Bob Bromley

Thank you. I appreciate the Minister’s commitment there. I want to note that Paramount is already using fracking in the Northwest Territories, apparently without any requirement for environmental review of this controversial technology. Further, the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board is not commenting on the use of fracking and says it falls under the jurisdiction of the National Energy Board. The National Energy Board says they can’t comment because of confidentiality agreements.

What’s going on here, Mr. Minister? Can the Minister inform the Assembly whether fracking is currently underway...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on my colleague’s comments and questions on fracking yesterday with some questions for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I would like to recognize the controversial aspects and potentially severe impacts of fracking. We need to take proactive steps to become informed ourselves and educate our citizens towards making the right decisions. First, of course, we need the facts. Will the Minister commit to getting departmental research underway on the issues involving fracking and supplying information to committees for their review...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one brief comment, really. I’m sad to see the wildlife division going the way of other government departments with the high expenditures on IT, and I suspect this is just the beginning. There has been a long tradition of scientists within that division being able to handle their data and I’m afraid now this is the start of a tract that will be costly and go well, into the future, into the millions of dollars. Just a note of sadness, Mr. Chair. I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to support my colleagues Mr. Hawkins and Ms. Bisaro in raising this issue in seeking some focus, as the Minister has offered towards moving forward on the Sissons School maintenance deficit and renovations are clearly required.

I’m wondering where we’re at with pellet boilers with our schools. How many schools do we have in the Northwest Territories and how many of them are now using wood pellet heat and are there opportunities for additional movement in that direction? Maybe that’s something the Minister could provide at a later date.

I guess with my last point I...

I appreciate the response from the Minister. I will look forward to the results there. It’s my understanding that under the current funding arrangements, local housing organizations who do not meet their rent recovery targets lose operating funds equivalent to the amount of uncollected rents. This is a very retrograde approach, because whether they collect rent or not, their costs of providing housing don’t go down. It only digs a pit of debt, and I realize there’s a balance here. Can the Minister say whether the options being considered in the Shelter Policy review include the possibility of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had indicated I would like to follow up on the specifics by division and so I will here, very briefly.

The proposal for a tank farm to increase capacity and upgrade, code upgrade, and I understand there are some serious challenges, structure challenges that need to be corrected in this community. I’m happy to see that work being undertaken. But I do want to stress again that there are opportunities to avoid the costs of in this case doubling the storage capacity and, of course, with that, the ongoing costs of forever trying to meet the new environmental standards and so...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize Patrick Joss. The committee has had many occasions to visit Ulukhaktok to do our business and on every occasion Patrick has been there to help out the committee. Thank you, Patrick.

It’s certainly been brought up for many years by MLAs. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thanks for the Minister’s response on that. I will follow up on that.

The other question I had was if the deferred maintenance is not responsible for the schools, I’m wondering if there’s any GNWT role in getting that deferred maintenance done. We seem to, obviously, be doing it for a lot of schools elsewhere. How are we and when are we going to make sure it gets done by whomever is responsible? For example, Sissons School in Yellowknife. Thank you.

That’s all I had. I think it might be interesting for committee to get a briefing on the functional aspect of it since we have had some briefings that suggest that that is important to the successful operation of the hospital. I will ask for that at a later time, but thank you for that information.