Hon. Pat Duncan: Honourable senators, I rise today grateful to the Creator for this day and for the privilege of speaking from the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe and respectfully serving Canada and Canadians with all of you.

Today, I’m speaking to Senator Galvez’s motion that describes the climate in a state of urgent crisis. Senator Mégie most eloquently described how our planet, which supports life, needs intensive care without further delay.

What constitutes an emergency? An emergency is a threat to life. Our climate, life on the planet as we know it, has been threatened with extreme weather everywhere. In Canada, we have borne witness to floods, fires, droughts, record snowfall, and we have lost Arctic ice — ice that forms the icebergs in Newfoundland and Labrador’s Iceberg Alley. An emergency is a threat to the security of the person. An absence of shelter, especially in extremes of weather, is an emergency.

No longer being able to access food and a subsistence lifestyle your culture has depended upon for thousands of years is a threat to the security of the person and culture. It’s an emergency.

The decision to describe a situation as an emergency, especially for governments — for leaders — is not an easy decision arrived at lightly, nor is it easily accepted. We have witnessed recent debates on this very subject earlier this year.

In 2018, strategy discussions amongst the Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Kluane Adamek, her team and Yukon chiefs coined the phrase “A Yukon that leads” to describe our region and the First Nations leadership and their advancement.

The regional chief granted me permission to share this with you. I spoke of this in a tribute to the late First Nations Yukon leader Paul Birckel. We lost a leader. Fortunately, we have not lost our way. “A Yukon that leads.” I cannot think of a better phrase to describe a variety of Yukon First Nation initiatives.

A notable example is Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. On May 19, 2019, Old Crow, the home of the Vuntut Gwitchin, declared a climate emergency in their community. Climate change is drastically changing the landscape and the lifestyle in this remote community, the only community not accessible by year-round road in the Yukon.

I will return to the discussion of roads in a moment.

Honourable senators, I would like to share with you this quote from the Chief Tizya-Tramm. He said:

It’s going to be the blink of an eye before my great grandchild is living in a completely different territory, and if that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is.

The emergency — the urgent crisis — is upon us, as Senator Galvez has outlined. It’s not the first time Canadians have been given this message. The 2019 Government of Canada report, Canada’s Changing Climate Report, noted:

Northern Canada is defined as the geographical region north of 60º north latitude, encompassing Yukon, Northwest Territories, most of Nunavut, and parts of Nunavik (northern Quebec) and Nunatsiavut (northernmost Newfoundland and Labrador). In this region as a whole, annual mean temperature has increased by 2.3ºC from 1948 to 2016, roughly three times the warming rate of global mean temperature.

Senator Black, in his address on this motion, outlined that he would speak from what he knows best — addressing climate change and agriculture. Senator Anderson spoke most eloquently of the changing climate in the North that she knows. Today, I speak of what I know — the changing climate in the Yukon.

In my lifetime, colleagues, I’ve borne witness to warmer winters. Yes, we still experience perhaps a week of extreme cold, yet not the weeks of minus 40 degrees Celsius that I remember walking to school.

As a young adult, I worked for Parks Canada Youth Conservation Corps in Kluane National Park at the base of Sheep Mountain, where the Kaskawulsh Glacier graced the landscape and fed the majestic Kluane Lake.

Honourable senators, I invite you to read the dramatic story of climate change in the North entitled A River Ran Through It, published on June 24, 2019, by Ainslie Cruickshank. It says in part:

Climate change has gripped the North. In a dramatic display of its power, a receding glacier stole the river that feeds this lake and the consequences have rippled throughout the watershed.

She was referring to the Kaskawulsh Glacier and Kluane Lake. “Now the Kluane First Nation is being forced to adapt.”

The motion by Senator Galvez describes climate change as an urgent crisis and the resulting climate events as catastrophic, particularly for Canadian youth.

The motion says climate change is an urgent crisis, and, if left unaddressed, the consequences for our youth are profound. Yes, there are lauded and laudable youth who have led and are leading, recognizing the urgency of the situation and the need for change, but the consequences of climate change continue.

I mentioned earlier that Old Crow is a fly-in community. Periodically over the years, when a new school or a health facility was constructed, an ice road would be built to the community of Old Crow. This year, the trucks were unable to traverse the ice road for a period of time due to warmer temperatures. The ice road to Old Crow, when it’s in use, is temporary, essential infrastructure.

The impact on permanent infrastructure, such as the highway network throughout the Yukon, is significant. These highways include the Alcan or the Alaska Highway, a major transportation route from the Lower 48 in the United States to Alaska, as well as Diefenbaker’s “Roads to Resources,” the Dempster Highway, a critical link for the communities of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories.

The thawing permafrost on these roadways is estimated to have increased the highways’ annual maintenance costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year since 2005. Hundreds of thousands of dollars may not mean much to provincial budgets of millions of dollars and the budget we’re looking forward to of billions of dollars, but when you’re considering a relatively small budget of a territorial government, it’s a lot of money.

The discussion of transportation, climate change and solutions like electric buses in the city of Edmonton are as important as all the steps, large and small, to address climate change.

