Michael Miltenberger

Thank you. The major concern was, of course, if a complaint was raised with a government service officer who would then file, then they would become party to an action that they may not in fact know that much about or may be caught up in an illegal proceedings that would make their job very, very difficult. So, are there ways to better be able to report? I think with new technologies, for example, coming down the valley if we have every community on fibre optic links and there’s better communications that people can phone. We had Safer Neighbourhoods legislation two Assemblies ago and there...

We have about $570 million that we hold in securities. That number has gone up from initially it was about $500 million. As we are getting into this business, there are constant reviews being done and if there are discrepancies then we work through the regulatory process to address those.

This is a shared responsibility under the water licences and environmental assessments. The majority of the money is handled by and flows through ENR through that process. We are looking at, as a government, how do we best structure ourselves to better provide oversight for all these outstanding securities across the land. We recognized very clearly after devolution that the federal government wasn’t paying anywhere near the attention they should have to this matter, and we’re currently at work internally still sorting out what’s the best way to structure ourselves to do that.

This is a journey of some duration we started back in 2005. We’ve made set targets and most of them were inward looking as a government, trying to put our own house in order. We are going to be putting out a new document, a renewal, but it’s not a Greenhouse Gas Strategy anymore. It’s going to be a Climate Change Strategy. That document is expected to be ready in the next couple weeks.

We are gearing up to be able to go to COP 21 in Paris, which I think, contrary to COP 12 or 15 that I attended in Copenhagen, which was supposed to be a seminal event, this one actually will be with the president...

With this big, pressing issue there are two things we need to do, of course. The mitigation that we’ve talked about in terms of reducing our greenhouse gases, our carbon footprint, switching to alternative energies, will have some immediate impact in terms of costs and effect of costs of living, but the longer term goal would be do our share, as global citizens, to reduce our carbon emissions and help mitigate the increasing temperatures. In the meantime, we also have to adapt, and as the Member has pointed out, we have had some structural failures. We’ve had pile replacements. This Highway No...

We tend to travel on the honour system but there is an implicit understanding that MLAs would be reporting back, because they’re usually there representing a committee that they would be reporting back to the events that they attended, the meetings they attended, and the important affairs that they dealt with and discussed while on those travels. At this point, that’s basically the extent in terms of compliance or reporting back as to exactly what events were attended. The Ministers, of course, have more accountability and are prepared and will disclose all the meetings they’ve had and all the...

Our specific involvement comes when MLAs travel with Ministers on trips, usually abroad, and there have been a number of those and there are outstanding claims that we’re still waiting for from an MLA that we hope will get cleared off so that we can end this session and the mandate of the 17th Assembly on a clear note.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave Lake, that Bill 72, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just like to take a few moments of the House time to acknowledge, recognize and pay tribute to the award recently bestowed on Sonny McDonald, Order of the NWT.

Sonny McDonald was a long-term employee of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. For 17 years he held the fort on the Mackenzie River Basin Board, as we slowly got our thinking clear, and left just before we finally negotiated an agreement with Alberta, an issue that he always brought up to me as something that was undone and needed to get busy on.

He’s also very well-known internationally as...

Thank you. We continue to work with communities in terms of controlling the alcohol and the alcohol abuse. In some of the larger communities it becomes a very consuming part of the occupation of policing, but we do not have any people that police airports on a regular basis that have that authority to search and seize other than the RCMP if they’re there and are doing it through part of their regular business. Thank you.