Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Welcome, minister. The Inuit‑Crown Partnership Committee has done significant work in advancing and promoting a whole-of-government approach to the stated Inuit priorities. President Obed and his board have been successful in getting your government’s support for many important social and economic issues.

One very important example is the framework to eliminate tuberculosis from Inuit Nunangat by 2030, which came with a $27.5-million commitment in 2018 from your government to be spent over five years. However, as I’m sure you know, The Globe and Mail carried out an investigation in June and found that $13 million allocated for tuberculosis countermeasures in Nunavut has been largely unspent, despite an active TB outbreak in Pangnirtung that has been ongoing for months.

Can you use your good offices — the funds came from your ministry’s table — to see that these desperately required funds are deployed where they are critically needed, in Pangnirtung?

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Minister Miller, in a December 7, 2020, letter, former premier Joe Savikataaq of Nunavut wrote to your colleague Minister Wilkinson, who was Minister of Environment and Climate Change at the time. In it, he said:

The [Government of Nunavut] . . . respectfully insists that, until we have achieved a devolution agreement and an offshore oil and gas agreement, that Nunavut lands and waters not be used to meet these targets.

— referring to Canada’s 2030 conservation targets.

During the Nunavut Land Use Planning Commission hearings on the Draft Nunavut Land Use Plan, which were held in Cambridge Bay just last week, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association reminded those present that, under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the regional Inuit associations decide who has access to and what activities can occur on Inuit lands. However, despite these interventions, federal departments continue to engage with communities directly on targeted efforts to create new conservation areas in Nunavut, circumventing both the GN, and, in the case of Talurjuaq’s proposed area, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association. In fact, DFO paid to charter —

Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson rose pursuant to notice of Senator Gagné on September 20, 2022:

That she will call the attention of the Senate to the life of our late Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.

He said: Honourable senators, I rise to speak in tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and also to speak of the special relationship Her Majesty had with the North, especially with St. Jude’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral in Iqaluit.

In 1970, Queen Elizabeth came to what was then the Northwest Territories, or N.W.T., the first reigning monarch to visit there. This was the first of three visits to the North. The Queen was accompanied by her husband, Prince Philip, and their then younger children Charles and Anne. She had planned to begin her visit to Canada by flying into the North, beginning in what was then Frobisher Bay. But the weather that day was very daunting — heavy overcast with no ceiling at all. However, minutes before Her Majesty’s plane arrived, having flown direct from London, the clouds providentially lifted.

The visit was thrilling for the Inuit residents of Frobisher Bay, many of whom were and are devout Anglicans. They were really excited to see their Queen in person — the person in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the person to whom they sang “God Save the Queen” and the head of their church. The Inuit were touched when Queen Elizabeth spoke a few words to them in their own language.

This first of three visits to the Arctic by Her Majesty and many more by members of the Royal Family, including Prince Philip and Prince Charles on more than one occasion, generated the excitement normally associated with the moon landing. In fact, young Charles said as he stepped off the plane, “It looks like the moon!”

Her Majesty often showed her ever-present sense of humour in her visits to the North as related to me by our former Senate colleague Pat Carney, who was there. The former mayor of Iqaluit — of Frobisher Bay then — Bryan Pearson was in charge of the gift presentations. He said that they couldn’t have someone staggering up to the stage with a kayak on his shoulders, so he had an Inuk gentleman make the presentation and two others who will lift it onto the stage. This was done and the Queen studied the kayak carefully. “Do you think I would do very well in a kayak?” she asked Prime Minister Trudeau the first. “I have one myself,” he told her.

During that visit, Her Majesty also turned the sod for St. Jude’s Anglican Cathedral, the first cathedral in the huge Diocese of the Arctic, which was built by Inuit carpenters in the shape of an igloo and completed in 1972. Queen Elizabeth also donated the cathedral’s cherished and beautiful baptismal font with its soapstone base.

Tragically, the cathedral was lost to arson in November 2005, and the demoralized congregation faced the giant task of rebuilding from scratch. I remember relaying to Her Majesty the promising news that a rebuilding committee had been formed for what became a successful $12 million undertaking from our small community.

Her Majesty and the family were active supporters of St. Jude’s. Every time any member of the Royal Family, including Her Majesty, visited Iqaluit after that first visit in 1970, they visited the cathedral. In recent years, Prince Edward and the Countess of Sussex ensured that when they visited the newly opened cathedral, it would be available as a place where they would receive visitors during their time in our community.

Her Majesty has seen a lot of the Arctic since she and her family first set foot in Frobisher Bay. After time spent in what is now Nunavut’s capital, the Royal Family made the long journey to one of Canada’s very most northern communities, Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island, which at 74 degrees north latitude is Canada’s second most northerly community after Grise Fiord. It was there in Resolute Bay in 1970 that Her Majesty said the words that are emblematic of her affinity with the Arctic. “You have not seen Canada until you have seen the North,” she said in that remote location.

After those stops in the eastern Arctic, the royal entourage flew to Tuktoyaktuk with the media following in a Hercules aircraft. When the Herc broke down in Tuk, the press was stuck there and had to make do overnighting in the school gym, but the royal party flew on to Inuvik with the media left behind. Former Iqaluit mayor Bryan Pearson — who had been travelling with the media — and former senator Pat Carney abandoned the media in Tuk and slipped down to the local float plane dock on a channel in the Mackenzie River to fly on in time to meet the royal party at their next stop in Inuvik.

Upon her arrival in Inuvik, the Queen was surprised to be met by Mr. Pearson. When she saw Mr. Pearson, she exclaimed, “Are you following me, Mr. Pearson?” He answered, “Oh, yes, Your Majesty. Just to make sure everything goes well.”

Senator Carney related how without the media, she and Mayor Pearson had the Royal Family all to themselves as they visited the local fur shop, tried on hats and jackets, and examined prints and sculptures. During that visit, the Queen met the late Chief John Tetchi of Fort McPherson. He wore his treaty uniform of blue pants with a red stripe and a jacket with yellow lapels.

We were honoured again in the North in 1994 when Queen Elizabeth visited Yellowknife to dedicate the new Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories and then went on to stop in Rankin Inlet, where the entire community turned out to greet her. Then she went on to Iqaluit, where she visited the cathedral for which she had turned sod. Our commissioner, the Queen’s representative in Nunavut, the Honourable Eva Aariak, said it well at a memorial service held last Sunday in her beloved St. Jude’s Cathedral. She said that Queen Elizabeth showed her great power in a quiet, dignified way of serving others with love.

I’m pleased to pay tribute to Her Majesty and acknowledge her keen interest in and understanding of the North and its Indigenous First peoples, a passion I know is shared by her son King Charles. May she rest in very well-deserved peace. Thank you. Qujannamiik.

(On motion of Senator Gagné, debate adjourned.)

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the ninth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology (Bill S-208, An Act respecting the Declaration on the Essential Role of Artists and Creative Expression in Canada, with amendments and observations), presented in the Senate on June 20, 2022.