Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of ENR. In my Member’s statement I talked about the mining industry impacts. Today I want to focus on the environment and the cleanup, and later on I’ll focus on the business opportunities and the potential opportunities and challenges to date.

I want to ask the Minister of Environment, has this government been working with the federal government in regards to the Bear Lake remediation cleanup of the mines that have been happening in that area? It’s been reported that 700,000 tonnes of waste was dumped into Bear Lake. Is the government...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Moses.

The standing committee is deeply concerned by the attitude of disregard displayed by the department with respect to the 2009 review and hopes that future reviews of the Official Languages Act will be received respectfully and treated more seriously.

The failure of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to provide a final, public response to the 2009 report had the following impacts:

The department did not articulate which parts of the 2009 report it agreed with and was prepared to implement, nor provide any rationale for those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Three hundred pages long, if we read one page a day I think we should get to it.

I want to ask the Minister, in the business case of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, as with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, are there pre-training types of employment opportunities for the Mackenzie Valley Highway in the business case with the Department of Transportation?

I ask this question because I would dearly love to see the Mackenzie Valley Highway right after this project. The lessons we are learning on the Inuvik-Tuk highway, it would be good to transfer those lessons to the Mackenzie Valley Highway from Norman Wells going to Wrigley for a portion.

Are the recommendations that we are learning on the Inuvik-Tuk highway going to be solidified in the Mackenzie Valley Highway?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to that list. The Doi T’oh Territorial Park and the Canol Heritage Trail are 942 square kilometres. Can I ask the Minister if he would provide a remediation, contamination report on the cleanup, because this is in discussion with this government here, as regards to our responsibility once all the checks and balances have been signed off and we take ownership of those two areas?

Mining has been pretty active in the Sahtu, and I’d like to continue my question. In the Mackenzie Mountains across from Tulita, I think the Minister is aware that there’s a lake called Drum Lake where the Drum Lake Lodge is situated. In that area there is a small site that’s been abandoned by, reportedly, a Shell company there that needs to be cleaned up.

Has the Minister looked at this small site at the Drum Lake area?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will continue on with my theme of economic development in the Northwest Territories, particularly in the Sahtu region.

Today I would like to talk about the potential for minerals, for mining in the Sahtu region. The amount of land related to mining exploration within the Sahtu, there are 397 mineral claims covering approximately 301,000 hectares, 14 mineral leases covering approximately 5.8 hectares, and 1.08 percent of the total Sahtu area is occupied by active mineral tenure.

The land claim was negotiated in 1993 and became law in 1994. The land claim asserts...

From our experience from the oil and gas development, and specifically I now want to focus in on the Sahtu region, has the Minister, through his department, done an assessment on the economic benefits around the oil and gas activity that happened in the last five years?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about the potential of the resource development we have in the Northwest Territories. We have seen it in the Sahtu region. Like any new technology, there’s always risk. We deal with that every day, from the time that Henry Ford came out with the Model T car to the vehicles we deal with today. There’s always potential risk with the technology that’s coming out.

Do we have the tools to manage these risks? I believe so. Again, like the vehicles, we have the tools to manage those risks. There are risks going to be involved.

We also need more research over...

Mr. Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories work more actively and closely with the Information and Privacy Commissioner on the implementation on the Health Information Act. Thank you, Mr. Chair.