Thank you, committee. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses into the Chamber.
Minister McLeod, I will ask you to introduce your witnesses, for the record.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have to my left Mr. Mark Warren, deputy minister-designate for the Department of Lands effective April 1st; and to my right I have Brenda Hilderman, director of finance and admin with the new Department of Lands. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. We will open the floor to comments on the new Department of Lands. General comments. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering: what will the Minister’s role be in environmental assessment processes? I understand other departments of our government will be reporting to this Minister. Could I get a description? My understanding of the current process at the federal level, we’re taking over. Do the departments speak with their own voice into the process but we are proposing that you – this is my understanding, correct me if I’m wrong – will require that departments report to you. To me, this is removing an important series of voices from the process, but perhaps I could get the Minister’s corrections and perspectives on this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My understanding – and I might have Mark correct me if I’m wrong – is we will coordinate responses and we will be part of a working group with the other Ministers and the input. I think that’s as far as our responsibility goes. We’ll be doing some of the coordinating work and then all Ministers will have their input into the process. That’s as far as we’re at right now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Everything is in the definitions, of course, so I guess I would ask, what does coordination mean to the Minister. Does that mean he will just make sure the formatting is the same and that the departments’ voice will be clearly heard and they will be contributing directly into the decision-making? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Warren.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The responsibility for the Department of Lands will be to coordinate the collection of all the different impacts associated with any given project, whether they are social impacts, economic impacts or environmental impacts. But it is pulling the information together to help the responsible Ministers make a decision, but Ministers will act in their own areas independently. The issuing of a land use permit would be of the purview of our Minister, to do the issuing of a water licence would be under the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, but we would help collect all of the information to help him make those decisions.
Thanks for that information. As I understand it, the Minister will be the decision-maker, except that there might be some sharing of that with a federal Minister. Could I get some fleshing out of that understanding and clarification? Thank you.
No, the Minister isn’t, it depends on what we are talking about, but if we are talking about the issuance of a land use permit in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, then the Minister of Lands would be the final decision-maker on the issuance of that land use permit. If we are talking about the issuance of a water licence, the Minister of ENR would be the decision-maker, but if we are talking about the issuance of a land use permit in the Mackenzie Valley, that is the purview of the boards that are responsible for that. They are the ones that would be, on the advice of the responsible Ministers, issuing those land use permits in the Mackenzie Valley. It depends on where you are operating and which particular authorization is being sought.
Mr. Chairman, thanks for that information. What will be the participation of the federal Ministers in this decision-making?
The federal Minister has a role to play as a responsible Minister, as well, under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. The federal Minister is part of the decision-making process and you have to achieve consensus amongst the responsible Ministers to have a position going forward for final recommendations that are made to the board. Right now the federal government coordinates that consensus, including the territorial Minister in that process. In the future we are going to be coordinating with the feds, so we will take more of a leadership role, rather than them coordinating us, but a lot isn’t changing in that regard. We are not issuing the permits because the board still does.
So I assume that the federal Minister wouldn’t play a role in the water licences and other examples that the Deputy Minister used here, a land use permit in the ISR and so on.
Sorry, can you repeat the question about the water licence?
There were three examples that the deputy minister used, land use permit in the ISR, a water licence, which would be determined by the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I just wanted to know if any federal Ministers would play any role there.
Not in the examples that I gave. We would be the final decision-maker on the issuance of the land use permit in the ISR, for example.
Mr. Chairman, my last question here. Who would be coordinating? Would there be one coordinating federal Minister in the areas where there was a federal role, for example, DFO on environment and AANDC? Would AANDC be coordinating that or would our Lands Minister, as an authority, play a role of coordinating federal departments separately? Thank you.
Previously the coordination role was done by AANDC and headquarters, but with the devolved responsibility, CanNor is going to be taking over that responsibility on behalf of the federal government.
Mr. Chairman, this is an unexpected player at the table now. I hadn’t heard about this one. So, CanNor is the one that will be working with our Minister of Lands on decision-making. Is that correct? Who is the Minister for CanNor? Thank you.
Leona Aglukkaq is the head of CanNor, the president of CanNor, and as far as coordinating with the federal government, it would be us coordinating with them in feeding into the environmental assessment process which is done by the boards under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, so we would work with them to bring a consensus amongst the responsible Ministers, feeding into the board. All responsible Ministers, federal or territorial.
I appreciate the information here and the tolerance of my colleagues’ new department. I am just trying to get my understanding right here.
