Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we made the Discovery Air loan there was considerable angst and agitation by some Members on the other side of the House. There was great concern about what was done. A freeze was put on the fund until it could be sorted out as how to go forward with the remaining money. We agreed to do that. We waited five or six months for a response from the committee. They said to come back and give us some options and we’ll tell you what we think. In the meantime, even though this was shared in confidence with committee, the Member has pointed out that we’re having some discussions now with the Auditor General in terms of how the Opportunities Fund will be accounted for in our books.
I don’t want the Minister to be quick to criticize my committee for sitting on this for five months. It’s been a year and these guys have not come up with a plan on the balance of that fund. I’d like to ask the Minister if the decision to lend the $34 million last year changed the way the federal government looks at the fund, now wanting us to book that whole entire fund as debt. I’d like to ask that question.
Just for the record, it wasn’t the Auditor General, it was Finance Canada that came back to us about how we treat and account for that money. I don’t believe that the Discovery Air loan had any bearing on how we were told we have to account for the money. I understand in Yukon it’s accounted for differently as well. I don’t believe the Discovery Air loan, which in fact is generating enough revenue so this fund does not lose money, had a bearing on this current issue with Finance Canada.
I’d like to ask the Minister what the government’s plans are in the immediate future for the remainder of that Opportunities Fund. If we’re not making any money from the Opportunities Fund and we’re actually paying an administration fee of 7 percent, what are we doing here? Why don’t we just give the money back if it’s going to be booked against our debt?
The Member’s suggestion is a serious consideration.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When might the Regular Members finally find out from this government what it intends to do with the remainder of that Opportunities Fund?
I haven’t yet used in this session in due course and the fullness of time, however, I will say that we are in discussions with Finance Canada. Finance Canada has indicated to us that they have this on their agenda, but they are now very preoccupied pulling their own budget together. So we are in ongoing discussions with Finance Canada about the resolution to this particular issue. As soon as we have anything to report, we will be coming back to committee. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, as I presume, the lead Minister on the Joint Review Panel. At least six of the Joint Review Panel recommendations to the NEB would require the proponents to demonstrate GNWT approval for various plans like incineration of wastes, wildlife plans and so on, plans strategies or assessments. The February 11th response to the NEB consult to modify process, in that the GNWT notes that it may be more appropriate to require the proponents to consult dot, dot, dot, instead of obtaining their approval. So the GNWT seems to be asking or shaking their shoulders from the responsibility or accepting the authority to require approval of those plans. Why would the GNWT make a recommendation renouncing an authority for GNWT approval seen by the JRP as necessary? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, I was trying to follow where the Member was referring to in this particular letter, and I’m unable to follow it. The thing that sticks in my mind was the dot, dot, dot. I have the report here. I was trying to listen to what he was saying and find it in the report. So I’m unable to clearly respond to that unless I can be pointed to where it is in this document which, while it’s before all the Members, is not really before this House. Thank you.
I appreciate that. That’s a fair response. It’s A.(2), on page 2 of the letter. I’m happy to see the Minister has it in front of him. Basically, there’s the point A.(2) and then the immediate sentence below that rejects the opportunity for GNWT to take on the authority that this mechanism is providing us. Why would we do that? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we’re in the process of pulling in a final response. A lot of what is in this letter, I’m assuming once again… I look at my A.(2) and I don’t know if we’re actually looking at the same document, which is the trouble, I suppose, with documents that aren’t before this House. Thank you.
I certainly agree there that this would have been much easier to do during a committee process, much more straightforward, and I think my views on that are clear. So let me move on to another question, if I may.
