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Statements in Debates

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 136)

Merci, Monsieur le President. In my statement earlier today, I covered two aspects of the closure of the Diavik mine, on whether GNWT was going to take over the airstrip and what role, if any, GNWT is playing with regard to transition planning for NWTbased employees. I'm going to ask my questions of the Premier because they cut across a few different departments. So can the Premier tell us whether GNWT has decided to take over the Diavik airstrip at closure? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. And I understand that one of the provisions of this bill are to allow for greater information sharing between the I think it's the Canada Revenue Agency and our government, and maybe that sort of goes both ways. But committee has raised the issue of trying to understand and get, you know, precise figures for a number of tax credits that we have, like for political contributions and so on. And because I guess in the interest of transparency and accountability, it would be nice to be able to put dollar figures on the value of the lost revenues associated with some of...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Thanks, Madam Chair. Who could have thought tax bills would be so exciting? But the committee report raises a few questions for me, and I did have the privilege of sitting in and listening to the review of the bill. There was some amendments made to the bill, and some of this, the provisions now, are being made retroactive to like more than five years ago. And I just had wondered why these changes were going back five years in time. Was there some delay on our part in getting some of this implemented? And I think the Minister said that that was not the case. But the report also says that the...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Merci, Monsieur le President. And I do want to acknowledge that this Minister has taken a constructive approach with CSFTNO, from everything I've heard so I want to give him credit for that. And I understand now that we've got these census numbers, which is good, but I can't even count or remember the number of times GNWT's been taken to court and lost over Francophone education rights in the NWT over the last 15 years.

So can the Minister tell us how he intends to keep GNWT out of courts over constitutionallyprotected Francophone education rights? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that because he's of course getting into my second question. The problems in Hay River are different and, in some ways, very similar, though, to what Yellowknife was like before the expansion of Ecole Allain StCyr. Ecole Boreale has been forced to keep its senior students in a portable for 13 years. Count it 13 years. And there are continuing issues with heating, water, and sewer services. The students also need to compete for gym time with the nearby public school.

Can the Minister tell us what he is going to do with regard to...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, this is a cap that's set in regulations. Cabinet can change this tomorrow if they want to; the Minister could change this tomorrow. The federal government had these caps. We adopted those with devolution. But after devolution, the federal government, the Auditor General came and looked at how the federal government tries to manage public liabilities and the Auditor General recommended to the federal government that they needed to change these caps in the areas where they retained jurisdiction, the offshore in particular. And so the Auditor General said that you need...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

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Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Madam Chair, I'm going to speak to this quickly. We have at least three pieces of legislation maybe two I guess, that where financial security requirements can be placed on an operator or mine owner, oil and gas operation I guess if we include oil and gas, maybe three or four different pieces of legislation. So the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has the Waters Act and they can ask for or through that process, financial security for waterrelated use and an infrastructure site can be requested. And there's the Lands Act, Northwest Territories Lands Act for landsrelated stuff...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm just going to speak to this quickly. This document, Approach to Contaminated Sites, I think is only about 12 or 13 pages. In the last Assembly, where it was actually a mandate item do some work on this, we were promised a policy binder. Never got it. And promised a policy binder again in this Assembly. Never got anything. Nothing's been done in terms of actual policy work by our government. No legislative change, no regulatory change, no policy work other than this 12/13page document. We got to do better. And that's what this is aimed at, Madam Chair. And I think many...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 135)

Thanks, Madam Chair. And I do urge anyone who's listening to actually read the rationale for this recommendation. But we have something adopted. This government has adopted the use of what's called the reclaim model. And it's basically a set of spreadsheets that are quite sophisticated, and unit costs are calculated based on experience from consultants working in the private sector on other governmentled remediation efforts, and those are used as a basis to calculate what it would cost for a third party to come in and remediate a site according to an approved closure and reclamation plan, and...