Just finally, is this only for lands that we are taking over and Commissioner’s land? Any federal land that is left over, there would be a difference; we would not be having the same authorities and so on. Is my understanding correct there? Thank you.
The authority of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the boards are for all lands, federal or territorial, so how we feed into the process is changing with us taking more of a leadership role and feeding into that process post April 1, but it would include projects that were potentially on federal lands, because the boards still have the authority over those lands as well.
Thank you, deputy minister. General comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s questions. I got a little confused with the number of Ministers and who is responsible and who is leading and not, and so on. I accept that we will now be the “person” who is at the top and pulling other people in and doing the coordinating, but we have got Fisheries and Oceans at the federal level, we have got AANDC and I forget the third one, and now we have CanNor and the Minister for CanNor, so I am trying to understand how CanNor fits into this equation. Do we now have four federal Ministers that GNWT and the Minister of Lands has to coordinate with, or is it one or is it just three?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Warren.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe what CanNor is trying to do is coordinate the federal family for us so that we only have to deal with the one point of contact for federal input into the process. Rather than the GNWT going out and trying to build consensus amongst federal Ministers, whether it is a fisheries Minister, and environment Minister or AANDC Minister, that would be done by CanNor and they would then bring that forward to us so that we would have a consensus approach being brought forward by Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Warren. Ms. Bisaro.
Mr. Chairman, thanks to the deputy minister. I kind of went, hmm, I guess we will have to just wait see how it works. Thank you.
Thank you, I will take that as a comment. General comments. Committee, we will move to detail. We’ll go to page 14-7, department summary, lands, operations expenditure summary, $26.830 million, we’ll defer this until activity details and information items have been considered. Page 14-8, information item, infrastructure investment summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Information item, revenue summary. Questions? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m trying to understand some of the numbers on this page and since they’re new there’s not a lot of information that we have to give us any background. So two questions on this page. Regulatory revenues, I’m comparing it to what was in MACA previously and this is up, I think, maybe $20,000 or so, from what was in the general revenue, regulatory revenues in MACA. So with this one, I guess, I would like to know where these revenues come from, what fees and charges make up this $67,000 and the other question has to do with the lease amount, the lease amount is about $2.4 million. The lease amount in MACA in ’13-14 is only about $700,000. So why the big increase in land lease fees, or in lease fees I guess I should say? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Deputy Minister Warren.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The $67,000, the increase is associated with an estimate of the land use fees that would be received from taking over responsibility for federal Crown lands and then the substantive increase in the lease revenues would be associated with the Territorial land leases, approximately $1.6 million additional coming in from the federal government for the leases on federal lands.
Thank you, deputy minister. Next on my list I have Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I had a similar question on the lease. It seems like it did in the land quantum that we’re talking about here, the previously federal land coming over. I think last year our lease revenue was $700,000 from MACA and so that’s been transferred over, it’s $7,000 and now we’re talking about $1.3 million from the federal government, but given the land quantum difference between Commissioner’s land and the federal land, that seems like a small amount. Any explanation for that? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. You’re going to have to bear with us as we try and get some information here because we didn’t expect some of the questions here. So we’re still trying to get our heads wrapped around the money that MACA collects and the money that the federal government collects and recognizing the land quantum, the fees could be different. This time next year we should have a better idea of how we balance the two numbers because the federal government, their fees, I know even for cabin leases, were a lot cheaper than what our fees were.
So there are some moving parts here and I think eventually we’re going to get to the day where all the fees are uniform, the fees that we inherit plus the ones that we have now. So right now, I mean, we’re just kind of jumping all over the place trying to wrap our heads around some of the numbers too. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. We understand this is a new department. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you. I recognize that reality. I don’t have to have these answers right away, but I think we’re on the other side trying to learn about the department too. So maybe we can help each other here.
The capital transfers, $461,000, again, come April 1st it’s a brand new department and we’re already dealing with some capital transfers. I’m just wondering if we know off hand what that’s all about. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Director Hilderman.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The $461,000 capital transfers is the value of the two assets that we understand will be gifted to the Department of Lands from Canada on transfer date, and under the new public sector accounting standards 3410, gifted assets are recorded at the appraised value in our main estimates. Thank you.
Thank you very much for that information. Can we say what those assets are?
Thank you. That value, $461,000, relates to the district office in Inuvik and a warehouse in Fort Smith. Thank you.
That’s great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Committee, we’re on page 14-9, information item, revenue summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Page 14-10, information item, active position summary. Mr. Dolynny.
