Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our department has now sat down with the Producers Group to start this discussion around the SEA. We received the filing, the EIS is underway. Our joint AOC and Cabinet committee will continue to provide that direction. At the upcoming meeting, which will happen this session, we’ll have further discussion on SEA planning and what our strategies are. There are a number of highlighted areas, themes, that we have to discuss and I look forward to that work, but we are now underway in meeting with the Producers Group. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell the Member that I share his frustration and I think many northerners do as well. It’s obviously a difficult legacy that we have from past industrial use, military use and other uses across the North, and across the entire country in fact, that we have a number of contaminated sites and these sites need to be cleaned up. The Member is right that there has been a lot of discussion between federal departments over the last 10 years. There was an acknowledgement and recognition in the early '90s that contaminated soil had to be dealt with in the Tulita area...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 16, Northwest Territories Business Development and Investment Corporation Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll certainly find out what information and materials we have available to us and what materials we use in the regions. I haven’t seen the videos. I’ll take it that they exist and the Member has seen them. I assume that they aren’t available in some of the aboriginal languages and we can look at that too, especially regionally. Obviously it’s not relevant for all regions, but we can talk about where it is relevant. I think there’s also some merit in looking at other materials and making sure that people in communities understand these. Obviously that’s the idea behind...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; the development of the Wildlife Act and the Species at Risk Act is underway. It has been underway for a number of years and obviously it’s a very slow process. We are required to consult with land claim organizations and with wildlife management groups. We want to make sure we consult with the entire public across the territory and all of the aboriginal organizations. It has been unwieldy. We have to make sure that we comply with the spirit and intent of all the land claim agreements, and we are aiming to do that. So, yes, I’ve run down a number of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll try to keep the responses as short as I can and save going into the history of how this came about from the Council of the Federation and just indicate that we’ve agreed on a number of thrusts in the National Diamond Strategy. There are several priorities that I think will greatly benefit the North. We know that it isn’t the intention of the NDS to speak to the creation or the development of a multi-stakeholder body that will assist in coordinating and implementing the strategy. The issues in the strategy that are of critical importance to us, I think, are the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right in that we have agreements with Ekati and with Rio, although I guess I would probably add that they’re more like understandings as opposed to specific contracts that we knew would be very difficult to enforce. In fact I think we realized early on we needed the companies to want to leave the diamonds here. We needed them to be willing participants in this venture. For the most part, I think they have been. I think it’s been very successful. Aber is complying with the spirit and the intent of the value-added industry here, as the Member knows, by...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a host of sites that need to be dealt with. It is, and I believe it is, and the government believes it is, a federal obligation to deal with those. Because of the ongoing devolution discussions, we have to get this squared away. As I’ve said, we are not interested in inheriting all the baggage from the resource extraction or baggage from past military sites. So we have to find a way to force the federal government to clean up these sites. I think it was a positive step to see the amount of money earmarked in the recent budget for contaminated sites across...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right. In the early '90s, this temporary solution and the creation of this engineered soil in Tulita was constructed, and 10 years indeed seems like a long time to be temporary. We do know that the low level radioactive waste management office has done a number of studies and surveys. They assure us that the contaminated mound poses no risk to people or the environment in its present condition. Nevertheless, obviously it needs to be cleaned up. There was a federal government commitment to do that cleanup. As I said, I’ve just recently, in the last...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Agricultural Products Marketing Act 2003-2004 Annual Report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.