MS. AVERY KINEW:  And you did present 
 12   some traditional knowledge about that from NCN?
 13               MR. HICKS:  I frankly think, Commissioner 
 14   Kinew, that the one thing that distinguishes the 
 15   routing here from other projects that we have been 
 16   involved in historically is the extent to which I am 
 17   comfortable that we have incorporated traditional 
 18   knowledge and the extent to which my colleague Stuart 
 19   Davies has testified, the extent to which that 
 20   knowledge is consistent with our expectations based 
 21   on the scientific literature.
 22               MS. AVERY KINEW:  Thank you, sir.
 23               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Mayer.  
 24               MR. MAYER:  Our precis of Dr. Schaefer's 
 25   evidence and his recommendations is sort of as 
07201
  1   follows.  He recommended an adaptive management 
  2   approach which would involve treating the Wuskwatim 
  3   projects as an experiment involving long-term 
  4   monitoring and hypothesis testing.  And from your 
  5   last statements, it sounds to me like Hydro or at 
  6   least your recommendation to Hydro would be that they 
  7   accept that recommendation.  Am I correct in my 
  8   assumption?
  9               MR. HICKS:  With one rider, and the rider 
 10   is very simple.  But to the extent that we've tried 
 11   to avoid sensitive caribou habitat and caribou, I 
 12   wonder whether funding of research of these lines 
 13   would be the best return for the research dollar or 
 14   whether we might not be better off funding caribou 
 15   behaviour studies more generally.  Do you follow what 
 16   I'm saying here?
 17               MR. MAYER:  I think so.
 18               MR. HICKS:  With that one caveat, no 
 19   problem.
 20               MR. MAYER:  Thank you.  
 21               MR. BEDFORD:  Further, Mr. Hicks, to that 
 22   last question.  I assume that what recommendations 
 23   you're making are both to Manitoba Hydro and the 
 24   Nisichawayasihk Cree?
 25               MR. HICKS:  They are.
07202
  1               MR. BEDFORD:  Moving to my last topic, 
  2   Mr. Hicks, you have the honour once again of 
  3   answering my questions.  Aside from the significant 
  4   additional costs of routing the transmission line 
  5   from Wuskwatim to Snow Lake along Highway 6, as 
  6   someone in the room once suggested, I understand that 
  7   there are some environmental concerns that may not 
  8   have been carefully noted by all attracted to that 
  9   alternative route.  Can you tell us, please, what 
 10   they are?
 11               MR. HICKS:  The first observation I would 
 12   make is that environmental effects tend to be 
 13   directly proportional to the extent of the footprint. 
 14   So if you extend the length of the line and the 
 15   cleared area associated with it, then chances are 
 16   that many of the environmental effects associated 
 17   with that disturbance will be greater than if you are 
 18   looking at a shorter line.  
 19               I believe that we estimated, earlier in 
 20   the testimony, that the option described would have 
 21   involved about 7.2 square kilometres clearing over 
 22   and above what would have been required for the 
 23   currently proposed lines.  Now that represents, in 
 24   relation to the whole of the transmission project, 
 25   about a 25 per cent increase.  But in relation to the 
07203
  1   two particular legs that were under consideration, 
  2   the piece from Thompson to Wuskwatim and the piece 
  3   from Wuskwatim to Snow Lake, that represents about a 
  4   35 per cent increase in clearing activity.  
  5               That's one aspect and I bring that to 
  6   your attention because if you'll recall Dr. Bayne's 
  7   testimony, he identified three critical issues which 
  8   he listed in order of priority and represented as 
  9   threats to biodiversity.  And the top one of those 
 10   issues was loss of habitat.  And I believe that that 
 11   equates quite directly to the amount of clearing that 
 12   would be required. 
 13               The second issue here I think is the 
 14   barrier effect, the extent to which not just caribou 
 15   but wildlife generally may find it difficult to cross 
 16   large barriers in the environment.  And this is not 
 17   just my opinion, this is an opinion that I think was 
 18   reinforced by both Dr. Bayne and Dr. Schaefer when 
 19   they commented quite cagily, I think was the word 
 20   that Dr. Bayne used, about the benefits of 
 21   consolidating routes.  And he warned the Commission 
 22   that he wasn't quite prepared to get solidly behind 
 23   that idea because there was this issue of barrier 
 24   effect.  And that different animals, different 
 25   wildlife will be affected differently by an increase 
07204
  1   in that width.                
  2               And of course the situation here in 
  3   consolidation is that you'd be increasing the cleared 
  4   area by roughly 100 metres in some cases and by I 
  5   think it was 60 metres in others.  So that barrier 
  6   effect, that edge effect that goes along, is at 
  7   issue.
  8               MR. SARGEANT:  What would be the total 
  9   width of those corridors once you added the extra 100 
 10   or extra 60?
 11               MR. HICKS:  I'd have to go back to my 
 12   notes.  The material that we presented, this was very 
 13   early in the piece, was the subject of an exhibit 
 14   that we did provide to the table.  The current 
 15   proposal, as you are aware, provides for a 60 metre 
 16   right-of-way between Thompson and Wuskwatim and a 110 
 17   metre right-of-way between Wuskwatim and Herblet 
 18   Lake. 
 19               The optional alternative that was 
 20   described and assessed by us would have required a 50 
 21   metre widening of the right-of-way in the area 
 22   between Pipe Lake and Thompson.  A 100 metre widening 
 23   in the area between Pipe Lake, Pronton and Herblet 
 24   Lake and a new right-of-way of 160 metres width in 
 25   the area between Pipe Lake and Wuskwatim itself.
07205
  1               MR. SARGEANT:  But do you know what the 
  2   current width of the -- 
  3               MR. HICKS:  They are about 45 metres.
  4               MR. SARGEANT:  They are about 45 metres 
  5   now?
  6               MR. HICKS:  Existing, yes.
  7               MR. SARGEANT:  And the ones that are 
  8   running along Highway 6?
  9               MR. HICKS:  That's right.
 10               MR. SARGEANT:  So then you add to that 
 11   the right-of-way around Highway 6?
 12               MR. HICKS:  What we did at the time we 
 13   made the submission to you is we assume that -- we 
 14   didn't know what those rights-of-way widths were.  So 
 15   point of fact, I think I assumed that they were wider 
 16   than that.  But what we assumed was you'd need a 50 
 17   metre separation between the new line and the 
 18   existing line, which is standard.  And that you'd 
 19   need a 30 metre separation between the new line and 
 20   the new edge of right-of-way.  So that's where the 
 21   numbers come from.
 22               MR. SARGEANT:  So we'd end up with a 
 23   pretty wide corridor?
 24               MR. HICKS:  It would be, again without 
 25   knowing the precise width of the existing 
07206
  1   rights-of-way, it would be roughly about 125 metres 
  2   in the case of the areas where you'd be twinning 
  3   existing lines and 160 metres in the case of the new 
  4   right-of-way that would be required between Wuskwatim 
  5   and Highway 6.
  6               MR. MAYER:  Just following from that, 
  7   however, when you talk about the 50 metre separation, 
  8   you already have a road there.  You could easily use 
  9   the road as part of that separation, couldn't you?   
 10               MR. HICKS:  Time and again over the 
 11   years, we've said to the Manitoba Department of 
 12   Highways that we ought to be able to use your 
 13   rights-of-way.  And they invariably tell us no, you 
 14   can't.
 15               MR. MAYER:  I noted with interest that 
 16   somebody dug some what I thought it was fiber optics 
 17   that looked awful close to the right-of-way.
 18               MR. HICKS:  We certainly can see, 
 19   Commissioner Mayer, that to the extent that you're 
 20   looking for a separation distance from the edge of 
 21   your right-of-way to, you know, a publicly trafficked 
 22   facility like the roadway itself, that you could 
 23   certainly make some adjustment.
 24               MR. MAYER:  And that is the longest 
 25   single portion of that piece of the route?
07207
  1               MR. HICKS:  My difficulty is I don't know 
  2   precisely where the existing transmission line 
  3   right-of way is relative to the highway right-of-way.
  4               MR. MAYER:  I believe the transmission 
  5   line right-of-way for the most part is to the west of 
  6   the highway which, at that point, runs almost north 
  7   and south.  It runs north and south to just south 
  8   between Wabowden and Ponton.  So you have a small 
  9   area where it crosses over.
 10               MR. HICKS:  Okay.
 11               MR. MAYER:  I could show you the curve on 
 12   the map.  
 13               MR. HICKS:  Going back to Mr. Bedford's 
 14   original question.  The only other comment I would 
 15   make, and I think we offered you a reference to one 
 16   of our interrogatory responses earlier on which deals 
 17   specifically with the question of consolidation.  And 
 18   I think our assessment there is entirely consistent 
 19   with that of Dr. Bayne and Dr. Schaefer and with 
 20   their caution in responding positively to the merits 
 21   of consolidation. 
 22               The one area where clearly you would 
 23   normally expect some benefits is that of edge 
 24   effects.  And that if you've already got the edge 
 25   effect, then your chances are you're not creating a 
07208
  1   lot of new edge effects.  The only issue there is 
  2   that no one really reminded the Commission that edge 
  3   effects are pervasive in nature.  The fact that 
  4   you've got species that are interior species and 
  5   species that are edge species doesn't reflect human 
  6   infrastructure.  That's a fact of nature.  
  7               Every stream, every water course, every 
  8   swamp, every bog has an edge.  And the edge effects 
  9   and the response of species to those edge effects is 
 10   entirely common throughout nature.
 11               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Hicks, I have been 
 12   informed that the first route that was considered by 
 13   the consultants is in fact the one which Commissioner 
 14   Mayer has suggested should be seriously looked at.  
 15   Can you tell us, please, how much time and effort was 
 16   expended studying this particular route and why was 
 17   it ultimately not the one chosen by the proponents?
 18               MR. HICKS:  I should be clear, Mr. 
 19   Bedford, that the route that was equivalent to that 
 20   suggested by Commissioner Mayer, that the reference 
 21   was to the construction power line, the transmission 
 22   line between Thompson and Wuskwatim where one of the 
 23   alternatives that we had looked at, I think it was 
 24   referred to as alternative "C" for that particular 
 25   segment of the lines, would have run down Highway 6 
07209
  1   and then directly into Wuskwatim in much the same way 
  2   that Commissioner Mayer had suggested to us.  
  3               We had also looked, though, at other 
  4   possibilities where we could have maximized the use 
  5   of existing rights-of-way.  We had looked, for 
  6   example, at, in the case of alternative "A" for that 
  7   same leg, perhaps using the existing WL43 which is 
  8   the Laurie River transmission line which runs more or 
  9   less in the same direction as the Provincial Road 
 10   391.  That we looked at the possibility of maybe 
 11   doubling up along that right-of-way and then coming 
 12   down in the same vicinity as the access road.  And we 
 13   did discuss that. 
 14               Conceptually, we talked about those kinds 
 15   of alternatives with members of the Future 
 16   Development Community and members of the NCN 
 17   generally for about 20 months from roughly the end of 
 18   1999 through to about August of 2001.  So all through 
 19   that period, the implications of going with existing 
 20   or consolidating facilities wherever you could was on 
 21   the table and discussed. 
 22               When it came time to go to actual routing 
 23   alternatives and specific discussions and assessment 
 24   of the differences, that began in about September of 
 25   2001 and culminated with the submission in April of 
07210
  1   2003.  I'm sorry, did I get the dates wrong?  Is it 
  2   right?
  3               MS. HICKS:  Yes, I think so.  
  4               MR. HICKS: Another 20 months in any 
  5   event.  So that particular route was looked at very 
  6   carefully by NCN during that second period and 
  7   conceptually during the first 20 month period.  
  8               I believe, and perhaps Councillor Thomas 
  9   could answer this more directly than I, but my sense 
 10   of the reason for rejecting that route was in part 
 11   cost and length and environmental implications.  It 
 12   was in part a concern about access implications.  It 
 13   was in part about -- and that as was reminded by 
 14   testimony before the Commission in The Pas, part of 
 15   the access issue was trying to improve access to some 
 16   of the lands south of the Burntwood River for NCN 
 17   members.  But beyond that, the access issue was a 
 18   concern.  And part of the reason for wanting to go 
 19   with a route that maximized the right-of-way within 
 20   the NCN or the Nelson House RMA was, I believe, 
 21   comfort that if it was in the RMA, and NCN of course 
 22   is a co-manager of that RMA, that there was a better 
 23   opportunity to maintain some influence and control 
 24   over its use. 
