Kevin O'Reilly

Yeah, okay, well I'll just cool my horses until that point. But I want to turn over to the contributions page on 100. There's a bunch of money going out; maybe there's some money coming in as well with regard to work on caribou. And where are we at with habitat protection. You know, we've told harvesters they can't harvest and some of them have done that voluntarily. You know, we've gone out, tried to get more wolves either by, you know, paying harvesters a little more or shooting them from helicopters. I don't know what else we can do for caribou other than protect habitat at this point...

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Lands. The department has placed top priority in our requests from the mining industry to use surety bonds as an acceptable form of financial security. Ernst & Young were sole sourced for $230,000 to tell the government that surety bonds are good financial security.

Can the Minister tell us whether the report is finished and will be released publicly? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. On the same page, sustainable livelihoods; we seem to be on a downward slide there. Can I get an explanation, please?

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'm not sure how much detail I can get into but I think it would be fair to say that there was significant concerns expressed about what was in the establishment policy and, probably more importantly, what wasn't there. What kind of changes are going to be made and are we going to see it before it's finalized by Cabinet? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Is there any new funding in here for implementation of the Forest Act? I know the Minister's we got the "what we heard" report tabled in the House earlier today, and there's probably going to be some significant changes. Is there any money in here to implement that new legislation if and when it passes? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. And I do want to compliment the Minister and his staff because I know that they're pretty good at leveraging money. But how confident are we that we're going to get any money for this? Because as I understand it, this is the funding that goes to support, you know I'm not even going to pronounce all the names right here, but Thaidene Nene and then a couple of other protected areas. These have gone through extensive consultation with Indigenous governments. It's a great kind of comanagement approach. There's guardianship, you know, projects and things happening there, some...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that the chair rise and report progress. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that this committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the Legislative Assembly at this time. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Yeah, okay, I guess I look forward to successful negotiations with the federal government then to increase this because I think it's really essential work that some of these folks do. So I don't think I have anything else, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. If I wasn't concerned before, now I'm really worried that all of this stuff is happening in secret behind closed doors. This is not good. And I'm not sure we should even be participating in that kind of process. That is very upsetting that look, good that we're getting experts; we're doing our homework to look at this. But if all of this stuff is happening behind closed doors and is being kept secret and we're only going to find out about it if Alberta decides they're going to do a regulation, that's not a good place to be. So I don't know, Minister or sorry, Madam...