Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay. I don't agree with everything that has been said. I would like to know, after the one-year period, if something goes wrong, who is responsible and who pays? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I wish to report to the Assembly that the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures has reviewed Bill 56: An Act to Amend the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council Act, Number 2. Mr. Speaker, the committee wishes to report that Bill 56 is now ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole as amended and reprinted. Masi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. This clause is about making sure that proof of financial responsibility remains in force during a suspension or abandonment of oil and gas facilities.

I want to thank the Minister for providing a letter to me yesterday. I tabled this earlier in the House. It provides some detail about how this is actually done in practice by OROGO. What this does is require that there be a one-year period after successful abandonment or decommissioning of a facility or an activity, I guess, that the financial responsibility has to stay in place for that long.

I would like to ask the Minister...

I didn't make those promises. Ministers did in this House, or even outside the House. All I am pushing for is to make sure that we fulfill those promises. There were further promises made to extend the fibre optic link to Tuktoyaktuk. Can the Minister explain the status of this work, its costs, and whether it will happen in advance of real connections and improvements in the communities that were supposed to be served by the fibre link in the first place?'

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I believe I heard the Minister say that concerns had been raised by OROGO and the NEB. This gets back to this issue of concurrence by the federal government, and I'd like to raise a point of privilege that this is impinging upon my ability to do my job as an MLA and put forward a motion for consideration of the House. I think this is thwarting my ability to bring forward a motion that is in the public interest, in my view. I turn my mind to some of the comments that were made yesterday by the Minister, as well, where, you know, federal consent was being sought as far back as...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Well, I am not sure I agree with the Minister's assessment. I believe that this is really certainly not in keeping with consensus government principles, to go off and seek federal concurrence while a bill is before the Legislative Assembly. I would like to get confirmation from the Minister and his staff: the changes that have now been made to this bill, they, as I understand it, they will require federal concurrence again. Is that correct?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have a few brief comments, and I do have a couple of lines of questioning that I would like to pursue.

First off, I was quite surprised that committee received absolutely no submissions from industry. Not one. Nothing. There is no record of any submissions made to the department as part of their development of the bill, because all of the submissions are still available on their website. To me, that means that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on the part of industry in commenting on our regulatory regime that they are actually governed by. They don't seem to be...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have raised this issue, again, on the floor of the House. I don't actually agree with everything that is in the recommendation. We don't have to do a comprehensive review of oil-and-gas-related regulation.

This absolute liability cap is in regulation right now. The Minister could change this tomorrow if the Minister wanted, and this should have been within the scope of the changes that were made to these pieces of legislation. I don't understand why the department didn't flag this internally as a problem. Right now, the absolute liability cap is somewhere between about $10...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am not going to belabour this one, because I am going to wait for the Minister to come up, and he is going to answer some questions about this. The public does need to know that the department and the Minister went off and got federal concurrence on the bills, because there is a requirement that that take place under the Northwest Territories Act.

While the bills were before the committee, the Minister went off and sought federal concurrence before committee had even changed them. It is my understanding that, even with the changes that have now been incorporated into the...

Once again, the Premier didn't answer my question about whether he actually consulted with his Cabinet colleagues about this letter before it was signed and sent.

I explained in my statement earlier today that these pieces of federal legislation that the Minister cited have very little, if any, application in the Northwest Territories. Of course, the Premier knows very well that the Mackenzie Gas Project was assessed under three different regimes, and of course, it was done through an agreed-upon arrangement under those three different regimes. I suspect any transboundary project would be done...