 25               MR. MAYER:  I'm back on because I just 
07211
  1   happened to have it highlighted, what I believe the 
  2   transmission EIS, page 6-8, preliminary routing 
  3   option for Wuskwatim to Thompson Birch Tree Station 
  4   230 kilovolt transmission line was initially 
  5   identified along PTH 6 but was eliminated from 
  6   further consideration mainly because of cost and 
  7   technical reasons.  There's no mention in there about 
  8   any environmental issues or particularly even access 
  9   reasons.
 10               MR. HICKS:  I would certainly concede 
 11   that.  
 12               MR. MAYER:  Thank you.  
 13               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Hicks, when one thinks 
 14   of the boreal forest, or at least when I think of it, 
 15   having been raised on the prairies of Southern 
 16   Manitoba, I imagine a vast forest of tall trees.  
 17   Accordingly, will not the projects, particularly the 
 18   transmission project, result in the destruction and 
 19   removal of a significant number of trees if the 
 20   proponents proceed with the route that is being 
 21   proposed?
 22               MR. HICKS:  We have estimated in the 
 23   Environmental Impact Statement and I believe in our 
 24   presentation in the opening days of the hearing that 
 25   the total footprint of the transmission lines is in 
07212
  1   the order of 27 square kilometres.  About 50 per cent 
  2   of that would involve productive forest land.  And 
  3   it's in that productive forest area where you'd see 
  4   the principal effects of clearing.  And the 
  5   non-productive land, there is in essence little or no 
  6   clearing involved.  
  7               If you are, you know, in a wet land or a 
  8   bog, for example, there really is no clearing at all. 
  9   And to the extent that there's no clearing, there is 
 10   of course no edge effect created. 
 11               The only other comment I would like to 
 12   offer there is that the edge effect is perhaps most 
 13   serious when you're clearing mature forest.  And the 
 14   estimate that's been provided to us by our project 
 15   ecologist, Dr. Innis, is that in the case of the line 
 16   between Wuskwatim and Snow Lake, that I had said you 
 17   have roughly 50 per cent in productive forest, he 
 18   estimated that roughly 20, 22 per cent of that 
 19   right-of-way would involve what he called closed 
 20   Crown forest, or in other words mature tree growth.  
 21               So the proportion is nothing like the 
 22   sort of slashing through the forest notion that I 
 23   agree comes to mind for many people.
 24               MR. BEDFORD:  Those are my questions on 
 25   redirect.  Thank you all.  I know that Ms. Matthews 
07213
  1   Lemieux has a few questions she would like to put to 
  2   her particular witnesses. 
  3               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  My questions are 
  4   for Councillor Thomas and Cam MacInnes.  
  5               Councillor Thomas, my understanding is 
  6   that a number of transmission routes were considered 
  7   by NCN throughout what was referred to as the 
  8   alternatives process.  Could you briefly explain what 
  9   the alternatives process was?
 10               MR. THOMAS:  Under the auspices of the 
 11   Future Development Team, we struck up a number of 
 12   committees to look at a variety of areas.  One of 
 13   them was the Alternatives Committee.  This one looked 
 14   at the location of the camp and the access road and 
 15   transmission lines and included representation from 
 16   NCN, Manitoba Hydro and the Environmental Management 
 17   Team experts as were required from the western 
 18   scientific point of view.  But we also utilized our 
 19   own people that we considered to be experts in the 
 20   area because they have lived in the area and made use 
 21   of the area for a considerable period of time. 
 22               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Okay.  Could you 
 23   also then explain how the Alternatives Committee 
 24   proceeded in its review of the various options on 
 25   transmission particularly having regard to the 
07214
  1   dialogue that just took place between Commissioner 
  2   Mayer and Mr. Hicks about the factors that were 
  3   considered?
  4               MR. THOMAS:  We tried to determine what 
  5   was the best way to do an analysis on the issue and 
  6   we identified a number of factors in the alternatives 
  7   committee that needed to be looked at.  And that 
  8   included cost and length of the transmission line 
  9   itself, environmental effects, access into our 
 10   traditional territory by non-NCN members.  And access 
 11   into the area for our own people who were making use 
 12   of the trapline systems and the fishing areas.  And 
 13   we've also kept in mind the protection of our sacred 
 14   sites which has always been a part of our thinking.
 15               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Okay.  Now my 
 16   understanding is that the Alternatives Committee 
 17   rejected the transmission line option along Highway 6 
 18   and that was the first option that was rejected. 
 19   Firstly, can you confirm this and can you also 
 20   confirm when that took place?
 21               MR. THOMAS:  Yes.  That option was 
 22   considered carefully and it was rejected by the 
 23   Alternatives Committee in the documentation that has 
 24   been put forward that indicates a date of February 
 25   14th, 2002.  If I may, I'll just read a portion of it 
07215
  1   to you.
  2               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Can you also just 
  3   indicate what volume you're referring to?
  4               MR. THOMAS:  This is Volume 1 
  5   Transmission page 6-26.  It states, 
  6                  "Subsequent to the Alternatives 
  7                  Committee meeting of February 14, 
  8                  2002, it was agreed that preliminary 
  9                  routing Option "C" would be eliminated 
 10                  from further consideration.  NCN Chief 
 11                  and Council indicated that routing 
 12                  Options "A" and "B" should be 
 13                  presented to the community at open 
 14                  houses in Nelson House on February 
 15                  20th and 21st of 2002.  And that 
 16                  Option "B" should be moved into the 
 17                  Nelson House RMA to the greatest 
 18                  extent possible." 
 19               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  You and Mr. 
 20   MacInnes both participated on the Alternatives 
 21   Committee; is that correct?
 22               MR. THOMAS:  Yes.
 23               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Could you please 
 24   explain for us then why option along Highway 6 was 
 25   rejected by NCN?
07216
  1               MR. THOMAS:  The factors that I've 
  2   identified just now and previously were the factors 
  3   that were used.  They were considered for the various 
  4   options that were determined -- for the various 
  5   options and it was determined that Highway 6 option 
  6   would not only cost more, but it was because it was 
  7   longer and wider and needed wider corridors, that 
  8   there would be significant environmental impacts.  
  9               However, the important factors for NCN 
 10   was being able to limit access to the area by non-NCN 
 11   members.  And it was felt that a route that did not 
 12   link up to the highway or with a highway as directly 
 13   would permit greater control in terms of access so 
 14   that non-NCN members would be less likely to gain 
 15   access to the area for purposes of hunting caribou, 
 16   et cetera.  
 17               And NCN members would also be able to 
 18   gain access to what was previously difficult to 
 19   obtain in the south eastern part of the resource 
 20   management area.  And it's in keeping with the idea 
 21   that we wanted to maximize benefits to NCN in more 
 22   ways than one as just identified.
 23               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Okay.  Now, what 
 24   concerns, if any, do you have about the Commission 
 25   recommending the first option that was rejected by 
07217
  1   NCN?
  2               MR. THOMAS:  No disrespect intended to 
  3   Mr. Mayer's statements about Highway 6, but I think 
  4   that it would be a major mistake in my view in that 
  5   it would mean essentially that the careful 
  6   incorporation of traditional and local knowledge was 
  7   virtually meaningless since these matters were 
  8   considered carefully over a period of time of more 
  9   than two years.  And I believe that it would be 
 10   necessary to spend that length of time going back and 
 11   reconsidering the options in light of that decision.  
 12               And furthermore, I think that I would be 
 13   concerned with the Commission making recommendations 
 14   about such a project when it is not the project that 
 15   we are seeking to have approved. 
 16               We've taken this issue to our people.  If 
 17   an alternative route has to be looked at, then we 
 18   would have to revisit the proposals as presented to 
 19   the Clean Environment Commission.
 20               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Thank you.  Now, 
 21   Mr. MacInnes, you also participated as an NCN 
 22   representative throughout the alternatives process.  
 23   Is there anything further that you want to add about 
 24   the factors considered and the process followed by 
 25   the Alternatives Committee?  
07218
  1               MR. MACINNES:  Well, I guess the issue of 
  2   access management took on a life of its own.  It 
  3   started out in the access road alternatives 
  4   evaluations and continued in the transmission line 
  5   routing evaluations and quickly became the issue  for 
  6   NCN.  And we've heard quite a bit of testimony about 
  7   that. 
  8               To follow on from there, it became the 
  9   continuation of the Alternatives Committee as the 
 10   Access Management Committee which has produced the 
 11   draft that you've seen as part of the submission.  
 12   And commitments for similar processes along 
 13   transmission lines for communities so interested. 
 14               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  Just one last 
 15   question and it's essentially the same question that 
 16   I put to Councillor Thomas.  Now, what concerns, if 
 17   any, would you have about the CEC recommending the 
 18   alternative route as opposed to the proposal that is 
 19   before the Commission?  
 20               MR. MACINNES:  I concur with what 
 21   Councillor Thomas had to say and also with David 
 22   Hicks' testimony just now. 
 23               I think I should add one more item that 
 24   was significant in terms of choosing a route that 
 25   avoided Highway 6.  It's a technical one.  And early 
07219
  1   in the process, we were told that reliability of 
  2   Manitoba Hydro's transmission system was paramount in 
  3   selecting routes that increased reliability was 
  4   important.  So running the route from Thompson to 
  5   Ponton or part of the route that way would have less 
  6   advantages to increasing the reliability.
  7               MR. MAYER:  If that's correct, sir, we're 
  8   in serious trouble because I know where the Bipole 
  9   lines are.  
 10               MR. MACINNES:  That's an issue for the 
 11   future.
 12               MS. MATTHEWS LEMIEUX:  I have no other 
 13   questions.  Thank you.
 14               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Bedford, Ms. Matthews 
 15   Lemieux, does that conclude your questions?
 16               MR. BEDFORD:  Yes.
 17               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.  Ladies and 
 18   gentlemen, it's almost ten after.  We will reconvene 
 19   at ten after 1:00.  
 20   
 21               (PROCEEDINGS ADJOURNED AT 12:10 P.M.) 
 22               AND RESUMED AT 1:12 P.M.)
 23   
 24               THE CHAIRMAN:  Ladies and gentlemen,
 25   we are going to get back to business.
07220
  1               Just before we do, the Commission had
  2   not ruled, up until now, on the two items which
  3   were tabled.  One was an excerpt submitted by the
  4   displaced residents of South Indian Lake, a
  5   one-page statement, which was taken from the
  6   Senate hearings in Minnesota.
  7               The Commission has decided that this
  8   excerpt will not be accepted.  It is only a brief
  9   excerpt.
 10               On the other hand, there were a series
 11   of three tapes that were also tabled by PCN just
 12   before making the closing statements.  They
 13   represent a total of about four hours of tapes
 14   from the hearing in Minnesota.
 15               The Commission has decided that these
 16   tapes will be transcribed and will be distributed
 17   to all participants and anyone wishing to make
 18   comments on them, may do so in the first two weeks
 19   after the closing -- within the first two weeks of
 20   the closing of the hearings in writing.
 21               Mr. Grewar, you have other items to --
 22               MR. GREWAR:  Yes, Mr. Chairman.  A
 23   number of exhibit items to enter.  Items that have
 24   been submitted since the adjournment of the
 25   hearing a week or so ago.
07221
  1               Three are from CASIL, the Community
  2   Association of South Indian Lake.  The first is an
  3   undertaking, which is a response from Mr. Jon
  4   Duncan, regarding three requests of information
  5   coming from CEC and Hydro/NCN, regarding
  6   background, corporate capabilities, project
  7   management services and dispute resolution
  8   services of Mr. Duncan.  That will be entered as
  9   CASIL-1012.
 10   
 11               (EXHIBIT CASIL-1012:  DAL company
 12                profile)
 13   
 14               MR. GREWAR:  Also from CASIL, not a
 15   response to a specific undertaking, but it was a
 16   request to a response of Mr. Abra.  It is Water
 17   Survey of Canada Gauging Station, Southern Indian
 18   Lake near South Indian Lake, and it is a water
 19   level hydrograph as CASIL-1013.
