QNW: Reforming the National Energy Board: What Role Will Indigenous Women Play?

Press Release

Introduction

This submission is presented by Quebec Native Women Inc. (QNW) to the National Energy Board Modernization Expert Panel. The Expert Panel has been tasked by the Minister of Natural Resources Canada to study the current structure, role and mandate of the National Energy Board (NEB) under the National Energy Board Act. Based on the comments and recommendations received from indigenous peoples, amongst others, the Expert Panel will make recommendations to the Government of Canada on how to modernize the NEB, including through possible legislative changes.

QNW represents Quebec’s First Nations women. Our membership includes women from the 11 indigenous nations in Quebec, i.e. Abenaki, Algonquin, Atikamekw, Eeyou, Huron-Wendat, Innu, Maliseet, Mig’maq, Mohawk and Naskapi. Some of our members living in urban areas come from elsewhere in Canada. As a member of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), QNW is also represented on the Assembly of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL), the First Nations Human Resources Development Commission of Quebec, and several other Native and non-Native commissions and committees.

QNW is encouraged by the Government of Canada’s efforts and the interest expressed by the Expert Panel to “speak to organizations and groups representing the interests of Indigenous women that can provide a gender-based lens on how the NEB can be modernized.”¹ Indeed, restoring the nation-to-nation relationship involves achieving parity between and among the various stakeholders. For this to be attained, the next generation of indigenous rights and the regulatory mechanisms designed to protect them must therefore take into explicit consideration the perspective of indigenous women.

This submission is designed to make the Expert Panel aware of the realities experienced by indigenous women as an intersectional group², with respect to the specific impacts and risks that the large-scale projects regulated by the NEB may represent for them. It is intended to serve as a reminder that indigenous women are subjected to specific and disproportionate impacts from large-scale energy development projects and pipelines that have an irremediable impact on their land and resources. These projects also contribute to climate change, to which indigenous women, and indigenous peoples more generally, are more vulnerable than the rest of the population. What makes this reality all the more worrisome is that indigenous women are those who gain the least from the economic benefits of such projects within their communities.

Currently, NEB regulations, policies and guidance notes contain no requirement as to the need to consider and evaluate the concerns of indigenous women and the specific and disproportionate impacts suffered by them.³ The NEB’s processes and decisions do not take this reality into account.⁴ Indeed, while a request from NWAC and Pauktuutit led to the inclusion of directions on how to conduct gender-based analysis as part of consultations with indigenous communities in the Updated Guidelines for Federal Officials to Fulfill the Duty to Consult⁵ in 2011, neither the National Energy Board Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act nor their respective enforcement policies make doing so a requirement.

As part of its mission to defend the rights of indigenous women, QNW has for many years been involved in activities aimed at protecting the environment, with a view of bringing attention to the specific concerns and perspectives of indigenous women as these relate to their access to the land and its resources and the protection of their traditional knowledge.

In 2013, QNW implemented the “Environment and Sustainable Development” program in order to examine the specific impacts of development projects and climate change on indigenous women and their families. In May 2012, QNW was part of a coalition of organizations that set up the “Forum Plan Nord” aimed at bringing together indigenous and non-indigenous, regional, environmental and labour union players to reflect on and propose more sustainable solutions to Northern development.⁶ In May 2014, QNW took part in hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on the Canadian Mining Industry which examined the responsibility of the five Canadian mining companies involved in multiple cases of labour rights violations, denial of the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination, and destruction of the environment.⁷ In 2014 and 2015, QNW also took part in a series of conferences held in Ottawa and Vancouver as part of the international symposium entitled Gendered Impacts: Indigenous Women and Resource Extraction.⁸ These events revealed a worrisome lack of precise data on the specific impacts of land and resource development projects on indigenous women, even though it is increasingly being recognized in Canada and around the world that indigenous peoples, and indigenous women in particular, suffer disproportionately from the impacts of these types of projects and the climate changes that ensue⁹ At the international level, numerous reports, including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have shed light on the differential and disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, and especially those who, like indigenous women, are subject to multiple forms of discrimination.¹⁰ The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly advocated a “gender-responsive, participatory and fully transparent, approach, taking into consideration vulnerable groups, communities, […] traditional knowledge, [and] knowledge of indigenous peoples” in the creation of relevant environmental policies.¹¹ More recently, following COP22 held in Marrakesh in November 2016 as part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement, special emphasis was placed on the need for signatory states to promote gender equality in their climate change policies¹², as well as address intersectional issues¹³ such as gender equality and knowledge of indigenous peoples.¹⁴

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