Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just in our own political timeline, this particular session will go to the 7th of March. There will be a prorogation and on the 7th of March there will be a new session starting which will be an opportunity to bring into the House this bill and other legislation for first and second reading which gives the committee 120 days to do their work and report back to the House, which means in all probability the last session in August. If, in fact, we wait until May or June, then we will totally miss any opportunity in the life of this government to bring this bill to the...

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the Member that he’s received many answers from me over the life of this Assembly; he just may not have liked them all. That does not consist not getting an answer.

In this particular case, we have done consultation. There was a publication sent out in 2009 that laid out all the main principles, proposed changes followed since that time with ongoing consultation. This act is a good act. I think it meets the test and I will also submit to this House that no matter what assurances I would provide to the Member except delaying and killing the bill, would not satisfy...

Mr. Chairman, given the fact that we have just signed the agreement-in-principle and we are just sort of organizing ourselves in our jurisdictions to start the negotiations, that is an issue that will have to be resolved. I would anticipate there would be possibly some type of period of time to allow for those types of loose ends or oversights. At this point, I am not in a position to speak specifically what the final detail will be on that very specific issue that the Member has raised. Thank you.

That was a federal announcement based on the result of the findings of a panel that looked at the work and there were some current studies like the one done by Dr. Schindler and Dr. Kelly. A panel came out and said that there were significant gaps in the role the federal government was supposed to be fulfilling. They announced that they were going to set up this monitoring. They announced they were going to set up a panel to oversee that. We do have, as I indicated, the benefit of having one of our staff on there, Dr. Kelly, who is sitting on that panel.

As we conclude this budget process and get geared up over the summer/fall, I will commit that we will consider the issue of how we provide support service in this area as we look at the business plans for 2012-13. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, there are some like Giant Mine where there is a separate agreement that will be separate from the agreement-in-principle where we have a signed arrangement with the federal government and ourselves, and then I will ask the deputy to speak about our responsibility on Commissioner’s land and some of the other waste site issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first question, just so it’s clear, Minister Bob McLeod and I had supper with Minister Kent and we raised the issue with the monitoring program, encouraging him to have Aboriginal representation on the board for it to be truly representative and successful, and we made the case. The Premier initially was there, but we made that case and that’s where we left that one.

The clearing house of information, we’ve talked about that. That’s one of our goals going out of the Water Strategy over time, is to be able to connect and make sure that we’re coordinated in terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the more remote and isolated communities there is a lot of interdepartmental cooperation as well as cooperation with the communities’ hunters and trappers groups, dog mushers, if they’re there, to deal with issues like rabies, like shots, pooling our resources, because there’s no specific clear program for this particular area that the Member’s talked about. As well as working with those, working with those universities that have veterinary colleges and where we’re able to work with veterinarians in the communities. So our intention would be to continue that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intention at this still preliminary stage of the road of all this alternative energy money and the Biomass Strategy is to work with communities and regions to find ways to put in infrastructure that will allow the use of biomass and in where it makes sense and their technology is there, if there is a district heating, district power kind of opportunity that is there, we are interested in that as well. The Member has to keep in mind what we are talking about here. The 16th Assembly has started the process that is going to stretch out before us I would suggest for...

Mr. Chairman, currently if you looked at a map from northern Alberta all the way down to the Arctic, in the NWT I think in the neighbourhood of about 148 different types of monitoring is going on. One of the challenges and problems is that it is often very disconnected, that companies are doing it. Some government agencies are doing it. Other government agencies are doing it. Different levels of government are doing it.

The other question and the big concern around the oil sands is: was it the right kind of monitoring? Were we testing for the right things in all of these exotic substances like...