Michael Miltenberger

I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

Thank you. Those concerns are captured in the approvals and in all the conditions that were attached through the approvals for those two projects. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate this motion being brought forward. It supports the work that has been underway for some time with Justice and Finance on looking at this issue, looking at whether we need to change our legislation or whether in fact it can be done through community municipal bylaws. The City of Yellowknife expressed some time ago, as well, an interest in having this matter explored so that collectively we’ll get to where we have to go. As this is direction to Cabinet, we will be abstaining. Thank you.

Thank you. In regard to the first part of the Member’s comment and question about which law would prevail, it relates to other territorial legislation. When there’s territorial legislation and federal legislation, then it has paramountcy. It overrules territorial legislation. That’s one issue.

The other issue is I’m convinced that the process that was put in place to approve those two wells, those two applications, was under the NEB, what’s voluntary and what they say in the questions part of their filing is they fully expect the proponents to disclose, which they’ve done. At the same time, we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Tuesday, November 12, 2013, I will move that Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

No, I haven’t spoken to the federal Minister directly on this issue.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. We as well try to make sure we work to make sure we have those same type of firewalls. Thank you.

We’ve accepted some, we’ve modified some and we’ve rejected some. It’s not accurate to say that we’ve rejected the recommendations. We have an obligation to be thorough and due diligence and look at the work that we’re doing, look at the advice and recommendations from other parties, and we’ve done that. We’ve agreed with some, modified some and some we’ve rejected.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that all the parties did the best that they could to move this process along. It’s very complicated and there are a lot of players. There’s a lot of interest, lots of advice and recommendations and all the decisions being made on the process and the decisions made were on what was going to be done in terms of freezing and those types of things all took time. Thank you.

There is not a question of have to be rejected. We did a review of the recommendations. We looked at them closely. We looked at how they all fit together. Some of them are sequential. There are issues related to time, to cost and to scope of the project. In spite of the Member’s comments that money is no object, when you’re in government, in fact, money is a constant object.

But very clearly, the concern is cleaning up the site. We don’t want any delays. Some of the concerns, in our opinion, are that some of their recommendations, because they’re sequential, for example, could add up to three...