Brendan Bell

I have had several meetings with the company on this issue. I have had a phone conversation with Joe Carrabba who has now moved on. He has been replaced and I have met with his replacement as well to better understand why the company felt the need to do this. We had some discussion and I think the Member has rightly articulated the issues that the company was faced with: a very hot economy in Western Canada; having to compete with the oil sands for labour; having to compete with other projects; the startup of the diamond mine in Nunavut; the Tahera Mine and generally just a booming economy....

Sorry, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. It is difficult for me to know what the producers believe, but my sense is that the producers are looking for a framework or a box that access and benefits can be negotiated in. They believe that there are certain things that make up access and benefits, an amount of money, essentially a rent for use of the land. That is the realm they would like to see this in. However, they acknowledge that there are all of these other socioeconomic impacts in communities that need to be adequately dealt with, but they believe they are the responsibility of government. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No. We had a long discussion around resource revenue sharing and the projected timeline for money to flow to northern governments. Optimistically, we were talking about probably 2007-08. Federal legislation would have to be changed in order for us to start to receive royalty revenues. What we were talking about was a way to bridge us to that point. We have pressing needs of communities up and down the valley now. We know royalty revenues can’t flow until 2007-08. We have a need now. We needed a bridge to get us there. That is why we entered into this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My apologies; that had slipped my mind. I will certainly commit to sitting down with the Member to talk about methodology for this review as we go forward. I think that’s very important and I’m sure the committee would not have objections to the Member sitting in on any committee discussions we have. But absent that, I’m certainly prepared to have individual discussions with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well the business planning process is well underway now, departments are working on it and the reinstatement of the remand centre has not been contemplated, but I am prepared to track this and account for the savings and projected savings going forward with committee. I can come back to committee periodically throughout the year. There is nothing stopping us at the end of the year, should we determine that we really aren’t saving any money this way and it’s become an increased burden on the system and RCMP budgets. I say hypothetically at this point because I don’t...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide the House with an update on the Mackenzie gas project. On April 27, 2005, Imperial Oil Limited, on behalf of the Mackenzie Gas Producers Group, announced a shift of attention from engineering studies to an increased focus on the pressing regulatory issues associated with the proposed Mackenzie gas project. The producers group also expressed the view that the economic demands in access and benefit negotiations were beyond the scope of what properly constitutes those agreements.

The producers group also made it clear that they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are sitting down to negotiate a socioeconomic agreement in terms of employment for the pipeline. I don’t see the same reality there. We know that in terms of pipeline construction, there are so many more people required for this project than we can possibly hope to produce in the Northwest Territories in a short time. So the reality is that there will be quite a significant amount of employment that has to be sourced elsewhere.

I guess I would say that in terms of the diamond mines, the three different socioeconomic agreements are different. I’ve been personally...

We agree that we need to keep the pressure up on getting this bridge funding. The voting in Ottawa and the uncertainty obviously impacted our ability to get a meeting, but we had some work to do prior to that meeting. We and the aboriginal governments had to sit down to quantify the impacts and be able to put enough detail and substantiation behind our ask that the federal government could move that forward and talk to the Treasury Board about that. There was some work for us to do. We have had meetings now and I believe going on this week in Ottawa with our senior staff and federal...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No. Our Premier and Finance Minister were very clear with the federal Ministers and with the Deputy Prime Minister that these were really on parallel courses. We wanted to sit down with our aboriginal partners and negotiate some bridge funding to deal with social impacts, but our key priority and the priority of northern governments was to get a resource revenue sharing deal and an AIP by this summer. We know that the Deputy Prime Minister came out in public and articulated the government’s support for getting a deal done. I believe she used, I could check on this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Member has accurately laid out the chain of events. But I would say that when we first met with the Deputy Prime Minister with also Ministers Goodale, Scott and Blondin-Andrew, we didn’t get down to specific numbers. We identified the challenge. We indicated that we are aware of why Imperial Oil had gotten to this point in their assertion that what properly constituted access and benefit agreements was not all that was being requested here. We acknowledge as governments that we have a responsibility and a role here and the federal government has a...