Honourable senators have often heard me say that one size does not fit all. Recognition and acceptance of the need for change and the urgency of this situation are not everywhere. It’s perhaps most evident in some of the younger population. There is a generation that grew up playing with big trucks that loudly went “vroom, vroom” and who dreamed of owning that F-150 truck or the GMC Denali with big tires. Now, as young adults, they love snowmobiling and driving four-wheelers in the back country of our provinces and territories.

The consequences for these young people is to say that all those things you thought you knew, the world you thought you were growing up in, doesn’t exist anymore. The lifestyle and adventures of your family, the generation that preceded you, are not yours to share.

We have all become deeply conscious of the divisions in our country. I believe our debates on emergencies such as this must also include discussions of understanding how painful these life-changing decisions are for some.

We cannot forget, and we must also express our understanding for rural Canada, places where transit systems powered by electricity — or even transit systems — are not the norm. In small rural communities, you hop on a four-wheeler to go to the store, and the pickup or the Suburban is your office, team transportation to the rink and the family trip to the nearest major centre for all manner of groceries and supplies.

Switching from fossil fuels is a challenge. Yes, we’re seeing the advancement of electric vehicles. Just yesterday on the news, there was an announcement of investment by governments in an electric vehicle plant. We must adapt to changes, not only in the area of climate. We have to adapt our lifestyles, our expectations and ensure that the transition is not a forced and one-size-fits-all approach.

Honourable senators, speaking to adapting to change, Kluane First Nation’s Chief Bob Dickson is quoted in A River Ran Through It. There is a lesson for all of us in his words. The article quotes him as saying, “We have to relearn our traditional knowledge all over again because things are changing.”

The article continues:

And it’s not just the lower lake level. The winters are getting warmer, there’s more rain, and the moose rut — mating season — is happening later in the fall.

Chief Dickson is quoted again:

We’ll live with it. When they created a national park they moved us here and we adapted to that. I think we’re going to adapt to this, just the same.

In discussing this emergency and the way forward, I believe we must be mindful of the differing circumstances, and we must approach the discussion in a way to deepen the understanding and not the divide, as seen in Senator Coyle’s inquiry on climate change solutions, and hope for the future. I hope to speak to that later this session.

Honourable senators, if there’s something good that can be said of everything, perhaps in our search for solutions for a changing climate and moving away from fossil fuels, there is also opportunity. The Yukon, as Senator Dasko shared in a statement recently, has witnessed the largest growth in the country. The demand for electric power has far outstripped the production capability of the hydroelectric facilities in the Yukon, especially in Whitehorse, to the point that diesel generators have been augmenting the supply for several winters.

In Old Crow, after declaring a climate emergency, Yukon’s northernmost community announced the completion of an ambitious project, delayed, as so many other projects have been, due to the pandemic. Sree Vyah is a solar energy project consisting of 2,160 single-sided monocrystalline panels, configured to maximize solar generation during the long summer daylight hours. It will reduce the community’s current reliance on diesel generators by 189,000 litres of diesel per year. It’s a drastic change for a fly-in community. Funding for the project came from several federal programs, the First Nation and the Yukon government’s development corporation.

Another innovative First Nation-owned project announced last month is Yukon Energy’s Electricity Purchase Agreement with Tlingit Homeland Energy Limited Partnership, a company that is 100% owned by the Taku River Tlingit First Nation, who will build and own the Atlin Hydro Expansion Project. Atlin is actually in British Columbia. This will add eight megawatts to the Yukon grid, eliminating the need for four rental diesels each winter. It will generate about 31 gigawatt hours of electricity each winter: approximately enough to power 2,500 Yukon homes annually.

Honourable senators, in my short time in the Senate, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about Canada’s nuclear industry. I have become especially interested in the small nuclear reactors as a possibility for power generation in the North. The Canadian Nuclear Association has stated that the uranium needed in the industry will create and sustain jobs, especially for First Nations in northern Saskatchewan. Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, New Brunswick Power and SaskPower have developed a pan-Canadian initiative to develop and deploy small modular nuclear reactors. These are just some of the Canadian solutions and opportunities that I look forward to discussing in Senator Coyle’s inquiry.

Honourable senators, I hope that my participation today has confirmed for you that the climate crisis is real in the Yukon, the territory I represent, and that it has significant negative, destructive effects on human health, life, food security and infrastructure, permanent and temporary, and that there is a real financial cost to climate change.

However, as seen in my examples, a cookie-cutter approach isn’t the way. The transition needs to be locally adapted. It needs to be community-led and sufficiently supported by all orders of government: federal, provincial and territorial, Indigenous and municipal.

We need to be mindful of the differences throughout the territory and of the opportunities.

I look forward to discussing the climate emergency as well as the solutions in coming days. Thank you, mahsi’cho, gùnáłchîsh.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Moncion, seconded by the Honourable Senator Simons:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology be authorized to examine and report on the Canadian assisted human reproduction legislative and regulatory framework and any other related issues deemed relevant by the committee, when and if the committee is formed; and

That the committee submit its final report on this study to the Senate no later than October 31, 2023, and that the committee retain all powers necessary to publicize its findings for 180 days after the tabling of the final report.