 20   
 21               (EXHIBIT CASIL-1013:  Graph:  Water
 22                Survey of Canada Gauging
 23                Station-Southern Indian Lake near
 24                South Indian Lake, water level
 25                hydrograph)
07222
  1   
  2               MR. GREWAR:  Also attached to be
  3   entered as an exhibit from CASIL -- again, no
  4   undertaking -- but it was a request of Valerie
  5   Matthews Lemieux during the cross-examination and
  6   it is the Wuskwatim and Southern Indian Lake
  7   Community Association of South Indian Lake,
  8   prepared for the Manitoba Clean Environment
  9   Commission by the Centre for Indigenous
 10   Environmental Resources.  It is the report of the
 11   community research conducted by CIER.  That would
 12   be CASIL-1014.
 13   
 14               (EXHIBIT CASIL-1014:  Clean
 15                Environment Commission Hearing
 16                Submission:  Wuskwatim and Southern
 17                Indian Lake, CASIL, Centre for
 18                Indigenous Environmental Resources,
 19                May 2004)
 20   
 21               MR. GREWAR:  All these, Mr. Chairman,
 22   have been distributed to all parties so they all
 23   have them.
 24               Now, just a few exhibits that were
 25   submitted by the Canadian Nature
07223
  1   Federation/Manitoba Wildlands.  The first one was
  2   in response to Undertaking 59.  It is Low Wind
  3   Speed Technology Development in the U.S.,
  4   Department of Energy, Wind Energy Research Program
  5   and it is as CNF-1026.
  6   
  7               (EXHIBIT CNF-1026:  Response to CNF
  8                Undertaking 59.  Low Wind Speed
  9                Technology Development in the U.S.
 10                Department of Energy, Wind Energy
 11                Research Program)
 12   
 13               MR. GREWAR:  Also in response to CNF
 14   Undertaking Number 62 is the "Real Cost of
 15   Integrating Wind".  This is a publication of "Wind
 16   Power Monthly", February 2004.  It is Exhibit
 17   CNF-1027.
 18   
 19               (EXHIBIT CNF-1027:  Response to CNF
 20                Undertaking 62.  "Becoming
 21                Respectable in Serious Circles".
 22                Windpower Monthly, January 2004,
 23                pages 39-42.  "The Real Cost of
 24                Integrating Wind", Windpower Monthly,
 25                February 2004, pages 35-46)
07224
  1   
  2               MR. GREWAR:  I just have a quick
  3   correction to the record.  CNF Exhibit 1022 was
  4   entered as Undertaking 58, not as 59 as it was
  5   originally entered -- I am sorry.  It was
  6   originally entered as 59.  It is actually
  7   Undertaking 58.  CNF-1022 was the Successful
  8   Utility Sector Energy Efficiency Programs in the
  9   United States.  That's just a correction to the
 10   record.  So, it was a response to Undertaking 58.
 11               Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
 12               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.
 13               Ms. Gaile Whelan Enns, on behalf of
 14   the Canadian Nature Federation/Manitoba Wildlands,
 15   you are ready to proceed with your closing
 16   statements.
 17               MS. WHELAN ENNS:  Thank you.  I figure
 18   someone in the back of the room will wave if I am
 19   not audible.
 20               We have attempted to do our best in
 21   terms of the closing statements within the
 22   confines of the time available and our current
 23   resources.
 24               Manitoba Wildlands would like to
 25   acknowledge the importance of the participation of
07225
  1   First Nations and Aboriginal peoples in the
  2   Wuskwatim Projects hearings.
  3               Informal and spontaneous
  4   presentations, as well as formal submissions and
  5   questioning by Aboriginal individuals are an
  6   essential ingredient in this process as the
  7   projects have the potential to impact people in
  8   both First Nation and Aboriginal communities.  We
  9   are glad that people from these communities had
 10   the interest and passion to attend, listen and
 11   contribute to the process.
 12               We are not going to use the aspects of
 13   our analysis and work products regarding
 14   Aboriginal land use and rights, et cetera, in
 15   these closing statements as that is best heard
 16   from the Aboriginal and First Nation voices and
 17   organizations and communities in these hearings.
 18               Nothing in what we are saying today is
 19   to be taken as a complaint about or disagreement
 20   within the affected community, participant,
 21   presenter or funded participant.  We make this
 22   statement before we begin because there has on
 23   occasion --
 24               MR. ABRA:  Would you slow down,
 25   please.  The court reporter has to take down what
07226
  1   you are saying.
  2               MS. WHELAN ENNS:  We make this
  3   statement before we begin because of the tendency
  4   on occasion in this room for one party to speak
  5   for or about another party.
  6               We also note for the record that last
  7   week, the CEC ruled that only one hour would be
  8   available for each closing statement from a public
  9   participant and that no new evidence would be
 10   accepted.  These decisions created a double
 11   limitation for our closing statements, as the only
 12   way to put content into the record now is to read
 13   it, thereby losing further closing statement time.
 14               Our earlier two-hour time slot, which
 15   we were preparing for, combined with these
 16   decisions, means our legal counsel is not here
 17   today.
 18               Our goals and our participation.  We
 19   have been in stages of participation in the
 20   Wuskwatim Projects Environmental Review since Fall
 21   of 1999, when our office decided to attend monthly
 22   sessions with Manitoba Hydro staff and consultants
 23   at the invitation of the Utility.  These sessions
 24   were in respect to Manitoba Hydro's development
 25   intentions.  So, once a month, one, two or more of
07227
  1   our staff and associates attended these sessions.
  2   The agenda was decided jointly and an ongoing,
  3   often productive, exchange of views and
  4   information occurred.  Access to maps, copies of
  5   presentations and other Manitoba Hydro materials
  6   was quick, professional and open.
  7               Those of us who attended those
  8   sessions hoped that when Manitoba Hydro told us
  9   they wanted to hear ahead of time about
 10   environmental concerns, wanted to hear suggestions
 11   about how to approach the first environmental
 12   assessment for a dam to be built in Manitoba in 20
 13   years and wanted to discuss and hear our questions
 14   and suggestions regarding environmental planning
 15   and management, well, we hoped that they meant it.
 16               We also hoped that some of our
 17   suggestions and identification of improved
 18   approaches would be reflected when we came to an
 19   EIS and environmental proposal for Manitoba Hydro.
 20               Many of the suggestions and
 21   identification of preferred approach from our
 22   staff and associates during those sessions were
 23   based on the need for Manitoba Hydro to grow its
 24   social license to operate.
 25               One other observation about those
07228
  1   sessions.  Early on, we ran into a problem which
  2   has permeated these hearings.  It took some doing
  3   to make sure that we were not in consultations.
  4   Interesting.
  5               Recent exchanges in this room about
  6   whether or not Manitoba Hydro would undertake such
  7   a collaborative discussion or process have been
  8   noted.  It may be necessary to have independent
  9   and external third party professional guides --
 10   professionals rather -- guide the various steps in
 11   public information and consultation which Manitoba
 12   Hydro may be directed to undertake in relation to
 13   Wuskwatim, the Churchill River Diversion or
 14   further and future intended developments and that
 15   was by way of a recommendation.
 16               Then, Manitoba Hydro's response to the
 17   EIS guidelines, their initial failure to
 18   understand how difficult their EIS materials were
 19   to work with, their assumption that while public
 20   participants were funded to undertake technical
 21   work and participate, that we could all just start
 22   the hearings in September last year and finish in
 23   October.
 24               Then there was the ongoing failure to
 25   disclose, dismiss the answers to interrogatories
07229
  1   and deficiencies in the Hydro filings.
  2               So, I have had to assume that our time
  3   was wasted for three years.
  4               I have also had to ask myself this
  5   winter whether the same phenomena repeats itself
  6   when the Utility holds discussions with affected
  7   Manitoba communities and organizations.
  8               Recommendations are interspersed
  9   through this presentation.
 10               Next we would like to recommend that
 11   the CEC, in order to prepare for its report
 12   writing, review the 2002 CEC report coming out of
 13   its public meetings and own recommendations for
 14   the EIS guidelines for the Wuskwatim projects, as
 15   these may well be CEC policy.
 16               To review then the public registry
 17   files regarding presentations and public review
 18   comments about the EIS guidelines, including our
 19   own.  The formal appeal of those guidelines from
 20   our office with detailed analysis which we
 21   undertook twice, once to meet the deadline and
 22   once to put more flesh on the bones, if you will.
 23               Then the public policy framework
 24   referenced in the Wuskwatim EIS guidelines, a
 25   review of it, I think, would benefit you in your
07230
  1   work.  You do not need to have public policy filed
  2   as evidence in these hearings to consider it for
  3   your recommendations.
  4               We were going to file our work
  5   products regarding the EIS's evidence today as it
  6   appears that panel members and CEC experts may not
  7   have had access to them or had access to the full
  8   public registry file contents.
  9               Our participation in the Wuskwatim
 10   hearings has been framed by the following policy
 11   and regulatory elements:  The EIS guidelines and
 12   there are two sets for the Wuskwatim projects.
 13               The ministerial reference letters
 14   about the CEC hearings for the Wuskwatim projects.
 15   We would note here that the Wuskwatim EIS
 16   reference letter is best interpreted widely and
 17   inclusively in the way that the CEC has indicated
 18   it will interpret the EIS guidelines when it
 19   reports on these hearings.
 20               The public notice regarding the
 21   Wuskwatim hearings and our public interest work in
 22   respect to decision-making for Crown lands and
 23   waters, especially for protected areas
 24   establishment.  Protected lands, of course, also
 25   significantly increase the likelihood of healthy
07231
  1   habitat for species and the sustainability for
  2   ecosystem and ecological services, not to mention
  3   that they protect carbon stocks and absorb
  4   emissions.
  5               Then there is the provisional order
  6   regarding participant assistant funding and our
  7   responsibility as the only environmental and
  8   conservation organization in Manitoba with
  9   participant funding or the capacity to attempt to
 10   participate throughout an unpredictable and
 11   unprecedented hearing process.
 12               The public policy for Manitoba and
 13   Canada as it pertains to the environmental
 14   proposal, the justification needs for and
 15   alternatives to and EIS filings and EIS guidelines
 16   for the Wuskwatim projects.  The standard and
 17   public expectations then when government is
 18   essentially licensing itself.  Access to
 19   information is a priority for any public review or
 20   set of hearings and the Manitoba/Canada
 21   Environmental Assessment Cooperative Agreement.
 22               That was a little lengthy, so
 23   basically that is what we have tried to identify
 24   and stick with in framing our participation in
 25   these proceedings.
07232
  1               Our original application for
  2   participation in these hearings then did not
  3   anticipate -- and this applies to all public
  4   participants who applied for funds in 2002 -- did
  5   not anticipate the amalgamation of the Public
  6   Utilities Board on the CEC hearings.  Decisions to
  7   have interrogatories, which have never been done
  8   before in a CEC hearing.  The Manitoba Hydro
  9   JNFAAT review or some of the failures to disclose
 10   information or the insufficient time in the
 11   hearings for EIS questions and environmental
 12   content.
 13               It should probably be stated clearly
 14   here that we, or any affected community or
 15   environmental participant, did not ask for a
 16   combined PUB and CEC hearings.  Nor did any of the
 17   above ask for interrogatories.  Nor was our
 18   opinion requested about these elements of the
 19   Wuskwatim/CEC process.  We will leave it to the
 20   experts and the CEC panel to consider how we got
 21   from a CEC hearing to here and how we will return
 22   to CEC hearings.
 23               The goals for our participation in the
 24   Wuskwatim hearings are ones we have tried to keep
 25   before us to the best of our ability.  They
07233
  1   include providing the CEC panel and participants
  2   access to new and independent information and
  3   outside experts.
  4               They include maintaining access to
  5   information during the lead up to and during the
  6   hearings and maintaining the focus on public
  7   policy commitments and the public policy framework
  8   relevant in the review of the Wuskwatim projects.
  9               They include also providing CEC and
 10   the public an alternative or different perspective
 11   on a variety of issues related to both the EIS and
 12   JNFAAT filings.
 13               Overall then, of course, we have been
 14   working to maintain a focus on aspects that are
 15   most important in our public interest work,
 16   including protected areas, species and habitat
 17   protection and climate change, et cetera.
 18               Wuskwatim phenomena.  I think I
 19   remember a -- well, several months ago talking to
 20   Ed Wojczynski on the phone about how we have to
 21   have Wuskwatim jokes because of what the
 22   incredible workload has been for everyone
 23   involved.  We still feel that way in our office
 24   and we have also found ourselves identifying the
 25   Wuskwatim phenomena.  They have shaped, if you
07234
  1   will, the 14-month Wuskwatim/CEC experience for
  2   all involved.  I am going to identify these for
  3   the record.
