Kevin O'Reilly

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As mentioned earlier, this guideline does not apply to sites that have land use permits and/or water license. The guideline does not allow the GNWT to accept financial liability or perpetual care at the GNWT cost. Under the Environment Protection Act, the parties responsible for the contamination is responsible for cleaning it up. If the responsible party is unable to address the contamination and is deemed an environmental emergency, the Act gives environment and climate change the authority to undertake the work required and recover the costs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, that's kind of my thoughts exactly. If this doesn't apply to GNWT, why are we doing it? Will this bill apply to Indigenous governments and will it allow seizure and sale of Indigenous owned lands? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, okay, thanks. Well, we've got it on the public record, then, that it's not the intention of the department to issue licenses or permits on privately owned lands or lands where there might be surface leases. And, yeah, I think that would really be incompatible with and some of these may be compatible activities. I don't know. But if somebody has surface interests, I think it would only be reasonable that, somehow, they get engaged before licenses and permits would be issued. So I'm glad to get that assurance on the record. And I will have some more detailed questions about some other...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate that explanation. But I don't think I heard anything about what lessons were learned as a result of the public engagement on the bill and how those will be applied on the regulations making forward. So would someone like to respond to that, please. Thank you.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I have been pushing for some time for a public review of GNWT's failing climate strategy which is really three separate and uncoordinated programs. These are environment and climate changes' climate change strategic framework, infrastructure's 2030 energy strategy, and finance's carbon tax.

As one of the final gasps during the current phase of the climate crisis, GNWT staff put on a threeday conference attended by about 150 participants in July. I want to give credit for the large gathering as there was a diverse set of interests and participants from all parts of...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I guess I'm just having a bit of difficulty understanding some of the things that I just heard. But, you know, I guess I'm pushing this because the Northwest Territories Association of Communities in their written submission said the following: There should be some sort of acknowledgement of complying with various types of community bylaws including, but not limited to, general plans and zoning bylaws, fire prevention bylaws, tree harvesting bylaws, soil protection bylaws, open air burning bylaws, among others.

So we're only talking about land use planning at this...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I don't want to repeat my opening remarks on the committee report other than to thank the environment and climate change staff and the members of the technical working group for getting us a bill that was much, much better than Bill 44 in the last Assembly and working collaboratively with us.

But one area that I want to explore a bit here, and this was an area that the committee spent I guess a significant amount of time, at least in the early stages of our review, was the application of the bill as drafted. It seems to be a law of general application, and it wasn't...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Well, I guess yeah, I think a lot of this can and should have been fixed before the bill got here. This issue was raised to us in the NGO submission. And I guess I take my job seriously. When people bring forward concerns and issues, I think we really, as MLAs, as committees, have a duty to try to find solutions. So the issue was brought forward to us. I'm trying to do my job. And, you know, I regret that we have to spend this amount of time but I still think that this is an important public debate, and that's one of the reasons why I got elected and came here to...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to respond to a couple items I heard there. I believe this is within the purview of the legislature. Part of our job part of why I got elected was to make sure that this government is more transparent and more accountable moving forward, and that's what I tried to do over eight years.

Plus, I think this is simply responding to some of the concerns and issues we heard as a standing committee about the forest superintendent having some new authority but no duty to do any of it. So how do we know if the forest superintendent's actually doing these things...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just want to get into perhaps the weeds a bit here but I guess when the bill was being developed, the department waited until basically the end of the process to carry out a very abbreviated public engagement period where they put out a summary of a policy intentions document. I think there was about four or five weeks to comment on it. It happened partly over the holiday break. It wasn't a very helpful thing to have happen, quite frankly, in terms of trying to engage the public. So it happened at the end, and it was very short. Some of the work may have been...