The Joint Review Panel makes many recommendations aimed at the GNWT. To meet these environmental, social and economic recommendations would require a lot of money. Without knowing what new funds are available, it will be impossible for GNWT to tell the JRP how it can respond to these recommendations. Has the lead Minister opened negotiations with the federal government to obtain these new dollars? And I am assuming we’re well along in estimating how many dollars we will need to fulfill some of these recommendations. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my Minister’s statement, this process is only partway through. We have not come to any final conclusions or recommendations. We have to be very careful how we do that because we’re one of the responsible Ministers. We know that before the start of the JRP process there was $500 million that was talked about as a socio-economic impact fund that would be shared by affected regions up and down the valley. In conjunction with the fact that we already spend 65 cents of every dollar on social programs, that there would be some opportunity for integrating and coordinating our responses and resources, but at this point we are not anywhere near nor am I in a position to speak to the specifics of this report, because we’re not there yet. When we’re finally ready to move, I’m one of a number of responsible Ministers and I have to be very careful of our legal considerations so that no one can stand up in the Leg. that they have a reasonable apprehension of bias that we went into this with foregone conclusions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Rather than go on with this charade and have the Minister call this card all the time, I’d like to maybe ask if the Minister will speak frankly to the Members in committee and bring us into the process. I think we would have some contribution to be made to the guidance, to our legal counsel, and part of that would be recognizing Regular Members as part of this consensus government. But maybe I’ll just ask the Minister if we can get that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Member makes a good suggestion. In fact, as we speak, we are pulling together an offer for a joint briefing between myself, as the Minister responsible for the JRP, and Minister McLeod for the National Energy Board process to do a full and thorough briefing to committee. We’ll bring in all the folks we need, all our skilled people, lawyers and such and have the discussion about this process, which has a multitude of moving parts and lots of considerations that have to be accommodated. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I spoke about the Stark Lake cleanup problem near Lutselk'e. Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious environmental issue and I’m talking about some radioactive contamination. I have questions for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to directing his environmental staff to meet as soon as possible with the community of Lutselk'e on this issue? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would share this information with the Member that the site in question is 22 kilometres east of Lutselk'e on Krys Point and Stark Lake. In the 1950s some advanced exploration was undertaken on site, which included blasting of a tunnel into the hillside in order to obtain samples for an assay. No milling or ore processing took place. The site was abandoned and the tunnel remained open. In the early 1990s, personnel from GNWT mine safety inspected abandoned mine sites around the NWT for safety concerns. The tunnel at Stark Lake was inspected and determined to be a possible concern and blasted closed. The site is located on Crown land and, therefore, the responsibility of the federal government. Indian and Northern Affairs has the site identified on their contaminated site inventory although it is not known if there are any contamination concerns on site. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I do recognize that the majority of the responsibility for cleanup on land and water within the Northwest Territories lies with the federal government. However, I do feel this government has some responsibility. Mr. Speaker, this is an immediate concern and, hopefully, we can get some immediate solutions. I also would be interested in some long-term solutions. Does the Minister have some sort of cleanup strategy for all of the contaminated sites in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
INAC undertook site reconnaissance in 2009 and identified the tunnel and adjacent blast rock pile remains of a cabin and tent frames and an old beached wooden barge. INAC plans to undertake a combined phase 1 and 2 environmental site assessment in the summer of 2010. Mr. Speaker, ENR will commit to obtaining the results of the site assessment and share them with the MLA for Tu Nedhe. Thank you.
I thank the Minister for those responses. Will the Minister commit to working with the federal government and the communities of Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e to develop some sort of a strategy to clean up the sites within Tu Nedhe?
Yes, we’ll work with the Member and the communities, and as the environmental assessments phase 1 and 2 are done and we get a sense of what the federal government is finding we’ll be in a position to collectively ensure that we work together to make the right decisions.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Stark Lake seems to be the immediate concern to the people around Lutselk’e, will the Minister commit to getting something done with the federal government and getting something done this summer in as far as actual onsite cleanup.
The environmental assessments by the federal government are planned for this summer. I think that it’s a critical first step to make sure we know what’s there and what may require cleaning up and how. We’ll be keeping an eye on this and keeping the Member informed. Once we have that information we’ll be in an informed position to make the right decisions going forward.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It has to do with our medical travel. We have a very comprehensive Medical Travel Policy in the Northwest Territories and I would suggest that most of the time it works really, really well. Occasionally, though, we bring to the floor of this House some anomaly, some glitches where there are problems.
The policy is well-known that if somebody requires medical travel it has to originate within the Northwest Territories. However, this does not address the situation that I described today in my Member’s statement where we have a student that’s already halfway towards the facility where they need to receive medical attention from the specialist.