  4               We know most of them, but we don't
  5   necessarily think of them as upset or think how
  6   they are affecting all of our efforts in the
  7   Wuskwatim hearings.  This is the first dam or
  8   generation station proposal in Manitoba for 20
  9   years.  It is the first combined Hydro project,
 10   dam and transmission to be reviewed under
 11   Manitoba's Environment Act, Canada's Environmental
 12   Assessment Act and Canada/Manitoba Cooperative
 13   Assessment Agreement.
 14               It is the first such project in
 15   Manitoba with the potential of a First Nation
 16   joint venture ownership.  The winter 2002 public
 17   meetings regarding the EIS guidelines and the
 18   content of the guidelines was held by the CEC and
 19   they were a first.  These are the first ever joint
 20   PUB and CEC hearings.
 21               Wuskwatim is the first project of its
 22   class under the Act with clear Federal
 23   responsibility and no Federal experts providing
 24   explanation to the panel members or the public
 25   during the hearings.
07235
  1               Wuskwatim is the first project of this
  2   magnitude in Manitoba since the constitution of
  3   Canada included specifics regarding Aboriginal
  4   rights.
  5               Wuskwatim is also the first project
  6   where participant funding enabled northern and
  7   affected communities to participate in and attend
  8   the hearings.  Only two environmental
  9   organizations are funded participants.
 10   Presumably, this set of hearings is the longest in
 11   CEC experience, it is probably not, though, in PUB
 12   experience.
 13               This is the first time formal, written
 14   questions called "interrogatories" were part of
 15   advanced steps prior to CEC hearings.  I have
 16   never known of changes in the make up of the CEC
 17   panel itself during the period of time bound by
 18   the reference from the minister.
 19               Probably the same is true about the
 20   Chair of the CEC changing during the reference
 21   period.  It may be also be a first for the Chair
 22   of the panel for review of the significance to not
 23   be the Chair of the CEC.
 24               The email distribution system for
 25   Wuskwatim projects information and filings,
07236
  1   starting with CEC responsibilities in July 2003
  2   has never been undertaken before.
  3               We have a full transcript for the
  4   first time in CEC hearings.  This is standard in
  5   PUB hearings.
  6               We might all agree that the amount of
  7   information, data, documents, presentations,
  8   et cetera is beyond any previous CEC process.
  9               Questions.  Questions about the CEC
 10   proceedings.  Perhaps it would be best to pose the
 11   general question of why certain things happened in
 12   respect to these hearings.
 13               Why do the CEC and the proponents
 14   persist in asking presenters who had clearly
 15   indicated the scope of their expertise and
 16   participation, a variety of questions about other
 17   aspects about the filings?
 18               Why are the records, evidence,
 19   undertaking, rulings, et cetera, for these
 20   hearings in several partial repositories?
 21               Why must the CEC continue to assume
 22   that the Wuskwatim/CEC activity is within the
 23   Manitoba/Canada Environmental Assessment
 24   agreement?  Sorry, left the word "cooperative" out
 25   of there.
07237
  1               Will the CEC follow its rulings and
  2   decisions regarding the Wuskwatim projects when it
  3   writes and files its report?
  4               Why has the CEC not asked for Federal
  5   Government experts?
  6               Why did the panel and the proponents
  7   persist in assuming that everyone participating
  8   had the capacity to read every word of the filings
  9   and transcripts?
 10               Why are the CEC panel and proponents
 11   persisting in assuming that everyone participating
 12   had the capacity to be in the room at all times
 13   over nine weeks?
 14               Why did the proponents feel the need
 15   to increase the intensity of questions for any
 16   presenter who was speaking about Aboriginal
 17   rights?
 18               Why is the CEC discussing its
 19   recommendations and assessments on the transcript
 20   in the room?
 21               Why did the hearing spend most of its
 22   time on two matters:  The justification needs for
 23   an alternatives to, and Aboriginal concerns?
 24               Why has the CEC tolerated the level of
 25   acrimony, disrespect, pre-judgment and loss of
07238
  1   civility in the room?
  2               How will the CEC regain its neutrality
  3   and fairness standard?
  4               We have one recommendation here.  We
  5   would ask, respectfully, that the CEC consider
  6   both the Wuskwatim phenomena and the set of
  7   questions above in considering its own
  8   recommendations.
  9               I am now going to move into a
 10   recommendation section.  It has got a couple of
 11   jokes in it.  You need that at midnight at the
 12   keyboard.  We all do.
 13               So, who has read what?  One of the
 14   areas we were preparing new questions for in the
 15   EIS portion of the hearings referenced the pattern
 16   of questions of presenters during these hearings.
 17   Over and over again, people were asked what they
 18   had read.  We were preparing to ask Hydro what it
 19   had read.  Our concern originating in the three
 20   years plus of sessions with the Utility staff and
 21   consultants rests on whether or not new learning
 22   about assessment and environmental planning
 23   approaches is, in fact, occurring.
 24               So, we were going to ask questions
 25   about who has read what.  The student that I am
07239
  1   thinking about right now, the intern in our
  2   office, who spent weekends preparing for this
  3   aspect of EIS questions is still walking around
  4   with piles and mountains of international
  5   resources and national references that we were
  6   going to use in this aspect of our questions.
  7               We were also concerned and have been
  8   concerned about the ability of the CEC panel to
  9   read the materials for these hearings.  We do have
 10   some comments and recommendations later regarding
 11   staffing and support for the CEC panel.
 12               Recommendation:  The CEC needs to talk
 13   to participants, review the participant funding
 14   program openly, follow more of the recommendations
 15   in Dr. John Sinclair's report, which was
 16   commissioned by the CEC, on this and other aspects
 17   of CEC hearings and Manitoba Conservation staff
 18   would certainly be relevant in such discussions.
 19               Access to information.  I am going to
 20   read several recommendations that result from our
 21   efforts and frustrations regarding access to
 22   hearing documents.  They are not yet inside the
 23   document I am working from today.
 24               We are all aware, I think, of the
 25   problems in the geographic scope of public
07240
  1   participants for these hearings and how far the
  2   hearings in Winnipeg many of them are.  So, this
  3   is a very obvious and straightforward thing.  But,
  4   if you are not a funded public participant and not
  5   on the list served, your access to evidence and
  6   hearing documents is very, very limited.
  7               The public registry, of course, won't
  8   be updated and complete until the hearings are
  9   over and the ability of concerned citizens to get
 10   access to exhibits reduces transparency and I
 11   think probably reflects badly on all of us.
 12               If you are a funded public participant
 13   and not able to be in the room all of the time,
 14   then you have a problem also in this regard.
 15               So, there is a need for a real time
 16   public registry on the web, with all new exhibits
 17   posted regularly.
 18               We would like to acknowledge that
 19   Manitoba Hydro has since the March hearings taken
 20   a fair bit of effort to follow through on requests
 21   in this regard.  That, of course, is an internal
 22   listing.  So, we are, overall, thinking about how
 23   to do this better; how all of us might do this
 24   better.
 25               Some documents have no evidence number
07241
  1   and are not listed in the transcript list.  We
  2   would strongly recommend that the CEC have the
  3   administrative resources that were discussed in
  4   the prehearing conferences last summer.  We were
  5   hopeful that that would happen because we knew it
  6   would reduce the work on the part of all of the
  7   participants and make life easier also for the
  8   CEC.
  9               A staff person is needed to track and
 10   record and describe exhibits, ideally, before the
 11   transcript is posted.  An electronic exhibit list
 12   posted to the web and updated daily would solve a
 13   tremendous amount of problems.  I would suggest in
 14   our office, we are the closest in the province to
 15   having the capacity and know how to actually keep
 16   up with the evidence and the undertakings and we
 17   still have very significant, shall we say, impacts
 18   in our abilities.
 19               Now, we also have some undertakings
 20   that don't appear in the transcript list, but
 21   appear in the CEC electronic list in email.  There
 22   are also documents entered twice under the same
 23   evidence number.  These are examples where we have
 24   reduced -- through the help of one of the grad
 25   students working with us, we have reduced the
07242
  1   number of instances, but the pattern is there and
  2   of course, it can be the most important piece of
  3   paper or document in somebody's work day, the one
  4   that has the wrong number on it.
  5               We would also recommend that reference
  6   materials and evidence no longer be clumped
  7   without their titles, and this is clearly a
  8   function of lack of resources, not intent on the
  9   part of the CEC, but to have, you know, reference
 10   to six documents and a generalized title of what
 11   they are is really a problem.  This has happened
 12   and it has been public participants' documents,
 13   not proponents.
 14               We have some undertakings from
 15   Manitoba Hydro where we were not able to find the
 16   corresponding undertaking when the undertaking was
 17   identified by the CEC in the records in the
 18   transcript.  We are rapidly coming to an obvious
 19   conclusion here in "Recommendation", that there
 20   actually needs to be a list -- an official list
 21   from the CEC of the undertakings and of the
 22   evidence.
 23               It would be best, of course, on the
 24   website and a variety of these things are actually
 25   ideally on the CEC website.
07243
  1               Verbal responses to undertakings are
  2   sometimes identified with the wrong number by the
  3   individual responding to the undertaking and then,
  4   of course, there is a challenge to get to the
  5   correction.  In the meantime, people are using the
  6   transcript.  So that is, again, a symptom and
  7   something that we would really appreciate the
  8   Commission thinking about in future.
  9               Generally speaking, we are
 10   uncomfortable with the lack of clarity on the
 11   verbal responses to undertakings, lack of clarity
 12   in the transcript itself and then the -- well, the
 13   wish we had it on paper and more formally.
 14               So, I am going to stop there and
 15   basically say that we are still hoping and there
 16   is no oversight in this regard.  So, if an
 17   undertaking goes into the transcript described a
 18   certain way, there is no mechanism for a public
 19   participant or the individual in this room who was
 20   asking for that undertaking in the first place, to
 21   clarify that it has not been described
 22   sufficiently clearly.  There is nothing in place
 23   and that, of course, causes going around and going
 24   around.  Thank you.
 25               Going to back to "Recommendations" and
07244
  1   what is in front of me:  Manitoba Hydro and New
  2   Renewables and that is alternative energy.  What
  3   is at stake here involves more than an economic
  4   factor for the province or the province fulfilling
  5   its obligations to indigenous people.
  6               This is also about Manitoba's
  7   leadership role with respect to the Kyoto
  8   Protocol.  It is about Manitoba's efforts to curb
  9   greenhouse gases at home in ways that are most
 10   effective in the province.
 11               Benefits from these efforts and risks
 12   from this business as usual, touch Manitobans well
 13   beyond the geopolitical boundaries of the
 14   province.
 15               Your recommendations will set a
 16   precedence for future reviews of Manitoba Hydro
 17   development intentions in this area, in
 18   particular, as discussed of course in the filings
 19   and hearings.  In the final analysis, the
 20   recommendations from the CEC will have profound
 21   effects, potentially, on North America's
 22   environmental and energy, policy and future.
 23               Since the CEC recommendations may have
 24   some effects on the environment ecosystems and
 25   North America's energy future, please try to think
07245
  1   out of the box and analyse the development
  2   proposal based on the totality of the
  3   circumstances.
  4               A fully informed decision must wrestle
  5   with some challenging issues including, for
  6   example, whether Manitoba will continue to take
  7   the business as usual electricity path where hydro
  8   power is viewed as the only -- or at least main
  9   energy source for generating electricity, where
 10   the project decision will fully embrace and
 11   respect renewable energy source development
 12   opportunities in export markets where new
 13   renewables may well soon satisfy demand for
 14   electricity.  And whether the CEC will have the
 15   wisdom and strength to allow and facilitate an
 16   alternative energy scenario consistent with the
 17   Kyoto Protocol, where the two social and
 18   environmental costs of hydro power are --
 19               THE CHAIRMAN:  Please slow down.
 20               MS. WHELAN ENNS:  I am sorry, I should
 21   be watching you.
 22               MR. SARGEANT:  Speak more slowly and
 23   you won't have to stop.
 24               MS. WHELAN ENNS:  And whether hydro
 25   power as an energy source is no longer allowed to
07246
  1   displace further development of renewable energy
  2   sources.
  3               Recommendation:  We have heard a fair
  4   bit about this from two or three of the presenters
  5   that we brought into the hearings.  Renewable
  6   portfolio standards for renewable energy are being
  7   put in place by three other provinces as we sit
  8   here today.  That means the CEC can recommend that
  9   this step be thoroughly reviewed for Manitoba to
 10   do the same thing.
