Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to ask questions to the Minister of ENR on the water quality monitoring that could be and should be happening in the Northwest Territories, more specifically working towards another lab in the Northwest Territories. There is one in Yellowknife. I would like to see another one, preferably in the Sahtu where there is going to be a lot of oil and gas development. We need to look at ensuring that people do have safe quality water and that they know what is coming down the Mackenzie River from the tar sands or the pulp mills. Can the Minister answer that question?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a lot of work underway in regards to water, as the Member is well aware, over the last few years and continuing to this very day. As a government, we pull together all of our resources within government to make sure we are working with communities. We are looking at source and water protection, making sure from the source to the tap we deal with that water. We have arrangements – especially in the southern part of the territory where the water comes in from Alberta – we have some initiatives with two different groups, the Slave and the Delta as well as the Peace-Athabasca Delta. We are working with the Alberta government, federal government, Aboriginal governments, with a number of NGOs to do all of this monitoring and the collecting of data. We have been looking at the fish. We have been working with the universities, as well; University of Saskatchewan for one. We have arrangements with members of the Council of Environment Ministers. The Premier is a member of Council of Federation which is taking an active interest in the water.
We are currently negotiating our transboundary agreements that are going to be binding to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Vancouver and the Northwest Territories. We know that the Alberta-federal government has just released their monitoring plan for water which includes, to a certain extent, the Northwest Territories. However, we recognize as does the Member, we need to do more. We have discussions currently underway once again with other potential partners to look at water monitoring, capacity, especially farther north. Specifically if we can do it and find the resources, we think it is very critical if we can get some water monitoring to pass around the Member’s community of Fort Good Hope. We think it is an area that needs to have some attention paid to it. We are working on that and should be able to show some progress in the next couple of months. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for outlining all such work that this government is doing to deal with the water issue. I want to ask any thoughts on what they can do for the people of Fort Good Hope. That would be appreciated by the people there. What baseline water quality information is currently being collected now in the Sahtu?
Mr. Speaker, we are looking at the Canadian Water Quality Guidelines as guidelines that have been developed probably across Canada. It gives guidance and sets standards to be followed by various jurisdictions. We also, when it comes to water in the communities, it has to, of course, meet all of the standards for the health of people, so it is considered potable and meets all of those various tests as well. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, several years ago Imperial Oil was found guilty by Environment Canada for water quality for dumping chemicals in the Mackenzie River. They paid a fine. I think it was a slap on the wrist for them for about $195,000 because of their conviction of dumping chemicals in the Mackenzie River. I want to ask the Minister on the water quality lab, is that something that this government is looking at in the future, putting another lab in the Northwest Territories along the Mackenzie River, more specifically somewhere in the Norman Wells or Fort Good Hope area?
Mr. Speaker, we see a clear need for community-based water monitoring. It is an issue that has come up through all of our consultations up and down the valley as we develop our Northern Voices, Northern Waters water strategy. As we look at the transboundary issues and the negotiations there, it is clear as well that that type of monitoring, both on the Alberta side and as it enters into the territory and as it goes farther north, are going to be critical.
We see community-based water monitoring as very critical. We have been spending a lot of time and energy at the border where the water is crossing, but we also recognize there are needs farther north. As we look at our planning for the expansion of community-based water monitoring, we are definitely looking at places like the Member’s community of Fort Good Hope where there have been a lot of concerns raised. It would be a good point to try to do that as we move forward in our planning. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have said in my Member’s statement that several elders in 1979, Chief Paul Wright and Chief George Kodakin said in the public meeting that one day we are going to put our nets in the water and when we lift the nets, there are either going to be no fish in there or there are going to be fish in there that will be sick and dying and no one will want to eat them. That is the prophecy they said to us in 1979. This is why I bring this issue up of water quality monitoring in the Sahtu along the Mackenzie River. We need to know.
How soon would the Minister be able to tell us that we could specifically have one in Providence, Wrigley, along Norman Wells and so forth, Tsiigehtchic and all the way up to the Beaufort-Delta? Specifically, we need to have water monitoring quality stations in the future. Will we have a lab and ask for another lab? When can the Minister tell us that this is something that he will take to the federal government to start putting these sites into the plan to have along in the Northwest Territories?
Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out at this juncture as we talk about the need to have better information on the water, better decision-making as it pertains to water at a time when the federal government is cutting billions of dollars out of their various departmental programs to save anywhere between $4 million and $8 billion this year. They are looking at a lot of cases, scientists and Environment and Natural Resources and a lot of resources that they currently have are going to disappear.
We are pursuing this as a GNWT initiative with some partners that we are working with, but clearly, if we want to do this the right way, if we want to actually have the decision-making, then it gets us back to the need to get devolution so that we have a legal authority over land, water and resource development. We don’t have to rely on the federal government. We can use our own sources. We can make our own decisions in the North. That is the critical piece in the next year and a half.
The monitoring stations, we will be working on and hopefully in the course of the next business plan we will be able to show some progress, but in the meantime the fundamental issue that we do need are the levers of control finally in the Northwest Territories, land, water and resource development. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
