Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement by asking whether — I believe it’s the Minister of ITI or ENR looking after the regulatory process here — the important conclusions of the environmental audit of 2005 are being followed up with some very important and critical recommendations requiring additional resources, the implementation of the cumulative impacts program and so on. Are they actually getting done? We’re in 2008; the next review will be in 2010. What’s our progress on that?

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Was there a question you want responded to in that?

Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort in the witnesses.

Mr. Miltenberger, may I have you introduce the witnesses.

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier today. I want to follow up in a larger context on some of the line of questioning of my colleague Ms. Bisaro.

I appreciate the Premier’s idea of needing to think outside the box as far as the NTPC. In the larger context of things — and context is everything, you know — we are facing a global water crisis, climate change; the rate of species loss is accelerating; the devastation of marine foods is well documented; and so on. Now we’re facing an economic crisis, increasing fuel costs, et cetera.

Does the Premier agree that today is a good day to...

Thank you for those comments, Premier. I wonder if it might be a good time in our talk about devolution and so on…. You know, I can’t say that I have really been a great admirer of the federal success at managing our resources, because of all the context I provided earlier in this question. I am hoping that this government will do a much better job when we do get responsibility, and perhaps it’s timely to start a public process.

Would this Premier consider implementing a public process to start the territorial debate on the basis we are going to manage our resources, to do a much better job...

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Premier’s rigour in looking for ways to disagree and not finding any there. Given our increasing reliance upon imported everything — i.e., our increasing subscription to the global economy and the increasing volatility of the global systems and so on — does the Premier agree that this major shift in the Northwest Territories to improve our ability to be self-sufficient and insulated from those things should really take the triple bottom line approach and strengthen our self-sufficiency using local resources to develop our local economies?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to respond to the Minister’s statement on some of the progressive energy initiatives that this government is showing, and I want to compliment them on that. I look forward to contributing to those further and to reviewing them through our climate change committee and so on.

But, Mr. Speaker, we really need to follow these initiatives within a context, and that context is: how did we get to this situation? We have an economy, a system of government, something here that has failed us and allowed this to become a critical situation. It’s not just here; it’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also rise to support my colleague Ms. Bisaro, and I was very pleased to second this bill. I think this is really all about respect. It’s all about doing business in a different way. We spend a lot of energy to get food up into our country here from afar, and to be throwing away two-thirds of the food is really disrespectful. It’s a waste of energy, and it doesn’t provide a good example to our people.

I also would like to recognize that this is a good example of the public responding to a situation, bringing it to our attention and working hard. I am always very happy...

Thanks to the Premier for those comments. I appreciate his agreement that there are some real needs there, and this is one way to do that. I am interested in some specifics.

We’re losing our young entrepreneurs; we’re going more to the big box stores and so on. Somehow they seem to become portrayed as northern businesses. It’s really the fundamental, systemic things that need to change. We need to have honour systems and so on for our elders. We need to really start to realize that traditional knowledge has real and practical value as well as to use modern technology. I am interested in what...