 11               Another recommendation:  That the CEC
 12   consider approaches for alternative energy
 13   projects and demand-side management, the portfolio
 14   standards mentioned above, that do not assume that
 15   Manitoba Hydro is the only vehicle for delivery.
 16   I have been asking the Utility for over two years
 17   what their preference is.  An independent,
 18   self-operating agency of the Utility or a new
 19   Crown corporation or some other joint public and
 20   private sector entity.
 21               Recommendation:  That Manitoba Hydro
 22   public reporting of a variety of measurements
 23   regarding energy efficiency, demand-side
 24   management and new renewable energy become
 25   transparent and regular.
07247
  1               That the Province of Manitoba put a
  2   long-term energy plan before the public for
  3   discussion before any further environmental
  4   proposals for Hydro developments are filed.  This
  5   is a public and election commitment.
  6               Next header here is, this is the "Dam
  7   and Transmission System" combined.  Our
  8   recommendation is that the CEC find out why three
  9   segments of transmission line are in this
 10   proposal, with one segment that is 120 metres
 11   bipole, as in 120 metres wide.
 12               We have heard a lot of discussion
 13   about this in these hearings and there were a lot
 14   of questions and interrogatories, but I think you
 15   need to find out whether one of these segments is
 16   sufficient to connect the proposed generation
 17   station to the Hydro system.
 18               We would recommend that the CEC in its
 19   report consistently connect the transmission line
 20   impacts with the generation station and its
 21   impacts as a whole.  Many of the EIS issues apply
 22   to the transmission line segments to a greater
 23   degree actually than to the generation station.
 24               Another recommendation:  The CEC find
 25   out why no clear answers on future or intended
07248
  1   projects connected to these three transmission
  2   segments have been provided despite Federal SEIA
  3   requirements in this regard.
  4               EIS guidelines.  Aspects of the EIS
  5   guidelines have not been fulfilled in the
  6   information filings and hearings content.  Our
  7   recommendation is in its report, the CEC needs to
  8   specify whether and how, noting where in the
  9   information load, each element of the EIS
 10   guidelines for the Wuskwatim projects have been
 11   fulfilled by the proponent.
 12               Protected areas.  The EIS guidelines
 13   are clear about protected areas content and
 14   expectations.  This has not been provided by the
 15   proponents, despite our efforts in review
 16   comments, interrogatories, et cetera.  In fact,
 17   this EIS is the weakest I have seen in this regard
 18   in Manitoba in ten years.
 19               Forestry companies in Manitoba have
 20   filed much more complete information than Manitoba
 21   Conservation, or Natural Resources as the
 22   department was previously known, which has then in
 23   fact been audited and commented on, where they in
 24   fact go into the proponent's protected areas
 25   information and respond to it.  That also did not
07249
  1   happen with this proposal.
  2               The CEC EIS questions about protected
  3   areas lack full public policy knowledge about
  4   protected areas.  The EIS guidelines refer to the
  5   lands and water strategy for Manitoba and
  6   Manitoba's action plan for a network of protected
  7   areas is part of that strategy.  It has been
  8   touted nationally by the World Wildlife Fund as
  9   one of the best public government documents in
 10   Canada in terms of protected areas, public policy
 11   statements of both goals and technical methods.
 12   Full information, of course, then is available as
 13   part of the lands and water strategy for Manitoba
 14   and on our website at Manitoba Wildlands.org.
 15               We have never figured out why Manitoba
 16   Hydro and its consultants relied on a 1994
 17   document and never asked, despite my repeat
 18   offers, for a briefing about protected areas.  We
 19   would like to note on the record that I and my
 20   staff spent an afternoon with the CEO of Manitoba
 21   Hydro and the executive -- I guess they are mostly
 22   vice-presidents -- of the utility regarding
 23   protected areas policy and technical matters in
 24   January of 2002.
 25               It gets odder.  This recently finished
07250
  1   publication of the National Round Table on the
  2   Environment and the Economy, the title being,
  3   "Securing Canada's Natural Capital, A Vision for
  4   Nature Conservation in the 21st Century," includes
  5   significant and accurate protected areas content.
  6               There is a list at page 111 of about a
  7   dozen people from Manitoba Hydro who participated
  8   in arriving at this national public policy element
  9   regarding conserving nature, and including
 10   protected areas.  Now, it is a simple question;
 11   why would that be?  Why the confusion on such a
 12   basic set of public policy?
 13               A recommendation then:  The CEC
 14   acquaint itself with Manitoba protected areas
 15   public policy and apply that to its Wuskwatim
 16   recommendations and report.  We would recommend
 17   also that the CEC obtain full information as to
 18   the status of the CEAA guidelines regarding
 19   protected lands and the out-of-court agreement
 20   between WWF Canada and CEAA regarding both current
 21   and future protected areas for any undertaking
 22   where there is Federal responsibility.  Our office
 23   and I -- we are both available to provide any
 24   policy or technical briefing or paper in regards
 25   to this recommendation.  The question I have asked
07251
  1   for years of Manitoba Hydro applies:  Does
  2   Manitoba Hydro, as a public utility, agree with
  3   and support protected areas public policy in
  4   Manitoba?  Will the utility actually support
  5   establishment of protected areas?
  6               Recommendation:  The CEC should
  7   specify Manitoba Hydro's responsibilities in
  8   regards to this and other Manitoba environmental
  9   public policies in respect to the Wuskwatim
 10   projects, and indicate in its report whether
 11   Manitoba, as a public utility, fulfils these
 12   public policy responsibilities.
 13               Definitions:  Another area we intended
 14   to work on during our EIS cross questions was
 15   definitions.  A growing concern emerged during
 16   interrogatories, as the utility did not appear to
 17   know and apply the meaning of a variety of terms
 18   in its environmental planning and policies, such
 19   as the precautionary principle, sustainability,
 20   ecological integrity, conservation biology,
 21   ecological economics, eco-system function, social
 22   license to operate, civil society, edge effects,
 23   externalities.  Those are just examples.
 24               The project's geographic scope, the
 25   recommendation:  The CEC should consider carefully
07252
  1   the situation we have all been in where the
  2   proponent determined, perhaps dictated, the
  3   project area and the project region.  Continued
  4   refusal to provide any comparative geographic
  5   scope has worried us through the entire last year.
  6   What about Manitoba's natural region system and
  7   Canada's eco region system?  Again, forestry
  8   companies in this Province have to provide this
  9   kind of mapping and analysis for environmental
 10   proposal.
 11               The systems, the two are compatible
 12   and based on natural systems and nature's
 13   boundaries.  Manitoba's regional system was
 14   reviewed for three years in the '90s, and updated
 15   effectively and thoroughly.  If the proponent can
 16   simply design the project area with no true
 17   oversight, then it can also aim to design away
 18   impacts or move them elsewhere in the natural
 19   system or the hydro system.
 20               Woodland caribou:  The CEC needs to
 21   consider the national responsibility for this and
 22   other species in relation to SARA, in relation to
 23   the biodiversity convention and Canada's
 24   biodiversity strategy which Manitoba signed.  It
 25   is well established that Woodland caribou are
07253
  1   declining in Canada due to human encroachment on
  2   to their forested range.  For Wuskwatim the
  3   effective loss of caribou habitat will extend well
  4   beyond the infrastructure per se, at least
  5   hundreds of metres, perhaps kilometers from the
  6   boundaries of the reservoir and linear corridors.
  7   Such permanent loss of habitat is predictable
  8   based on similar experiences from Alberta to
  9   Alaska, from Newfoundland to Norway.  The
 10   predictions from the EIS belie this knowledge.
 11   The EIS has borrowed from the low end of the
 12   scale, 100 metres, to generate an estimated
 13   decline of less than one half of one caribou.
 14   This figure is an underestimation and not truly
 15   representative of the literature.  Our best
 16   scientific knowledge indicates that the permanent
 17   transfiguration of the landscape due to
 18   transmission lines, roads, and reservoir will
 19   result in impacts of 250 metres to 5000 metres
 20   beyond the project infrastructure, translating
 21   then into caribou population losses that are
 22   anywhere between 7.5 to 150 times those projected
 23   by the EIS.
 24               Recommendation:  The EIS prediction of
 25   insignificant effects on Woodland caribou is not
07254
  1   upheld by our current understanding of
  2   understanding of impacts on this threatened
  3   species.  This scientific work should be redone by
  4   independent experts.
  5               The full weight of our knowledge about
  6   Woodland caribou has not been applied to the
  7   question of transmission line routing.  The EIS
  8   has relied on a habitat suitability index derived
  9   from a stand level vegetation characteristic set.
 10   Such a spatial scale is not adequate for caribou,
 11   a species that needs to be managed and conserved
 12   at the landscape scale.  The only valid way to
 13   evaluate various transmission routes and their
 14   effects on caribou would be to quantify the number
 15   of home ranges crossed, and the number of calving
 16   sites affected.  Surprisingly, this was not done.
 17               Adaptive management, a recommendation:
 18   The benefits of the potential Wuskwatim projects
 19   to Manitobans, should it proceed, should they
 20   proceed, need to be more than electrical or
 21   economic.  They should include increased
 22   understanding of ecological effects of such
 23   projects on sensitive species like Woodland
 24   caribou.  A sustained independent scientific
 25   effort is necessary well into the operational
07255
  1   phase, and not only to verify predictions of the
  2   EIS but to provide enhanced environmental
  3   understanding, the basis then of adaptive
  4   management.  We would also suggest that any work
  5   of this sort would need to be transparent and
  6   public.
  7               Public policy and regulatory
  8   framework, a recommendation:  We recommend that
  9   the CEC identify the elements in Manitoba and
 10   Canada's public policy framework relevant to the
 11   projects, and indicate whether they have been
 12   identified and responded to.  This is standard
 13   practice for an environmental review for this
 14   class of development.
 15               Much of our work for EIS review and
 16   regulatory comments and interrogatories relates to
 17   the elements of the public policy framework.  So
 18   these products, work products, and our February
 19   2002 comments previously to the CEC may be
 20   relevant.
 21               The environmental management plan:
 22   Conditions to be fulfilled -- this is regarding
 23   conditions to be fulfilled prior to a decision as
 24   whether to issue licenses for the Wuskwatim
 25   projects.
07256
  1               The proponents should not be allowed
  2   to address important or substantive environmental
  3   issues as part of the environmental protection
  4   plan which will be developed subsequent to the
  5   issuing of a license or licenses under the
  6   Environment Act.
  7               You have heard quite a few
  8   recommendations over the last few months in
  9   regards to concerns about the environmental
 10   management plan or plans for these projects.  This
 11   has also has been a fairly constant and I suppose
 12   repetitive area in our review comments, analysis,
 13   interrogatories, and so on.
 14               In too many instances, both in
 15   supplemental filings and interrogatories, the
 16   proponents have deferred answers to questions that
 17   should be addressed within the EIS by simply
 18   stating the issue will be addressed in the
 19   Environmental Management Plans.  We accept that
 20   certain issues are best addressed on the ground,
 21   however, we are concerned that these plans should
 22   not be used to avoid issues that need to be
 23   addressed prior to licensing.
 24               As part of the preparation for
 25   cross-examination on the EIS, we compiled a list
07257
  1   of instances and interrogatories posed by Manitoba
  2   Wildlands and the CEC where responses referred to
  3   these plans.  These are available should the
  4   Commission wish to have a copy.
  5               Recommendation:  That before any
  6   license is granted regarding the Wuskwatim
  7   projects, Manitoba Hydro provide either the
  8   Environmental Management Plan for public review,
  9   or answer in a public manner all EIS questions and
 10   interrogatories which the utility has indicated
 11   are subjects for the Environmental Management
 12   Plans.
 13               Climate change:  Throughout the EIS
 14   there are references to climate change as though
 15   the scientific community was in some large degree
 16   of doubt about the relative role played by solar
 17   and volcanic activity and human caused emissions
 18   of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
 19   The characterization of the issue is simply
 20   misleading.  I would be inclined to add, given the
 21   amount of discussion in this room in March in
 22   particular about climate change, that there has
 23   been some movement, and some learning, and some
 24   improvement in responses from Manitoba Hydro
 25   regarding climate change.  Still, there is
07258
  1   significant misunderstanding in the EIS in its
  2   dismissal of climate change science as having
  3   anything useful to tell us about climate change
  4   impacts on this project.
