Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Earlier today the Standing Committee on Government Operations read into the record its report on its review of the 2015 Report of the Auditor General of Canada on Corrections in the Northwest Territories.

The Auditor General’s report, which was tabled in this Assembly on March 3, 2015, concluded that the Department of Justice has not met its key responsibilities for inmates within the corrections system. The audit found that while the department had adequately planned for its facilities, it did not adequately operate facilities to house inmates in compliance with key...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to waive Rule 100(4) and have Committee Report 19-17(5), Standing Committee on Government Operations Report on the Review of the 2015 Report of the Auditor General of Canada on Corrections in the Northwest Territories, moved into Committee of the Whole for consideration later today. Thank you.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that in the interest of transparency and accountability, the Department of Finance share the findings and recommendations of the Internal Audit Bureau with the committee in confidence, particularly where the Government of the Northwest Territories relies on those findings and recommendations as substantiation for its action taken. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The recent release of the long-awaited ENR 2014 Fire Season Review Report, had, as the Minister put it, girding their loins in preparation for this upcoming fire season. Now, although the use of cute biblical sarcasm is always welcome for the academics that pay attention, it unfortunately doesn’t offer much in the way of sustenance to what the people are expecting from spending over $56.1 million of their money.

Now, again for the record, we applaud that there was no loss of life or serious injury last year; and yes, the promise for better communication is nice to hear...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To put this motion into context, environmental liabilities have a new accounting standard referred to as PS 3260 and that is referred to as liability for contaminated sites. Committee reviewed things like the Giant Mine environmental liability and another 129 potentially contaminated sites. Dialogue between the government and the OAG staff did put some degree of uncertainty about how the GNWT was calculating its cost to remediate and record them in the public accounts. In theory, the process and the practice should be doing so at the beginning of the year. We are led to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On June 2, 2015, the House received a report from the Standing Committee on Government Operations on the Review of the 2013-2014 Public Accounts. The report contains eight recommendations to the government, and on January 22 and 23, 2015, the standing committee examined the public accounts of the Northwest Territories with the assistance of staff in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and the Office of the Comptroller General and the GNWT’s Department of Finance.

On February 12, 2015, the standing committee examined the consolidated financial statements of NT Hydro...

I appreciate the response to that. To the question of timing, if this bill goes through here, when does this bill become enacted in terms of affecting… I assume, it was brought forward by one of the pensioners. When would this trigger any type of monetary flow?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Bromley for bringing this to the floor of the House today to allow some debate on it here.

The whole idea about devolution was to reduce our dependence on Ottawa. We keep hearing that, that we want to take full control of our lands, our water and resources, and in this process we are evolving. We’re going through our evolution, and I think we’ve shown our ability, in a very short period of time, to deal with our new environmental duties in managing our resource development. It appears, by all accounts, that this government is still...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, the motion is fairly self-explanatory, but I believe the other message that it’s trying to convey is that the department, through the Auditor General’s observations, had very little in the form of monitoring the performance of the training that was completed by our staff and I found that to be a bit problematic. If you don’t know what calibre your staff are, it can very hard to initiate the programs and services that we’re compelled to do under statutory obligations. So, we recommend that this motion not only enforce the rules that need to be applicable to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, public record. A number of government policies obviously exist to penalize Northland Utilities’ customers throughout the NWT. There seems to be very little action on the part of this government to do anything to fix these NTPC overcharges and disparities, given its recent directive to the PUB to not allow these disparities to be corrected.

Will this Premier meet with Northland Utilities and First Nation groups before the territorial election in November to speak about these specific policies and to work together to address them?