Kieron Testart

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Over the course of this budget review, I want to be able to speak to some of the work standing committees did during the business planning process. We touch on this often in our sittings to benefit our constituents that MLAs are hard at work for the fall of every year, reviewing the departments' annual business plans. This takes a lot of time from the Ministers' offices, the standing committees, and from the departments and departments' staff. It is a significant amount of work, and it should not be understated how important this is in the functioning of consensus...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs well knows the issue of the outstanding amendments to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, earlier in the day in my Member's statement quoted one of her officials from a business plan review for 2016-2017. I would like to ask the Minister today: what progress has been done since that review on updating the Cities, Towns and Villages Act? Thank you.

I'm just going to remind the Minister that the GNWT is in a revenue crisis right now, a massive shortfall that is unpredicted at this time around. It seems like now is the time to do it. Will the Minister reconsider that in light of a significant shortfall in revenues?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment made a Minister's statement, and I will quote from it: "Royalties directly impact the profitability and viability of resource development projects in the NWT" and that, "further, we will not be reviewing our resource royalty regime as part of the work on the proposed act."

One of the stated public goals of the act is to create a cuttingedge mineral resources regime in the Northwest Territories. If royalties affect our competitiveness so much, why is the Minister indicating that we are not going to address...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister reach out to the City of Yellowknife, canvass with them on any potential funding shortfalls, and commit to working with them to resolve those shortfalls, either with additional funding or with legislative change by the end of this session? Thank you.

Will the Minister approach the municipalities herself instead of waiting reactively for them to approach her? Will she approach the municipalities and coordinate these amendments?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm passionate about this issue. It's long overdue. In addition to these changes that are being proposed, these minor changes to the CTV, has this allowed the department to look at other outstanding changes and consult on other issues with the CTV Act? It's a big piece of legislation. Is the Minister contemplating any other changes to the CTV Act? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Tough act to follow.

A lot of these new initiatives that the department is speaking to are good things: additional resources for land rights agreements; $250,000 to the friendship centres; $100,000 for the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation; the Western Premiers Conference; campaign schools. I mean, these are all good things, but around what the standing committee deemed as extraordinary funding requests from the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation and the council of friendship centres, these are both issues that have been raised with Members of the Legislative Assembly as...

I appreciate the stakeholder engagement that's gone into this. The Association of NWT Communities has recommended these changes and other changes in the legislation for, I think, a decade now, so it's nice to see the department moving forward. I'm wondering if there's any possible way that the Minister can move up the timeline? The reason I ask, Mr. Speaker, is the City of Yellowknife is depending on some of these changes so they can afford their tourism operation. I just don't want to be put in the situation where we're not able to give the City of Yellowknife this legislative change and they...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, support the mining industry. I don't think my question was insulting. I think what's troubling is that the Minister won't present those significant contributions to our government's revenues and our economy in a transparent annual mining report. Will the Minister commit to putting those facts on the table in an annual report so we can stop having this debate and properly acknowledge the contributions of the mining sector to our economy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.