Thank you.

I appreciate the invitation to share with the committee today the Government of Northwest Territories' perspectives on the federal government's role in protecting and managing Canada's freshwater resources.

I wish to acknowledge that I'm situated today in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. These are treaty lands and home to many indigenous peoples, including the Yellowknives Dene, Tlicho and Métis, and I'm grateful to be on this land.

Freshwater monitoring and stewardship are key portfolios for the government in the Northwest Territories' Department of Environment and Climate Change, but much of the work that we do involves partnerships, including those with the federal government, mainly the Department of Environment and Climate Change, Natural Resources Canada and CIRNAC. We value these excellent partnerships and the support we receive from federal departments on freshwater initiatives, and we want to see them continue.

I want to provide you with some background NWT context before sharing our priorities regarding federal activities and investment in fresh water in the north.

As you likely know, the Northwest Territories is a very large land mass, coupled with a very small population of about 40,000 people spread out over 33 small communities. Devolution of Northwest Territories' lands and resources to the GNWT occurred in 2014, but federal investment in the north remains key.

Almost half of our residents are indigenous, and fresh water, in particular, is of great importance to all of the indigenous peoples of the NWT. When we speak about fresh water in the NWT, much of it is located in the Mackenzie River basin. That basin covers 1.8 million kilometres over five provincial and territorial jurisdictions. It's about 20% of Canada's land mass. It serves as a water source, but it's also a channel for transportation, for food, and for connection to culture and language for as long as people have lived on the lands that surround it.

As you know, rapid climate change has been affecting the NWT's freshwater resources for decades. Average annual air temperatures have risen up to 4°C in the northwestern NWT since the 1970s. Climate change modelling predicts that the Mackenzie Valley will continue to experience some of the greatest air temperature increases in the world in coming decades. We've experienced unprecedented extreme variability in water flow in the Northwest Territories over the last five years. As an example, water levels in the Great Slave Lake, a water body with a period of record over 60 years, went from very low in 2018 to very high, and then record highs in 2020 and 2022. Now we're down again to a record low in late 2023 and 2024.

Water levels on Great Slave Lake are determined by conditions upstream in the Mackenzie River basin, so these extreme conditions represent huge volumes of water, in the order of cubic kilometres, and this translates into many metres of exposed shoreline. However, more practically it means that if transportation goods can't be delivered by barge to remote communities, there's an increased cost of living for residents and to the GNWT. Some of the other experiences that we're facing are thawing permafrost and an increase in historic flooding events, as seen in some of the photos provided, as well as an increase in the frequency and size of wildfires, based on levels of drought never seen before in NWT forests.

Because of these new extremes, it's very difficult to predict how the Mackenzie River basin will respond in the future under different climate warming scenarios. NWT does have some of the largest bodies of water in the world. We're seeing big changes. Research, science and partnerships with indigenous knowledge-holders are critical for understanding and mitigating these changes. One key point I'd like to make is that increased federal support in freshwater research and monitoring is essential.

Through the Canada water agency and funding through the freshwater action plan, we would like to see federal support for a northern climate water hub. No such hub exists in the north, and Yellowknife would provide a central location for the entire Mackenzie basin. This hub could be a base for critical research on climate change and its impacts on fresh water, encouraging collaboration among scientists, indigenous knowledge-holders and policy-makers, and it would be responsive to the NWT's unique co-management regulatory system for land and water decision-making.

I also want to highlight the role of the Mackenzie River Basin Board and the need for increased federal support there. The federal government plays a key role in convening provinces and territories through the board, which was created in 1997 through the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement between the Government of Canada, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., Yukon and NWT, but its potential has been limited by a lack of resources. We see that an increase in staff and financial capacity for the board's secretariat could enable greater research and community engagement while allowing provinces and territories to focus on the implementation of their own bilateral agreements.

Finally, the federal government, through Environment and Climate Change Canada, plays a key role in regulating the lower Athabasca oil sands. The federal government is now considering developing regulations that would allow the release of oil sands-treated effluent.

As you know, the NWT is downstream of these potential releases. As you may imagine, NWT residents have a deep concern about this possibility, so strong regulation of oil sands is critical for our downstream interests.