  5               "Due to the level of uncertainty
  6               relating to the potential effects of
  7               climate change, Manitoba Hydro cannot
  8               project a specific climate change
  9               scenario for the Wuskwatim generation
 10               project area."
 11               The document, Manitoba and Climate
 12   Change, a Primer" co-produced by the Manitoba
 13   Clean Environment Commission and the International
 14   Institute for Sustainable Development in December
 15   2001, anticipates the potential threat to projects
 16   such as Wuskwatim due to climate change impacts.
 17               "The increased summer temperatures,
 18               together with reduced precipitation
 19               and higher evaporation might reduce
 20               the amount of water available for
 21               Manitoba's hydroelectric production."
 22               Recommendations:  Prior to any
 23   licensing decisions, the proponents should be
 24   required to conduct a thorough review of
 25   alternatives to the citizens in Manitoba in making
07259
  1   decisions about the long-term interests of the
  2   Province in respect to climate change.  The EIS
  3   should be updated to include the climate change
  4   impacts on the viability on this set of projects.
  5               Another recommendation:  The Canadian
  6   Environmental Assessment Agency guidelines on
  7   climate change should have been applied to the
  8   EIS.  The CEC also then, as a recommendation,
  9   might clarify for Manitoba Hydro its
 10   responsibilities regarding carbon sequestration
 11   and greenhouse gas emissions inside Manitoba.
 12               The participant funding program:  We
 13   would like to remind the CEC and the participants
 14   and the proponent of a few items related to
 15   perceptions about funded participants in the CEC
 16   Wuskwatim projects hearings.  Although we commend
 17   the decision to fund participants to participate
 18   in the CEC review and hearings, we feel that the
 19   perception persists that this somehow levels the
 20   playing field in terms of capacity.  Participant
 21   funding is finite.  When the schedule changes to
 22   add new elements to the process or the number of
 23   hearing days increases, no additional resources
 24   are forthcoming to increase participants' capacity
 25   to respond to these changes.  This is in contrast
07260
  1   to the proponents' situation where there are a
  2   host of staff and legal advice available, and also
  3   the CEC where there are also resources, sort of,
  4   to accommodate expansion of the hearing process.
  5               To illustrate our point, we would
  6   respectfully inform the CEC that there is a
  7   significant discrepancy in terms of the work that
  8   we were expected to do in order to participate in
  9   the review and the hearings, including two rounds
 10   of interrogatories --
 11               THE CHAIRMAN:  Please slow down.
 12               MS. WHELAN ENNS:  -- including two
 13   rounds of interrogatories that were added to the
 14   schedule after issuing of the funding.  In excess
 15   of $15,000 in time and materials in our
 16   participant funding was spent to access
 17   information and documents because of inadequate
 18   access to information.  This included convincing
 19   the proponents to create a table of contents to
 20   the EIS, continuously having to request documents
 21   and monitor to ensure we were actually receiving
 22   messages and so on.  Again, in excess of another
 23   $15,000 was spent on extra fees, travel and
 24   accommodation for presenters because of scheduling
 25   challenges.
07261
  1               All of the work that I have done as
  2   part of the Wuskwatim review and hearings has been
  3   remunerated at minimum wage, because resources had
  4   to be used to pay contractors and staff and to
  5   fulfil our public responsibility.
  6               These funding realities then do not
  7   include the cost for preparation of
  8   interrogatories to the PAT that were essentially a
  9   waste of time.
 10               Our participation was largely based on
 11   volunteer presenters, contractors working at less
 12   than half their usual fees, pro bono work or
 13   minimum wage work provided by myself, and the
 14   redirection of our participant funding resources
 15   due to challenges again in procedures and
 16   scheduling.
 17               We do have a recommendation.  Never
 18   have the proponents forward participant funds
 19   directly to participants again.  Arms length
 20   administration of funds is essential.  The simple
 21   fact is that the affected communities public
 22   participants and funded public participants had no
 23   increase or flexibility in resources as to
 24   schedule and time line since the EIS was filed and
 25   the time line grew to 14 months.  We are in the
07262
  1   12th month since the CEC activity and participant
  2   funding started.  We recommend then that the
  3   Province and the CEC arrive at a formula which
  4   sets participant funding in relation to the cost,
  5   revenues, and level of government
  6   responsibilities, in direct relation to an
  7   environmental proposal, so the public funding is
  8   understandable and not politicized.  Then that
  9   formula needs to be put in place for the
 10   provisional order variables for significant
 11   changes in expectations for public participants.
 12               We wish to go on the record to
 13   indicate that the per diem paid to Manitobans who
 14   provided their time to commissions and boards such
 15   as the CEC needs to have a significant raise.  The
 16   current per diem, which has not been increased in
 17   decades, simply is not in the public interest.
 18               Recommendation:  The per diem for CEC
 19   panelists to be at least $400 a day, with travel
 20   time, reading, and study time, and meeting time
 21   also remunerated.
 22               Recommendation - for the record,
 23   chuckles in the room -- recommendation:  The CEC
 24   needs to talk to the public participants, review
 25   the participant funding openly, follow more of the
07263
  1   recommendations -- we are getting a little
  2   repetition here, I am sorry -- on Dr. John
  3   Sinclair's report that was commissioned by CEC on
  4   this and other aspects of the hearings, and
  5   Manitoba Conservation staff would be relevant, of
  6   course.
  7               The next time, CEC hearings, one of
  8   our most significant concerns since last fall is
  9   the failure to provide the CEC with additional
 10   staff resources which the Wuskwatim hearings
 11   required.
 12               You may note, or refer back to our
 13   written comments from August 2003, and our
 14   requests and discussion in the transcripts of July
 15   28th.  We recommend then that the CEC be enabled
 16   to provide a stronger, credible, consistent level
 17   of access to information, both in the hearing room
 18   and outside, for participants, funded and
 19   non-funded, and for the public.  We recommend that
 20   the CEC make sure there is a public list of all
 21   evidence and undertakings and the response to
 22   those as an ongoing official source of information
 23   during hearings.  We recommend that the CEC
 24   determine who decides whether an undertaking has
 25   been answered and answered adequately.  It is odd
07264
  1   that it needs to be said, but surely the proponent
  2   does not decide what is relevant information or an
  3   adequate answer to an undertaking.
  4               That the CEC review the transcript
  5   before it is posted so as to avoid having to pull
  6   it down, correct it, and repost with subsequent
  7   problems in access at crucial times.  The Court
  8   Reporters have done a tremendous job, the
  9   specifics though of titles and documents and so on
 10   are often missing.  It is worth noting I think in
 11   the last week of hearings in May, when the
 12   Pimicikamak closing statements were being provided
 13   in the hearing room in the other hotel, that the
 14   transcript had been up and down all week, that the
 15   transcript was significantly delayed that week in
 16   terms of the usual pattern through the previous
 17   weeks of the hearings and there were stretches of
 18   time when it was taken down for corrections.
 19               We would like to suggest then that the
 20   CEC make sure that no further references to
 21   evidence like eight various documents would occur,
 22   and that any unclear, non-named evidence would be
 23   corrected.
 24               Please, cooperate with the Province
 25   and the Federal authorities to make sure that all
07265
  1   documents from each stage of the review and
  2   hearings are available publicly in both electronic
  3   and paper format in one place.  Please always make
  4   public in the hearings room the schedule for the
  5   day, the week, and the next stage of the hearings.
  6   Please keep an up-to-date set of procedures
  7   available on your website and in the hearing room,
  8   including posting decisions and correspondence
  9   regarding the hearings on your website.  Please
 10   allow your scientific experts to ask questions of
 11   presenters and proponents.  Please, let's all, if
 12   you will, work together in terms of identifying
 13   the need for independent and external expert
 14   information, both for the CEC and in hearings.
 15   Please implement an evaluation process for each
 16   set of hearings specific to public participation.
 17   And please, have a clock in the room.
 18               We have obtained -- next header is
 19   consultations, and moving close to being done
 20   actually, if anybody is looking at the time.  We
 21   have obtained a legal opinion regarding the
 22   testimony of Ms. Heather Leonoff in these
 23   hearings.  I am going to highlight a couple of
 24   sections of that legal opinion in my remarks
 25   today.  We, again, realize you're not taking any
07266
  1   evidence and I don't want to use too much time on
  2   this.  But I did ask Woodward & Company to take a
  3   look, because we were not generally understanding
  4   what happened in the room and in the transcript
  5   that day.
  6               "We are of the opinion that Ms.
  7               Leonoff's comments are wrong in law."
  8   This is in reference to the question of whether
  9   the Clean Environment Commission has jurisdiction
 10   to hear submissions on the issue of Aboriginal
 11   consultations required under Section 35 of the
 12   Constitution Act.
 13               "Administrative tribunals like the CEC
 14               have the authority to consider
 15               questions of law and specifically to
 16               consider Charter issues.  While the
 17               CEC may not be quasi judicial, it has
 18               full purview in an administrative law
 19               context to consider Aboriginal rights
 20               issues.  In fact, Aboriginal
 21               participants are entitled to have
 22               their issues reviewed by tribunals as
 23               opposed to proceeding before the
 24               Courts in a lengthy and expensive
 25               process.  The Supreme Court of Canada
07267
  1               has said, 'Canadians should be
  2               entitled to assert the rights and
  3               freedoms that that Constitution
  4               guarantees them in the most accessible
  5               forum available, without the need for
  6               parallel proceedings before the
  7               Courts.  To allow an administrative
  8               tribunal to decide Charter issues does
  9               not undermine the role of the Courts
 10               as final arbiters of the
 11               Constitutionality in Canada.'
 12               It is important to note that
 13               administrative tribunal is a generic
 14               term, applies to boards, commissions,
 15               agencies or tribunals.  The term is of
 16               course used interchangeably.
 17   
 18               Section 6 and 7 of the Environment Act
 19               specifically grant the Clean
 20               Environment Commission the power to
 21               mediate disputes, interpret
 22               environmental legislation and submit
 23               reports to the Minister on the policy,
 24               legislation and regulations it has
 25               reviewed.  When we examine the
07268
  1               legislative scheme, clearly these
  2               provisions indicate that the
  3               Legislature intended to grant the CEC
  4               the power to consider questions of
  5               law.  Therefore, it stands that it has
  6               jurisdiction to consider
  7               Constitutional issues.  It is
  8               undisputed in the Supreme Court of
  9               Canada judgments that the Constitution
 10               as the supreme law must be respected
 11               by an administrative tribunal that is
 12               called to interpret law.
 13               With respect to Aboriginal rights
 14               issues, the Supreme Court has stated
 15               that 'the Province has legislative
 16               competence to endow an administrative
 17               tribunal with the capacity to consider
 18               a question of Aboriginal rights in the
 19               course of carrying out its valid
 20               Provincial mandate.  The CEC's mandate
 21               specifically grants it authority to
 22               consider issues which are culturally
 23               sensitive with respect to the
 24               Wuskwatim projects.  Aboriginal and
 25               Treaty rights are extremely culturally
07269
  1               sensitive and are therefore within the
  2               purview of the CEC mandate.  It
  3               appears that Ms. Leonoff is suggesting
  4               that Aboriginal rights issues,
  5               particularly those relating to section
  6               35 consultation should be worked out
  7               in the Courts.  In our view,
  8               encouraging litigation as the primary
  9               means of addressing First Nations
 10               concerns and Aboriginal concerns is
 11               neither responsible nor advisable.
 12               Litigation is both time consuming and
 13               expensive.  As CEC panelist Robert
 14               Mayer noted, 'that process I
 15               understand is to toddle off to Court,
 16               which some of us believe turn out to
 17               be exceedingly complex and expensive.'
 18               It would appear that the CEC hearings
 19               would provide an ideal forum for
 20               Manitoba Conservation to address
 21               Section 35 consultation issues, as the
 22               process is open to the public and far
 23               less expensive than court
 24               proceedings."
 25               I am going to just move quickly
07270
  1   through a couple of more quotes and get back to
  2   the main document in front of me.
  3               "Ms. Leonoff has failed to recognize
  4               that while there are no definitive
  5               cases articulating Aboriginal rights
  6               in Manitoba, there are several Supreme
  7               Court of Canada cases outlining the
  8               tests and requirements for
  9               extinguishment and infringement of
 10               Aboriginal rights.  Therefore, we have
 11               mechanisms in place to answer
 12               questions about existing Aboriginal
 13               rights.  In addition, we know that
 14               Manitoba First Nations are guaranteed
 15               certain treaty rights.  Although each
 16               treaty is in itself unique, Treaties
 17               3, 4 and 5 guarantee that First
 18               Nations shall have the right to pursue
 19               their avocation of hunting and fishing
 20               throughout the tract surrendered,
 21               subject to regulations made from time
 22               to time by the Government of Canada.
