Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like to recognize my wife, Suzette Montreuil, for being here today. I know that she was in the Great Hall earlier for a photo op with the Minister responsible for Seniors, but I want to thank her for looking after at least one senior in this House after I'm finished here every day. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and I do appreciate her coming to the Assembly today. Thanks.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I served on Yellowknife City Council in 1997 to 2006, and certainly, when I was on city council, the position of the Northwest Territories Association of Communities was that access to information legislation should be applied to them.

I think what I heard during the public consultations was that municipalities are okay with that. They just want to make sure that they have the right kinds of support in place to allow that to happen. The idea here of having a working group, some sort of a collaborative process of developing a plan for rolling this out, is a great idea, and it...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that long explanation of what is going on. The reality, of course, is that our government continues to spend more on a visitors centre in Dawson, Yukon, than we do here in Yellowknife, which is the capital.

The Minister trotted out some great numbers of the increases in visitation at the visitors centre in the basement of city hall. As the Minister well knows, I helped drag him through the visitors centre when we were coming back from lunch one day. I think that the city is doing a good job with what they have, but they clearly don...

I want to thank the Minister for correcting my notes here. They have three sets; that is a lot of designs to work with, then, but it looks like we are going to be going out for some more. When is the decision actually going to finally be made about either resurrecting the current building or knocking it down?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I see that in the report. Maybe future reports are going to be a little bit clearer about the reporting under each of the subsections in section 8 of the Environmental Rights Act. I think the Minister, though, has made my point here. Given the issues of late reporting by the Minister under the Environmental Rights Act and the lack of use of the rights established under this legislation, what is the Minister doing to promote environmental rights in the Northwest Territories? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I want to thank the Minister for that. From my calculations, in the 28 years since the Environmental Rights Act has been passed, there have been three requests for investigations into the release or potential release of contaminants into the natural environment. Only one of the three requests for investigation was accepted, and that happened back in 1991. Can the Minister confirm those numbers on investigations under the Environmental Rights Act: three requests and only one actual investigation in 28 years?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I will come back today to the too-long and too-twisted tale of the former Northern Frontiers Visitors' Centre and the lack of progress re-establishing a tourist information centre for Yellowknife. It's been more than two years since the facility closed.

Back in February 2017, the Minister of Infrastructure told me that his staff were working to stabilize the building and had "recently gone out for expressions of interest on possible design opportunities." Northern Frontiers Visitors' Association board produced a report detailing the estimated $5 million in...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am an alternate on the Government Operations Committee, and I want to sincerely thank all of the committee members for their very hard work in putting this together. I sat in on all of the discussions here in Yellowknife. This is a great report. This is why we are here as legislators, to do this kind of work. Very significant improvements have been made to the bill, but I do want to particularly recognize a few individuals for the work that they did on this whole process.

I want to congratulate the chair of the committee, Mr. Testart, for stick-handling this through the...

I want to thank the Minister for sharing that information. I hope that he is going to share, maybe, a summary of the geotechnical report with myself, as this building is my riding, when it is completed. The other key unknown here, of course, is the role of the City of Yellowknife in promoting visitors services. The Minister once told me that "we are working with the City of Yellowknife to determine the long-term model delivery of the visitors information centre." Can the Minister update us as to what sort of discussion there has been with the City of Yellowknife in providing proper visitors...

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Infrastructure. In my statement earlier today, I itemized some reports about reimagining the design of a new or redeveloped visitors centre here in Yellowknife, the former Northern Frontier Visitors Centre. I pointed out the Minister's statements that redesigns were being commissioned in 2017 and that there was a recent RFP or something, again, to do more design. Before we go out with this new call for designs, can the Minister explain what he intends to do with the first two sets of designs? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.