Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that if I get Cabinet support for a single agency, and I would indicate, Mr. Speaker, I still have to go forward to Cabinet with a proposal and receive an endorsement of that proposal prior to coming forward to committee, but if and when that happens, I am hoping that we can do something very quickly here. If and when that happens we will have, no doubt, a very good and I am sure heated exchange at the committee level about potential locations for a new agency. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would say that the individual tourism providers, I believe, are out at tourism shows. I know they will participate going forward and are out, as the Member indicates, with their sales books and trying to book tours for the upcoming season. My information, looking at the numbers from this past season, is that things are improving, if only slightly. We haven't seen the dramatic recovery that we were looking for, but I have spoken with two of the three operators who are involved in aurora visitation, and they are optimistic about the numbers and recognize that this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Member is looking for the amount of money owed to the government, or the BCC specifically, from this company. I am unable, because of our legislation, to give the Member the number. The Member will remember we have had many past discussions about the need to balance the privacy and the protection of proprietary interest with the need for the public to know. This is a difficult balance. I think it is a discussion that we'll continue to have going forward. I look forward to that discussion, but without the agreement of the parties involved, I can't...

Thank you. The Member is certainly right; we have monitoring obligations. We have obligations that are shared with BHP and with Diavik, and we will with DeBeers, as well. We are proposing to set up a joint monitoring board under the terms of the new agreement, and have done likewise in some of the past agreements. I think the Member is making the point that we need to be vigilant in monitoring. I agree with the Member. We have to ensure that the commitments being made, and that we spent so much time negotiating, are being lived up to. Obviously we have an obligation in that regard, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We talk about the context or the frame in which negotiations were undertaken with DeBeers in this matter, in developing our socioeconomic agreement. I would say that we took our guidance from past SEA agreements with BHP and with Rio Tinto, and further to that, Mr. Speaker, followed the direction as laid out in the EA process by the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. That EA process provided the frame of reference, and laid out a number of obligations that had to be met both by the company, by DeBeers, and by our government. So we’ve used that as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will go the Member one better. I also was a lifeguard at the beach and I hope I wasn’t frolicking on the job.

---Laughter

I recognize that it would be certainly helpful and it is important to make sure that the beach is safe. We are proposing that it be posted as unsupervised. I can’t guarantee that there will be lifeguard services at that beach, no more than the past Minister could for the past season despite the contract in place. The city was unable to provide lifeguards. So it would be misleading for me to stand here and say that I could guarantee that there would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the benefit of the contract in front of me, as it seems Mr. Hawkins does. I appreciate that he will table it later today, so we have it and I can probably give him some more important answers at that point. Just a little background, Mr. Speaker, though, I believe we approached negotiations with the city this year and were looking to sign a contract, recognizing that costs had increased. It has always been on a cost-shared basis in the past. Past expenditures have been about $12,000 for our government. We went into these negotiations and offered $15,000...

Thank you. In terms of negative impacts on the people of the Northwest Territories, obviously we want to mitigate those wherever possible. I can assure the Member that I’m sitting down with my colleagues, the Minister responsible for the social envelope, to first identify what those potential impacts are, and we have some I would say track record now. We can take a look at our experience with the course of the last couple of mines. I think we need to learn from that. We need to understand where the challenges are, and where there are potential impacts seek to mitigate them. There...

I think philosophically we are talking about, Mr. Speaker, the same idea. We’ve been working to negotiate a protocol agreement with the producers group. That protocol agreement would be an umbrella agreement that would spell out the number of sub-agreements that come under it. I think there are -- I am going to guess between nine and 15 -- one of those agreements would be the socioeconomic agreement, and we’ve also had discussions about the length of time it has been taking to get the protocol agreement finalized. We are in discussions with the producers group and at the same time moving...

Mr. Speaker, again, I can’t provide that assurance. In the past it has been a $12,000 contribution, it has been cost shared, a shared responsibility with the city. The proposal this year from our government, recognizing that costs have indeed gone up, was to increase that to $15,000, recognizing that it should still be on a cost-shared basis. The city countered with full cost recovery only, turned down the $15,000 offer, wanted the $21,000 in full cost recoveries. So I can’t guarantee that we’ll come to a contractual arrangement, but I will guarantee that I will sit down and speak with the...