 23               Furthermore as Chief Justice said in
 24               Simon and reaffirmed in Sioui,
 25               Treaties and statutes relating to
07271
  1               Indians should be liberally construed
  2               and uncertainties resolved in favour
  3               of First Nations.  It is important to
  4               note that the surviving substance of
  5               the Treaty is not a literal promise
  6               but a Treaty right to continue to
  7               obtain necessaries through hunting and
  8               fishing by trading the products of
  9               those activities subject to
 10               restrictions that can be justified."
 11   
 12   Then a recommendation or two and a conclusion on
 13   this -- sorry, I read that already.
 14   
 15               "Not only do Ms. Leonoff's legal
 16               opinions have some significant gaps,
 17               but her testimony was actually legal
 18               argument and had no place being put
 19               before the CEC under the auspices of a
 20               witness presenting.  It is our
 21               submission that the CEC should
 22               disregard her presentation entirely.
 23               The CEC has the opportunity to address
 24               the subject that is of primary
 25               importance and significance to a large
07272
  1               majority of the public participants."
  2   So that would be our recommendation, that you
  3   seriously consider how you're going to then
  4   address this issue that has clearly been of
  5   primary importance.  Federal responsibility,
  6   cooperative environmental assessment:
  7   Environmental organizations and other voices
  8   requested and asked for a joint Federal/Provincial
  9   environmental panel to review the Wuskwatim
 10   projects.  Many of the people in this room will
 11   know that those requests and those voices have
 12   been pretty consistent since late 2001 or early
 13   2002.  We are of the opinion today that that
 14   approach would have been better for all parties to
 15   these hearings.
 16               We would like to remind the CEC and
 17   all present that there are still several steps to
 18   come in the Wuskwatim regulatory process.  The
 19   comprehensive study for the Wuskwatim generation
 20   station by the Department of Fishery and Ocean
 21   under CEAA has not yet been submitted.  Public
 22   review then and comment on the comprehensive study
 23   will also take place.  The Federal Minister of the
 24   Environment may still refer the generation station
 25   project to a Federal Panel following the
07273
  1   submission of the comprehensive study, which will
  2   include public comments.  The National Energy
  3   Board will need to approve energy export permits
  4   for this, and other Manitoba Hydro permits for
  5   export in the same, if you will, time line.  And
  6   water power license for Wuskwatim is not yet in
  7   place as a permanent license.  Various other water
  8   power licenses for Manitoba Hydro generation
  9   stations are seemingly interim.  I think that's
 10   what we found out here.
 11               All public participants in the CEC
 12   have been informed that the Canada/Manitoba
 13   Cooperative Environment Assessment Agreement is
 14   the basis for this review and then the CEC
 15   hearings, and that the project administration team
 16   has oversight under that cooperative agreement.
 17               So, in closing, I would like to refer
 18   to two pieces of correspondence.  First there is a
 19   letter that we sent to the Chair of the CEC, Mr.
 20   Terry Sargeant on May 5th in which we asked,
 21               "Whether the Clean Environment
 22               Commission had confirmed independently
 23               whether the assessment of the
 24               Wuskwatim projects has in fact been
 25               conducted according to the terms of
07274
  1               the Canada/Manitoba agreement on
  2               environmental assessment cooperation."
  3   In my own defence, I realize I am not always
  4   getting the words in the correct order for the
  5   name of this agreement.
  6               We posed this question to Mr. Sargeant
  7   because the public participants were informed
  8   repeatedly, including in CEC proceedings, that the
  9   assessment of the projects was being undertaken
 10   consistent with that agreement.  We raise this
 11   matter because we have not received a response yet
 12   from Mr. Sargeant, and because we have received
 13   correspondence from the Honourable David Anderson,
 14   Federal Minister of the Environment, which is
 15   dated May 21, 2004, in which he states, and I
 16   quote,
 17               "Under the Canada/Manitoba Agreement
 18               on Environmental Assessment
 19               Cooperation, Federal officials
 20               responsible for completing the Federal
 21               environmental assessment have been
 22               cooperating through Manitoba's
 23               assessment and licensing process.  I
 24               understand that the Clean Environment
 25               Commission's interrogatories and
07275
  1               hearings referenced in your letter are
  2               part of the Provincial process.
  3               However, as the projects have not been
  4               referred to a review panel under the
  5               Canadian Environmental Assessment Act,
  6               the hearings currently being conducted
  7               by the Clean Environment Commission
  8               are not part of the cooperative
  9               environmental assessment."
 10               The Minister goes on to state, and I
 11   quote,
 12               "Following a thorough review of the
 13               comprehensive study report and
 14               comments received from the public, I
 15               will make a determination as whether
 16               to refer the Wuskwatim generation
 17               project to a review panel under
 18               section 29 of the Act."
 19               The reason for making the reference to
 20   correspondence at a closing, or close to closing
 21   in these remarks, is because it has been pretty
 22   hard to tell, if you are a public participant, it
 23   has been pretty hard to tell where you are and
 24   where we all are procedurally at different points
 25   over the last two years.  Of course, given that
07276
  1   there was considerable hope of being inside that
  2   agreement fully, starting about two years ago, we
  3   felt that it was necessary to put some of this
  4   into the record.  The letter from May 21st from
  5   Minister Anderson is in response to our letter of
  6   appeal, which again some of the parties and people
  7   in the room have seen, because we have again
  8   consistently for two years been seeking Federal
  9   responsibility, Federal voice, Federal experts in
 10   these proceedings.
 11               I wanted to, if I could, just repeat
 12   one thing that may have gone by some of us in all
 13   those words.  It is, I think, very helpful for
 14   environmental licensing as a whole in Manitoba, to
 15   proponents in this proposal, in these hearings, to
 16   Manitoba Conservation, to public participants, to
 17   environmentalists, to the communities in the
 18   north, if the public policy and regulatory
 19   framework is really made very, very clear by the
 20   CEC in its report.
 21               I did make the quick comment several
 22   pages back that you do not need to receive as
 23   evidence, public policy commitments, documents, as
 24   evidence in this room for them to be an
 25   ingredient.  I think you will find that the door
07277
  1   is open and quite clear in the EIS guidelines for
  2   you to be very, very specific.
  3               There are a couple of recent examples
  4   of that; certainly the CEAA guidelines in respect
  5   to climate change are an example.  There are also
  6   CEAA guidelines in respect to environmental
  7   assessment and traditional knowledge.  There are
  8   various aspects to the Federal Species at Risk Act
  9   that are clearly part of both the public policy
 10   and regulatory framework in respect to
 11   environmental assessment in Manitoba.
 12               I wanted to also express my
 13   disappointment that the most recent publication
 14   from the Nelson House First Nation co-proponent
 15   has not been provided.  My recollection is that in
 16   April we went through some steps that were needed
 17   in this room so that the documents regarding the
 18   statement of understandings were available to
 19   everyone.  If I missed it, my apologies.  I am
 20   relying on the people around me who are still
 21   trying to keep up on the evidence and
 22   undertakings.
 23               I am about four or five minutes over.
 24   Thank you.
 25               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you very much.
07278
  1   These are lengthy sessions, so perhaps, before we
  2   begin and we interrupt, maybe we will have a short
  3   break.
  4               MR. BENOIT:  It is a short
  5   presentation.
  6               THE CHAIRMAN:  All right.  Thank you.
  7               Just before you begin, Mr. Benoit, you
  8   understand this is a closing statement?
  9               MR. BENOIT:  Yes.
 10               THE CHAIRMAN:  Okay.
 11               MR. BENOIT:  Mr. Chair --
 12               THE CHAIRMAN:  Is this Mr. Al Benoit?
 13               MR. BENOIT:  No, Mr. Dan Benoit.
 14               THE CHAIRMAN:  Dan Benoit, sorry.  You
 15   may proceed.
 16               MR. BENOIT:  Thank you.  Good
 17   afternoon, Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Elders and
 18   those in attendance today.  For the record, my
 19   name is Dan Benoit.  I am the natural resource
 20   coordinator at the MMF.  What I gave to the CEC
 21   today was some undertakings that you had asked
 22   for, as well as a letter that was sent out to
 23   Manitoba Hydro in response to the letter that they
 24   submitted to the CEC last Tuesday, or one week ago
 25   last Tuesday.
07279
  1               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.
  2               MR. BENOIT:  The MMF submission today
  3   will be short, as we rely on our previous
  4   submissions and we don't want to repeat them
  5   today.
  6               There has still been no meaningful
  7   consultation or offer from anyone.  Manitoba Hydro
  8   and NCN have tabled a letter that they have sent
  9   to us setting out their invitation to meet.  I
 10   have submitted a copy of our response, which I ask
 11   to be made an exhibit.
 12               I wish to take this opportunity to
 13   read a portion of the letter into the record,
 14   particularly we identify four elements and five
 15   components of proper consultations.
 16               The letter before you is to Mr.
 17   Wojczynski and Mr. Thomas.
 18               "The MMF remains of the opinion that
 19               consultation with respect to projects
 20               such as proposed Wuskwatim generation
 21               and transmission projects..."
 22               THE CHAIRMAN:  Just a second, Mr.
 23   Benoit.  I understand that Mr. Grewar -- there is
 24   only enough to make five additional copies of
 25   this.
07280
  1               MR. BENOIT:  Shall I wait?
  2               MR. GREWAR:  Yes.
  3               THE CHAIRMAN:  Hold on for a few
  4   seconds.
  5               MR. BENOIT:  No problem.
  6               MR. BEDFORD:  I have an objection.
  7               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Bedford?
  8               MR. BEDFORD:  Mr. Chairman, we would
  9   like you to know that we have never seen the
 10   letter.  So if it is addressed to Mr. Wojczynski
 11   and Mr. Thomas, it would be useful that they at
 12   least receive the letter.
 13               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Grewar will make
 14   copies.
 15               MR. BENOIT:  Just for the record, Mr.
 16   Chair, the letter that was submitted to you as
 17   well two weeks ago was never seen by us at the
 18   time that Hydro presented it to the Commission.
 19               THE CHAIRMAN:  Proceed, Mr. Benoit.
 20               MR. BENOIT:  Okay.  The MMF remains of
 21   the opinion that consultation with respect to --
 22               THE CHAIRMAN:  Sorry, just a minute.
 23   You have no copies yet?
 24               MR. BEDFORD:  If you could bear with
 25   us, we would like to read the letter.  If Mr.
07281
  1   Benoit could be patient, we would like to read the
  2   letter.
  3               THE CHAIRMAN:  Okay.  We will take a
  4   short break, ten minute break.
  5   
  6               (HEARING RECESSED AT 2:29 AND
  7               RECONVENED AT 2:29 P.M.)
  8   
  9               THE CHAIRMAN:  Ladies and gentlemen,
 10   are we all back?  Mr. Bedford?
 11               MR. BEDFORD:  Firstly, thank you for
 12   allowing us an opportunity to read the letter.  My
 13   apologies to Mr. Benoit for having interrupted his
 14   presentation, but I will quickly concede that it
 15   was somewhat extraordinary to hand us a letter
 16   that is dated today's date that responds to
 17   something that we did send three weeks ago.  I am
 18   happy to inform Mr. Benoit that he is somewhat
 19   mistaken.  We did not file the letter we sent to
 20   the Manitoba Metis Federation in advance or on the
 21   same day of the organization having received the
 22   letter.  It was received four days before we
 23   brought it forward at the Commission.
 24               Having said that, and now having had
 25   the opportunity to read the letter, I think we can
07282
  1   proceed.  It is evident, having read it, it is a
  2   response to a letter that the proponent sent, and
  3   in substance appears to welcome the opportunity to
  4   go forward with some consultations with the
  5   proponents.  I am instructed on behalf of my
  6   client, and the instructions are shared by my
  7   colleague, Ms. Matthews Lemieux, from her client,
  8   the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, that we would
  9   like the record to show, notwithstanding that we
 10   are going to hear about the letter momentarily,
 11   that we do object to this procedure of bringing
 12   forward in final argument a new document which you
 13   have been invited to tender as an exhibit.  I
 14   somewhat anticipate that you are going to allow
 15   that, but I would encourage you, given that this
 16   is only the second of a number of final arguments,
 17   that you give some thought hereafter to perhaps
 18   exercising some discipline, or you may find a
 19   number of other parties anxious to bring forward
 20   new documents in final argument that they wish to
 21   tender as new exhibits.
