Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Nice try by my colleagues. I move that this committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the department of Environment and Natural Resources at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So in the Minister's opening remarks, he said that there's an extra $1.03 million for work on the Bathurst and Bluenose East caribou herds. I don't want the Minister to tell me right now, but I want an itemized list of what this money's actually for. So can the Minister commit to provide that and actually make it public? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks. No further questions. But I do want to thank them for getting on this. It's been a longstanding issue for Yellowknifers. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. While I appreciate the opportunity to get a technical update but I'm going to be asking the Minister questions before the end of this sitting on this matter because the public deserves to know whether the provincial government is going to allow us to sit on this committee or not. So that's a heads up to the Minister that I'm going to be asking for answers in public about this.

I want to move on, though, to a couple of other areas here if I can, Mr. Chair.

I believe this is the part of the ENR budget where inspections for water licenses are conducted, and if I've got that...

Okay, thanks for that. Yeah, I can tell the Minister that I visited Greenland about maybe six, eight years ago, and in Greenland in the capital Nuuk, they had machines that you could just put an empty bottle into and cash came out at the bottom. So if they can do it in Greenland, I don't know why we can't do it here. Like, was and that was, like, a number of years ago. So I'm is that the kind of remote technology or something we're talking about here? Like, this isn't rocket science. It's done all over Europe. But is that the kind of thing we're talking about? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair, and I thank the deputy minister for that. Well, with all due respect, how can you part of a transboundary agreement when the provincial government upstream won't even share information; won't even allow you to be at the table when monitoring is being discussed? This is totally unacceptable. I would like to know from the Minister what the position of the federal government is on our request to sit on this committee?

Okay, thanks. I'm kind of curious; I don't know why we can't fix the Main Estimates. But over to the environment fund. It's on page 95.

I know that there's an accumulated surplus over time but the last three years or next year and then the previous two years, we're running a deficit there on an annual basis. So I'm just wondering what is the objective that this fund is kind of being managed to? Are we trying to draw it down to get it back down to zero at some point, or what is happening? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm a very patient man. I've been waiting six years. So any kind of progress reporting would be really helpful. But I'll leave it at that. That's all my questions on this activity. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I want to thank the Minister for that. If I was worried before, now I'm even more worried that this modeling doesn't even go into the Northwest Territories. So if it doesn't cover the Northwest Territories, I'd like to know more from the Minister what he's going to do about this? Mahsi, Madam Speaker.

That's one of the few times I think I've actually got a 'yes' in this house, so very pleased to hear that, and I know a lot of other Yellowknife residents and others will be quite happy with that.

So in the description of the activities carried out under what the purpose of this section of ENR is, there's words around prevention. Is there any policy work that this section of ENR is going to do this year? The only thing in six years that I've seen here was about a 10 or 12page document about some kind of vague GNWT policy around contaminated sites. Is there any other policy work, legislative...