Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. There have been public reports that the Alberta provincial government and the Alberta energy regulator have unilaterally decided to reduce water monitoring as a result of the pandemic. The quality and quantity of waters flowing into the NWT from Alberta are supposed to be protected by a Transboundary Water Agreement. Can the Minister confirm whether he has received any notice of reductions in water monitoring from Alberta under the Transboundary Water Agreement? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I don't need this now, but can I get a commitment out of the Minister of Lands to give us a briefing note about the status of the project and the land tenure for it, and whether this is going through an environmental assessment, that kind of thing? There's a lot of finger pointing going on on the other side. I don't really care which Minister provides it as long as we get an update, a briefing note on it. That will be helpful. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I had a chance to get my hands really dirty on the weekend. We drove down to the Northern Farm Training Institute, or NFTI, near Hay River to volunteer. On the first morning, we built trellises for pumpkins and squash, but in the afternoon we each bagged about 1,000 pounds of potatoes.

The Great Potato Collaboration is now under way. NFTI put out a call for potatoes for the NWT during the pandemic to help build food security. The Potato Growers of Alberta helped identify one of its members, Sunnycrest Farms, that could help. John and Marlene Ekkel own Sunnycrest...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Can someone tell me what the status of the Inuvik wind project is? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. The reason why I'm raising this is I was in the last Assembly. We saw this trend of increasing amounts of carry-overs from one year to the next. I took the previous Finance Minister to task over this and suggested that we needed to have some way of tracking what the reason was over time as to why we can't get the money out the door, why we can't do the spending. This is increasingly critical during this pandemic, that we find ways to get money out the door to help stimulate our economy. As the largest driver in our economy, we have to get the money out the door. I need to...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Well, that's great because it accords with the table I'm looking at. Can I get some sense of the trend of the carry-overs over time? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Okay, thanks for that explanation. Can I get a sense of how much of this supplementary appropriation is the result of carry-overs from the previous year? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. The size of this supplementary estimate is a bit surprising. I think it is $166 million. We passed the capital budget in the previous Assembly, if I remember this correctly. I think it was in the neighbourhood of about $240 million. Can I just get an explanation as to whether this is the largest supplementary appropriation we have made and some explanation as to the size of this? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Sure. Thanks. I didn't anticipate getting into this level of detail in some of these things, as well. I take it, then, that the Minister is prepared to provide that information following this discussion. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. It's great that we've increased our monitoring while Alberta continues to reduce theirs, and that there is some kind of risk assessments that our staff have done. It would be great to see that. Can the Minister, though, tell us whether he has taken some serious action, like invoking the dispute resolution provisions in the Transboundary Water Agreement with Alberta, and, if he hasn't invoked the dispute resolution process, why hasn't he done that? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.