Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I will provide some introductory remarks and then turn to the process used to develop the bill. I will also provide some comments on the bill and concerns with what is there and what is missing.

The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we are already seeing the consequence of global warming, with an increase of 1 degree Celsius in annual mean temperature. There is more extreme weather and diminishing Arctic see ice, among other changes. The report notes that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require "rapid, far...

I thank the Minister for that commitment. Can the Minister give me an idea as to when he expects to make this information public?

Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like to follow up again with the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. He talked about two different ways of capturing some benefits from significant discovery licences. One is in the initial call for bids, and second, in the actual issuance of the significant discovery licence itself. In the call for bids, has a decision been made by the Minister on what the rates would be for significant discovery licences in the future? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the Minister for that explanation. It was a fear of risk of litigation, so that we now don't get any benefits from these significant discovery licences. The Minister last week said that we should not, "set rules without a transparent and open process." The Minister also said that he will consider charging rental rates under the terms and conditions for future bids in the Northwest Territories when we put out plans for petroleum exploration in the future. Can the Minister tell us who is consulted in setting those rates and what they will be?

Merci, Monsieur le President. Last week, I made a Member's statement about the great post-devolution resource giveaway, where the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment issued 10 significant discovery licences that tie up petroleum resources forever without any benefits to NWT residents. The original exploration rights were issued by the federal government. Can the Minister tell us whether the federal government made any provision for fees or work requirements in the issuance of those original rights? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do have just a few brief comments that I would like to make. I want to thank the committee for letting me sit in on a lot of the meetings that they had regarding the report. I am quite pleased with the recommendations that came out of the report.

911 is something that was being worked on when I was on city council back in 1997 to 2006. This was not in our mandate, and I do appreciate the work of a couple of Ministers to bring this forward. I want to commend them for their hard work in getting this bill to us and that this is finally going to happen in the life of this...

Merci, Monsieur le President. On the occasion of International Women's Day, I would like to speak about what we are doing to promote women in leadership. I attended the lively public hearing in Yellowknife on January 17th by the Special Committee on Increasing the Representation of Women. There were about 30 participants, including media, and I would like to commend everyone for the respectful dialogue and the ideas that were put forward.

There were three main themes presented. One idea was to run elections for a woman and a man in each riding in the NWT to ensure that half of the MLAs are...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I noticed here that the budgets for a couple of the statutory officers have actually decreased. For the Information and Privacy Commissioner, there is $28,000 less for 2019-2020, and for the Languages Commissioner, I am not going to attempt to do the math in my head; $38,000, my friend tells me. Can someone explain to me why these reductions are being made? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I know that, over at the archives, there are actually copies of the minutes for the Northwest Territories Council going back to 1921, and they are the only record of those minutes anywhere in the world, as I understand it. Do you know if that sort of information is part of this project? There are research requests, and I have had reason to go back to the 1950s recently on this, but is that going to be part of this project? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Nice try. Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I am not going to be nearly as long on this one. I am not going to oppose this bill. It does serve a number of public purposes, including allowing for pension credits to be earned by residents and so on, so and it is simply enabling legislation in terms of allowing for a cost of living credit to be used. I don't really have anything to oppose on this bill. I wish that there were some stronger public reporting provisions tied back to how this is going to be used to report on rebates that are tied to the carbon tax, but I don't have any difficulty with this bill...