Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response. I'm just wondering: what kind of assurance can the Minister give me that this drafting of this bill or this act is going to be done in a way that includes all interested stakeholders? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Well, the money may come from industry; this is not their money. This is money that's to be used for environmental studies, and if there's no plan for actually spending this money or priorities, so we just throw it open to requests for proposals. That to me doesn't sound like a very wise investment of the money. Is there not a set of research priorities or needs that have been identified so that the funds can be used in the wisest way possible, whether it's to understand the effects of oil and gas exploration on woodland caribou or offshore or whatever? What is the plan to...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Was there any consideration given to cutting this funding to help meet our government's fiscal strategy? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, monsieur le President. Glad to hear the Minister say that we're going to start being a little bit tougher with our negotiations so that we can retain more of the benefits here for Northerners.

One way to perhaps help that: can the Minister commit to having a thorough and independent review of our socio-economic agreements conducted so we can learn from others and our own mistakes, and will he agree to make such a review public? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay, I'll try to go at this a different way. Is there a plan or a strategy for the use of these funds? Have research priorities been identified? I'm just wondering why we're not spending more of the money in a given year, why we're surplussing money. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The bottom line in this contributions is for the NWT Chamber of Mines; is that core funding that is provided to the chamber? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I can assure the Minister that all those agreements are there, but most of them are unsigned, most of them are undated. I had to go to secondary sources to try to actually find out when they signed, like, news releases and so on. In any event, I look forward to having them all there.

As I raised in my statement earlier today, there are few, if any, legally binding commitments in the current socio-economic agreements. Can the Minister confirm these agreements are really best-efforts arrangements with few, if any, specific binding commitments with penalties and sanctions for non-compliance?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the commitment by the Minister, and just so that he understands, I'm glad that the department is getting ready and they're responding to a growing tourism industry here. That's a good thing. I just want to understand a little bit better about what exactly this position is going to do. I'll give you an example. I was over at the Frontier Visitors Centre a week and a half ago; I was there for about 45 minutes, they had, like, five staff on. Probably 50 people came through the doors and were buying things. The place was crazy, quite frankly. So those people are...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Are the companies actually putting any money into these agreements, or is it just us expending money on the agreements? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Colleen Wellborn. She is a constituent of mine, and thank you for joining us in the House today. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.