Ronald Bonnetrouge

Madam Chair, the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment took the job of reviewing Bill 74, Forest Act, very seriously. The bill itself will impact residents across the Northwest Territories in a tangible way if it receives assent, and the bill is the first to be codrafted in the Northwest Territories.

A significant amount of the committee's time and energy went in to reviewing this bill line by line, listening to what the people thought about the bill, and brainstorming solutions to problems identified by committee members. This work is outlined in the committee's report...

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Department of Environment and Climate Change prepare a detailed budget and work plan for continued codevelopment of regulations necessary for a new Forest Act allowing for more public engagement on those regulations and the implementation of its new responsibilities under a new Forest Act. Mahsi.

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that departments undertake in the codrafting of resource management legislation and regulations, should secure additional resources for this process, and conduct more robust public engagement. Mahsi.

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that if the overall legislative timeframe allows, there should be the ability to extend standing committee reviews of resource management bills to allow for completion of the collaborative review process. Mahsi.

Mahsi. So to trigger that whole process, the community would have to request through ITI for the boat and the ramp or the dock and the ramps?

Mahsi, Madam Chair, and mahsi to the Minister for that. I'm just wondering why you know, if our community I was asking for a process of how we could get that in. Now you only mentioned one part of it there, getting DFO involved. What's DFO's involvement in anything like this? Mahsi.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Yeah, I was on the committee that travelled with social development on this Education Act. Although it was specific to several items that would give some leverage to the department in accessing school records from the communities, we did hear, as my colleague from the MLA for the Great Slave spoke passionately about here, she pretty much captured everything that was out there. But there was other ones that I heard from the BeauDel, you know, education council members up there that they're saying well, all these changes we're looking at making on this first round, you know...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, Saturday, is a federallyrecognized statutory holiday in recognition of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This holiday falls on September 30th each year. This day honours residential school survivors across Canada and the thousands of children who never made it home.

The federal government contracted the Catholic and Anglican churches to operate the residential facilities in order to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the white man's culture. One of the ways was to separate Indigenous peoples from their families and homes. Our people were...

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Has the department hired engineers, or they're using inhouse engineers and have they been to the community yet? What's the expected timeline for this type of work here? Mahsi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I note that the Deh Cho bridge repair work is not listed in here. It's I think it's probably repair work but that's the one dealing with the cable failure. I'm just wondering if it's a bigger it's a bigger task than originally expected, if they have to bring in an expert from the United Kingdom, and what's the projected estimated cost to repair that project and what's the timeline? Mahsi.