 22               Thank you.  And again, Mr. Benoit, my
 23   apologies for having had to interrupt you.  As I
 24   said, I find the circumstances were quite
 25   extraordinary.
07283
  1               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you, Mr. Bedford.
  2   The Commission has not chosen at this point in
  3   time to file this as an exhibit.  But we cannot
  4   prevent Mr. Benoit, if he so chooses, to make that
  5   part of his closing statement.
  6               I cannot speak as a decision of the
  7   panel, but having briefly caucused with one or
  8   two, it may be that we will not accept this as an
  9   exhibit.  It is up to Mr. Benoit to make his
 10   presentation, and if he chooses to make that part
 11   of that letter, of his statement, we cannot
 12   prevent that.
 13               Proceed, Mr. Benoit.
 14               MR. BENOIT:  Just a point of
 15   clarification, Mr. Chair.  So, you said that this
 16   will not be allowed to be entered as an exhibit;
 17   correct?
 18               THE CHAIRMAN:  I said we have not made
 19   a determination on that, but it may be that we
 20   choose not to enter it as an exhibit.
 21               MR. BENOIT:  Okay.
 22               THE CHAIRMAN:  It is your opportunity
 23   now to make your closing statement, and we cannot
 24   dictate to you what you choose to use as your
 25   closing statement.
07284
  1               MR. BENOIT:  I have been directed to
  2   have this letter entered into exhibit and,
  3   therefore, if it is the possibility that it might
  4   not get entered, it would probably be best that I
  5   read it into the record as part of my final
  6   statement here.
  7               The letter is to Mr. Ed Wojczynski and
  8   William Thomas, re the Wuskwatim Generation and
  9   Transmission projects.
 10               "Dear sirs:  We are in receipt of your
 11               letter of May 19, 2004.  We agree that
 12               it is in the best interest of all
 13               parties to focus on the future and not
 14               to dwell unnecessarily on past
 15               failures.  We are pleased that
 16               Manitoba Hydro and NCN are now
 17               committed to meeting with the Manitoba
 18               Metis Federation as the representative
 19               of the Metis Nation within Manitoba,
 20               and more specifically, as the
 21               representative of the Metis people in
 22               the project area.  We agree that there
 23               is a need to discuss and reach
 24               consensus on an appropriate process
 25               and reasonable costs.  The MMF is also
07285
  1               committed to engaging in an
  2               appropriately funded consultation
  3               process that will lead to a beneficial
  4               future for all Metis who will be
  5               affected by these projects.
  6               The MMF remains of the opinion that
  7               consultation with respect to the
  8               projects such as the proposed
  9               Wuskwatim Generation and Transmission
 10               projects must contain four elements.
 11               First, the proponents must fully
 12               inform MMF of the development.
 13               Second, the proponents must work with
 14               the MMF to arrive at a fully informed
 15               understanding of the current land and
 16               resource use of the Metis people in
 17               the project area.  Third, both the
 18               proponent and the MMF must work
 19               together to understand how the
 20               proposed projects will affect the
 21               Metis culture, way of life, and
 22               economy.  Fourth, both parties must
 23               work to accommodate the needs,
 24               interests, rights and culture of the
 25               Metis, and thereby arrive at an
07286
  1               appropriate mitigation and
  2               compensation measures.  The goal of
  3               such accommodation is to ensure that
  4               the Metis people in the project area
  5               not only are not damaged by the
  6               proposed projects, but that they may
  7               in fact benefit from the development.
  8               In your letter you state that you are
  9               committed to having appropriate staff
 10               and advisers meet with representatives
 11               of the MMF to review the project, the
 12               activities of the proponents to date,
 13               and the analysis arising from the
 14               investigations and consultations.  You
 15               go on to say that you hope to receive
 16               from the MMF the perspectives of its
 17               membership with respect to the
 18               pathways of effects and impacts of the
 19               Wuskwatim Generation and Transmission
 20               projects on the activities and
 21               cultures of the Metis people.
 22               While we are certainly willing to
 23               discuss a process, we must make it
 24               clear at the outset that the MMF will
 25               only participate in a full and
07287
  1               meaningful consultation process.  Such
  2               consultation process can only happen
  3               if both parties are in the possession
  4               of the necessary information and
  5               facts.  It should be clearly
  6               understood that the MMF is not now in
  7               possession of all the information that
  8               is required for such a process.  We
  9               have never had the opportunity to
 10               conduct the kinds of studies necessary
 11               to fully understand the effects your
 12               proposed projects or your past
 13               projects have had or may have on our
 14               people.
 15               Therefore, it is not simply a matter
 16               of sitting down and talking.  Manitoba
 17               Hydro must deal with the fact that it
 18               has been funding First Nations and
 19               others with many millions of dollars
 20               for 30 to 40 years to develop just
 21               such information, and has done
 22               absolutely nothing for the Metis.
 23               This is most unfortunate because it
 24               means that the first substantive
 25               requirement in the consultation
07288
  1               process, after agreeing on the details
  2               of the funded process, is to gather
  3               information.  This is likely going to
  4               take some time, expertise, and money,
  5               none of which at present is available
  6               to the MMF.
  7               Therefore, while we remain committed
  8               to participating in the consultation
  9               process, we wish to make it clear that
 10               there is a great deal of catch up work
 11               to be done.  Having said that, we note
 12               that an immediate beginning on such an
 13               information gathering process will be
 14               in everyone's best interest.  Indeed,
 15               we look forward to working with you to
 16               enable us to undertake such studies
 17               for the MMF to better understand our
 18               people's needs and better enable us to
 19               establish a working relationship with
 20               NCN and Hydro for the future.
 21               For your assistance, we have taken the
 22               opportunity to put down the basic
 23               components of what we believe to be an
 24               appropriate consultation process as
 25               follows:
07289
  1               1.  Discussions and consensus to
  2               develop a process of consultation and
  3               accommodation.
  4               2.  Full funding for the consultation
  5               and accommodation process.
  6               3.  Thorough investigation and study
  7               into the lands and resource use,
  8               economy, culture, and way of life of
  9               the Metis people in the project
 10               affected area, which may necessitate
 11               studies by independent experts.
 12               4.  Announce by all parties of the
 13               studies generated in number 3 with a
 14               view to understanding how the proposed
 15               projects will affect Metis culture,
 16               economy, way of life, and land and
 17               resource use.
 18               5.  A consensus with respect to
 19               accommodation which will include
 20               mitigation and compensation measures
 21               intended to minimize the impacts of
 22               the projects on Metis including, but
 23               not limited to, an impacts and
 24               benefits agreement.
 25               We thank you for your letter and look
07290
  1               forward to entering into a full and
  2               meaningful consultation process with
  3               NCN and Manitoba Hydro."
  4   It is signed by Al Benoit, senior policy advisor.
  5               The next point I would like to make is
  6   that the Metis have a distinct culture, way of
  7   life and economy, thus the need for separate and
  8   full consultation to determine the unique ways
  9   that the Metis will be affected.
 10               There are two core groups in the area
 11   affected by the projects, Indians for the
 12   constitution purpose or the legal purpose, and
 13   Metis, both Aboriginal peoples whose cultures are
 14   protected under section 35 of the Constitution.
 15   Each group has a distinct culture, economy, and
 16   way of life.  However, because of the factors that
 17   Jean Teillet had listed in her testimony with
 18   respect to the close relationship between the
 19   Metis and the Indians, there is a considerable
 20   overlap on the edges of these groups.  This
 21   overlap cannot be used to deny the existence of
 22   the core group of Metis, or the proponents'
 23   responsibilities with respect to consultation with
 24   the core group of Metis.
 25               The MMF reiterates its main
07291
  1   submissions, that the Metis are a distinct culture
  2   from Indians, that they have their own unique way
  3   of life, economy, and culture.  We remind you of
  4   our earlier reference to the evidence from the
  5   book Canadian Forest Service that showed the Metis
  6   use of plants in a way that is separate and
  7   distinct from Indians, which I submitted here
  8   today, there are 14 plants as an example.
  9               This is but one small sample of how
 10   consultation and study could show, or would show
 11   the distinct Metis culture.  Unfortunately, none
 12   of this had been done, so we have insufficient
 13   information with respect to the effects of this
 14   project on the Metis culture.
 15               In closing, the MMF says quite simply,
 16   the EIS is deficient with respect to its effects
 17   on the Metis.  We also say that the CEC has
 18   insufficient information to make any findings with
 19   respect to the effects of these projects on the
 20   Metis culture.  This lack of evidence and the
 21   deficiencies in the EIS must form part of your
 22   recommendations and reports to the Ministers.
 23               We ask that you recommend to the
 24   Ministers this project not proceed until full
 25   consultation with the MMF has been completed,
07292
  1   including reasonable accommodation and mitigation.
  2               We have set out the details of what
  3   full consultation means in the letter I have just
  4   read into evidence.  That is what we are asking
  5   you recommend to the Minister.
  6               We began our last presentation with
  7   the phrase "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme
  8   chose."  We say that this CEC can make meaningful
  9   change here.  You can reverse Hydro's deplorable
 10   40 year trail of destruction.  But it will take
 11   some courage.  We are sure that you have such
 12   courage and we ask that you put it to work and
 13   really change things.  We ask you to do the right
 14   thing.  Thank you.
 15               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you, Mr. Benoit.
 16   Just as a matter of clarification, you state as
 17   part of your statement that you require the
 18   gathering of information to enable us to undertake
 19   studies for the MMF to better understand its
 20   people's needs, and better establish a working
 21   relationship with NCN and Hydro for the future.
 22   Am I quoting correctly when I quote from your
 23   application for funding assistance when I read the
 24   purpose of the requested funds and the purpose for
 25   which the funds were granted, which was the
07293
  1   gathering and reporting of potential
  2   environmental, social and economic impacts of the
  3   proposed Wuskwatim project on Metis people living
  4   and working within the development area?  Am I
  5   missing something?
  6               MR. BENOIT:  No.  Our initial
  7   submission was for a sum of money that was in
  8   excess of the 80,000 that we actually did, or had
  9   received.  And therefore, at that time when we
 10   received it, we had to pare down what was expected
 11   as far as consultations and how much we could
 12   actually scratch -- or how much in depth we could
 13   actually answer those questions.  So, we have, at
 14   a very superficial level, answered those
 15   questions.  Our people have told us they will be
 16   affected and we put all that information in the
 17   documents that we gave in our presentation.  But
 18   we are talking the difference between a full-blown
 19   assessment that should have been done by Hydro and
 20   NCN versus what we are able to do on the paltry
 21   funds that we received to go and physically go out
 22   and talk to our people, which much of that was
 23   spent just on that.
 24               THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Mayer.
 25               MR. MAYER:  I didn't quite catch your
07294
  1   last comment about the book.  I am assuming you
  2   were referring to the book that was presented, I
  3   think to me as much as to the Commission, on
  4   Aboriginal plant use in Canada's northwest boreal
  5   forest?
  6               MR. BENOIT:  Correct.
  7               MR. MAYER:  Did you have the
  8   opportunity to hear the re-examination of the
  9   Hydro panel this morning?
 10               MR. BENOIT:  No, I did not.
 11               MR. MAYER:  Were you aware one of --
 12   coauthors of that book is from Nelson House and
 13   worked with Jackie Krindle, the EIS plant
 14   specialist, in collecting the vegetation and
 15   traditional knowledge used in the EIS?
 16               MR. BENOIT:  No, I was not aware of
 17   that.
 18               MR. MAYER:  Do you find that
 19   interesting?
 20               MR. BENOIT:  Somewhat.
 21               MR. MAYER:  We did.  Thank you.
 22               THE CHAIRMAN:  Thank you.  Thank you
 23   very much.
 24               MR. BENOIT:  Okay.
 25               THE CHAIRMAN:  Yes, we are finished,
07295
  1   Mr. Benoit.  Thank you very much.
  2               Ladies and gentlemen, this completes
  3   the business scheduled for today.  We will convene
  4   again tomorrow at 9:00 o'clock.  Thank you.
  5   
  6               (ADJOURNED AT 2:58 P.M.)
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