Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I want to thank the Premier for that, and I can confirm there is a signed version on the ledge website but nowhere else on any GNWT website. And, of course, our website is not the GNWT website.

There is a requirement in the Environmental Rights Act for an annual report to be tabled in the House, although we've slipped on that in the past. I tried to include a requirement for some type of reporting and implementation of the statement of environmental values to the bill, but Cabinet opposed that. So can the Premier tell us whether there's going to be any sort of...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. My questions are for the Premier. According to the statement of environmental values, the Premier is, quote, "accountable to the Executive Council and residents of the NWT for implementation of the statement of environmental values," end of quote.

So recently I'd asked officials from three departments Executive and Indigenous Affairs, Finance, and Environment and Natural Resources who was responsible for implementation of the statement. And guess what, Madam Speaker, nobody seems to know.

So can the Premier clarify who is really in charge of implementation of the...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I move that the chair rise and report progress.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I want to thank the Premier for confirming that there is no internal tracking and that there's no public reporting. There's absolutely nothing in the statement about how it is to be applied to Cabinet decisionmaking, tracking, reporting, or evaluation. That's a disappointment, Madam Speaker, that Cabinet doesn't take this statement of environmental values very seriously, in my view. But Cabinet now includes some sort of genderbased analysis on climate change implications in its decisionmaking. So can the Premier commit to include a section and analysis on the...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I want to thank the Premier for reading off parts of the statement. But, you know, in my statement earlier today I said that there does not appear to be a signed and dated copy of the final version of the statement of environmental values anywhere on the GNWT website. So can the Premier confirm that there is no publiclyaccessible final and signed version of the statement of environmental values, and can she commit to fix this problem? Mahsi, Madam Speaker.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. One of the bills passed during the legislative avalanche ending the last Assembly was a completely new version of the socalled Environmental Rights Act, the first time this legislation had been reviewed in 29 years. The standing committee of the day worked very hard to improve the bill with 14 successful amendments.

One of the new features of this littleused legislation was supposed to be a statement of environmental values. The NWT is the second jurisdiction in Canada to develop such a statement. This means the GNWT is supposed to consider the principles and...

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair. There's a few things in the recommendation from the committee report that weren't necessarily captured in the committee motion. But the sorts of things that I would expect to see in an annual report that could be made publicly available include things like, you know, the number of permits that have been issued for elevators and lifts, the number of approvals, orders issued, whether there was actually any prosecutions or fines levied, inspections carried out; those kind of things.

The Minister did give us some assurance in the public hearing, the clausebyclause review...

Merci, Madame la Presidente. I want to thank the Minister for her Minister's statement. And, of course, she's free to table more information about those outages if she wants. But winter's coming on, and electrical outages can become a threat to public safety and property. So can the Minister tell us what steps have been put in place to make sure that the events of September 11th are not going to be repeated where both the hydro grid and backup systems failed at the same time? Merci, Madam la Presidente.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, nice try. I move that this committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam la Presidente. I wish to recognize a couple of pages from the Frame Lake riding, Kayden Halliday and Deagan Lacome. Thank you