Now, the Minister could solve this with a one-off kind of answer about this particular instance, but I would like to ask the Minister if she would be willing to have her department look at the whole issue of medical travel for students attending post-secondary education and how we might come up with a policy framework that allows for some discretionary type approval for situations like this.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member brought this matter to my attention about 11:00 this morning. My staff and her staff are looking at the specific situation, but I do agree with the Member that we need to make sure that the students who are away and considered NWT residents in any other way should be able to take advantage of their medical travel. So I am reviewing the policy; not the policy, I have to first find out what is going on with this. I’m sure within the policy we can make this happen.
There are no doubt, I mean, the Medical Travel Policy is, no doubt, a very expensive policy and very expensive exercise of the Department of Health and Social Services because we do live in the North and we are remote from some of the very specialized services that are required by our constituents. It’s a very large ticket item. It’s very expensive. Sometimes things are done which might actually seemingly waste money, but the opportunity to save money is here before us.
I’d like to ask the Minister if there is anyone within the organization who looks after medical travel or medical insurance issues who she could see her way clear to give the kind of authority to, that could deal with things like this so that they don’t end up having to reach her desk here in the Legislative Assembly.
Without having reviewed the specific situation I’m not able to say right now whether or not this is a deficiency in the policy or it’s a case of someone just not using the full breadth of the policy. I do need to look at this first.
Right now we do not have an appeal mechanism under the medical policy. That’s the second part of the question. The review that we’re doing of the policy will contemplate that and the changes that we’re suggesting in other policy that we can’t talk about yet, we are looking at that as a part of the larger review of the medical policy. In this situation I’m hesitant to say that it’s either misapplication of the policy or the lack of the policy or anything until we find out exactly what happened, because in my two and a half years here I’ve not had any case like this. It could be that this might be an anomaly. I need to get some more facts.
We have a lot of students from the North who do attend post-secondary facilities in Alberta. It seems to almost be a destination of choice. I don’t have any statistics to bear that out. Where a constituent or resident can prove a cost savings to the government, the cost to get from Grande Prairie to Edmonton to see a specialist is a lot less than getting from Hay River to Edmonton. Where it is an absolute, undeniable, proven case of where it would cost less to waive the policy about it having to originate in the Northwest Territories, would this not be something that the Minister could simply and quickly and expeditiously put into place?
Yes, I would be interested in looking at that I will get back to the Member quickly.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are directed to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. They are in regard to the agreement we have on the gas tax. In the agreement it stipulates that by March 31st the communities have to complete their community energy plans and their integrated community sustainability plans. Yet, from the information that I have, only 10 communities have completed their plans, leaving 23 communities to complete the work before March 31st. It’s only a month and a half away.
In the information that’s been provided it states that some communities are in the process of a meeting with council at the middle of March. This is pretty close to the deadline. In other cases they are still in the process of discussions with a consultant.
I’d like to ask the Minister what happens to those communities that do not complete their commitments under the Gas Tax Agreement and what is the penalty for not completing those reports by March 31st.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are 10 that are completed, 13 bringing them to their councils for approval in February, and the balance -- I believe it’s 13 and 10, I may have the numbers backwards -- will have them to their councils for approval in March. We anticipate that all communities will meet the deadline. In the event that they don’t, their funds will be held back until they have their plans completed and approved.
As we all know, some communities are having difficulties with deficits or lack of core staff to ensure they have capacity to do the work to complete these reviews. I’d like to ask the Minister what other resources are there for communities that do not have the capacity in SAOs or people in the communities who can actually physically do the work. Is the government willing to put more resources into those communities so that we can try to meet the deadline of March 31st?
MACA held five regional workshops to help community governments with their plans. They brought in SAOs, two elected officials from each community to take part in the workshops. As well, some of the communities have gone to the private sector to help with their sustainability plans. We will continue to track those communities that may be a little behind, but we still anticipate that all communities are going to be completed by the March 31st deadline.
Could the Minister give us the statistics on the community energy plans and what communities have completed their community energy plans and which ones haven’t? Thank you.
