Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the specific question of community water monitoring, there are sites that have been established. There is one near Good Hope. We also installed sites above and below Norman Wells, as well, with all the equipment that we use to do the monitoring to detect and be able to check water quality and what specific substances may be in there and at what level. That is there and we’re committed to building that network all the way down to the Arctic Ocean, to the Beaufort, to make sure that all the communities have that same level of comfort about the quality of their water as it flows north.
In regard to the broader question and concern about water licences and what’s our role, we will have roles in water licences. We are now moving into a quasi-judicial role where, as responsible Ministers, we have to be very careful about what we say about specific projects, where we say it, how we say it, to whom we say it to, to ensure that we protect the integrity of the process, that we do not create any apprehension or reasonable apprehension of bias, and we have moved from that ancillary role to a leadership role, and with that comes that responsibility to always be very conscious about how we comment on specifically individual projects as they are brought up, given the fact that we have that regulatory function, in my case, with water. The Minister of Lands will have their authorities, as will the Minister of ITI, so we will ensure the integrity of the process and we will play the roles in the North that were formally played by federal Ministers.
When you have a company such as Imperial Oil renewing its water licence for the next 10 years and stated in their submission that they are going to be taking out close to three billion litres of water over the 10-year period and putting back 1.5 billion litres after it’s been recycled through its plant, this states specifically to the chapter in our land claim agreement where our water will not be altered, the quality of water will not be altered, so the baseline study, I guess, is asking and I appreciate the Minister citing that there is the water monitoring, field testing or it’s actually a location where they test on a regular period, they test for certain chemicals and they test for a certain shift in the quality of the water. That’s what I’m getting to. That’s what we negotiated in the Sahtu land claim, the altering of the quality of the water in the Mackenzie River. That’s what I’m getting to, and just to give some assurance to the people in Fort Good Hope who pull the water out of the Mackenzie River to use it for drinking. I wanted to just state that for the Minister.
The other question I have is right now in the Sahtu there is a CanNor project along with the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board. They’re going into communities to look at the traditional environmental lifestyle and balancing that with the skill development with the industry. The report hasn’t been written up yet, but I’ve been hearing that some of the elders are being in these meetings and in these workshops, and I talked earlier to the Minister about having a gathering of traditional knowledge keepers of the environment into the region, and extracting some of that knowledge in the form of almost like an elders’ summit on traditional knowledge. Not everything can be pulled out of the books. You need the elders there with their first language and the history of the areas that they are using in the Northwest Territories.
One of the concerns, and again, I’m going to speak just on the comment that was made to me over the weekend, the elders are quite concerned of the water being extracted from the fish lakes, and that’s the concern that has been noted there. I guess I want to ask the Minister just on the baseline studies on the lakes that are now being used by the oil companies to use for their operations. Is there, right now, some baseline studies being done on the fish lakes in the area?
There is baseline work being done, as I discussed with the Member during question period. I’d have to check and get back to the Member whether it includes specifically fish lakes, but I’ll commit to do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list I have Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few comments for the Minister and the department. First off, on last year’s spending on forestry, a lot of people in my riding would like to see the forestry crews replaced with communities. I know in last season, I believe it was more than $10 million in spending. A lot of that money could be spent within our territory. I know a lot of it went south. That’s one thing we need to work on is creating more employment in the communities and stop a lot of these major fires before they get out of hand.
The other thing I wanted to comment on – and this was mentioned earlier today – was the Lands department. I look at the facility in Inuvik and there are a few positions that are going to be in Inuvik. It’s pretty clear that there needs to be another main facility there. The facility right now at Shell Lake is almost older than Inuvik right now, pretty close. I think it’s time to replace that building. I am not sure what the department’s plans are for the near future. There was a major concern earlier this year that when we do take over departments that we have the proper facilities for them. Right now, those are the only concerns that I have. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have 29 fire crews, combination of contract and our own crews across the North, understandably all in the boreal forest area. So we do have a significant commitment in employing local folks in the regions and communities to fight fires. Oftentimes, if there’s a big fire season like there was last year in the Deh Cho, we import all the folks we can find from other regions. In some cases we even have to import them from outside the territory if we are really pressed, as we were last summer where there was a flare-up, as well, in the South Slave. We were hard at it with all our crews. It varies.
The issue of Shell Lake, I’m assuming it might even be older than Moose Kerr School.
---Laughter
We do have it on the capital plan in a couple of phases. The critical first step is going to be the warehouse space and then the lab has to be rebuilt so that it meets the new standards as safe and meets all those tests. Subsequent to that would be the replacement of the actual office space itself. Thank you.
For a minute there, I thought they were going to replace both those buildings.
Just on another note, it has to do with forestry as well. Two of the communities, Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic, are looking to do some preparation around the communities in the way of firebreaks. Both communities are in line with the forest and we need to ensure there’s some kind of break in case of a major forest fire.
Would the Minister be willing to work with the communities to ensure that happens? Thank you.
We have an ongoing commitment to work with all the communities in terms of making sure their FireSmart Program is put into effect. In communities, for example, in the early parts of the fire season if fire crews are not busy, they can work on that and they have done that in many communities, help with firebreaks. We have staff that can assist with the design. So, yes, we are prepared to work with communities to see how we can advance those critical initiatives.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does committee agree we’re completed general comments?
Agreed.
Page 13-7, department summary, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, operations expenditure summary, $87.528 million. We will return to this once we’ve gone through the pages.
Page 13-8, information item, infrastructure summary. Questions?
Agreed.
Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could the department give a breakdown of the large capital projects for $3.026 million, please?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Ms. Magrum.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could I just ask the chair to identify where on the page that figure they are referring to is? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Magrum. Mr. Dolynny, I’ll ask you to ask that question again, please.
No problem, Mr. Chair. Page 13-8, infrastructure investment, large capital projects, $3.026 million. The breakdown, please.
Ms. Magrum, right towards the bottom. Ms. Magrum.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will provide the breakdown of our entire capital plan which is the $5.091 million, so $2.856 million relates to the Taiga Lab, which is a gifted asset from AANDC as of April 1st; $65,000 which is a patrol boat; $100,000, which is warehouse complex upgrades in Tuktoyaktuk; $170,000, a regional lab in Fort Simpson; $50,000, fire tower, the Enterprise lookout tower; $150,000, Schiltee Rock in the Fort McPherson area for a fire tower; $250,000, an incident response standby facility in the Fort Simpson area; $115,000 in Fort Smith for air tanker base workshop storage; $100,000 in Fort Smith for a planning study for the Territorial Fire Centre; $85,000 for an air tanker base workshop storage in Hay River; $150,000 for air tanker base dispatch standby facility in Norman Wells; $175,000 for regional warehouse upgrades in Norman Wells; $175,000 for a type IV wild-land fire engine crew support; $135,000 for communication network upgrades; $85,000 for repeater tower communications; $125,000 for a mobile incident command centre; $75,000 for a lightning location centre; $100,000 for air tanker base electrical service upgrades in Yellowknife; $130,000 to replace air quality monitoring station in Yellowknife. The differentiation between the large cap and the small cap is the total completed project if it’s over $400,000, then it is a large cap project. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the breakdown. If I caught some of the information correctly, some of them were studies or plans. Are those subject to capital asset depreciation? Thank you.
The planning studies are subject to amortization but only when there was a physical asset in place. For instance, if we have a planning study for towers, then we would have to have a number of fire towers actually built and then a portion of the planning study is attributed to each of those physical assets and those are amortized over the life of that asset. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You learn something every day here. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. We are on page 13-8, information item, infrastructure investment summary. Questions?
Agreed
Page 3-9, information item, revenue summary. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to follow up on my colleague Mr. Yakeleya’s questions. I see our water use fee is $80,000. That’s incredibly low, given the use of this public resource. As Mr. Yakeleya said, 10 billion litres of water at Norman Wells by Imperial Esso. We know, in fact, that that will be put to shame, in terms of the amount, very quickly by the activity with fracking, which is a very, very intensive water use.
Letting industry use these resources at this rate is an incredible subsidy. It’s an environmental subsidy, but it’s much costlier than some; for example, $15 million in the development strategy is pale compared to this subsidy. It’s more along the lines of the hundreds of millions that we are subsidizing with infrastructure.
The big concern here is that in many cases this is permanent loss with fracking. The water is permanently removed from the ecosystem and stored underground forever or returned in a polluted state to the ecosystem. We know that the North has very limited renewable water.
Will we expect to see some recognition of this, now that we have some authority here, in the water use fees? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve been operating from the premise of we will do devolution and then we will evolve from that point. There are a number of areas across the whole spectrum tied in devolution where we’re going to be looking very carefully. We’ve said the same thing about royalties and taxation, that we’re going to be very careful and measured in anywhere, like the issue the Member raises, are going to be getting attention and we’re going to look at how we do business and are we the right size and how do we carefully change things if we do decide to change things, so I would say yes, we’re going to be looking after, as we evolve, those things will be looked at. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the Minister. Just on the timber permits and licences, I know we’ve signed a recent forest management agreement and the Minister has mentioned that stumpage fees will be modest. With this activity, will there be any likely revenue in this area in the foreseeable future? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Campbell.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. With the forest management agreements and forest industry evolving here in the Northwest Territories, once operations commence here we expect to see a significant increase in that area for revenues.
Thank you, deputy minister. Next on my list I have Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple questions on this page here. When it comes to the hunting and fishing licences, we know that there is the Wildlife Act and regulations are pursuant, as well as devolution implementation, as the Minister reminds us here, so how are these two new things that we’re going to be involved with, how does that change how we set hunting and fishing licences and suspected revenues for this fiscal year?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It won’t change what revenues we have projected. We control hunting licences and the federal government controls fishing licences, and there has been no change in fishing licences of any substantive nature for many, many years. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Dolynny.
Mr. Chair, under the Environment Fund net revenue of $150,000, this is a change from last year where we didn’t have an entry in the revised estimates and I’m assuming that the main estimates of $246,000 prevailed.
Can the Minister indicate what took place, why we don’t have a revised estimate and has there been a change in net revenue for the Environment Fund?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Director Magrum.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There was no line in the original previous year’s estimates. This was a requirement to line up our main estimate recording for the public accounts at the end of the year. As we get to the information item later in the mains on the financial statement for the main estimates, this reflects the current year’s surplus projected for the Environment Fund.
There is no revised amount for the ’13-14 Main Estimates because we are expecting an increase in costs. There has been an increase in costs in freight, contractors’ costs, satellite depot contracts, increased staff required for the pilot project with e-waste. In ’14-15 we do project that we will have a surplus because we are going to be retaining a portion of the salvage value at the processing centres, where we currently do not. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Magrum. Mr. Dolynny.
I appreciate the response here. The fees for water and soil analysis, this is a brand new entry here for 2014-2015 at $524,000. How did the department come up with that number? What was their basis and guidelines for $524,000?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This was based on a multi-year average of the figures we got from AANDC. Thank you.
Are those numbers publicly available? Thank you.
If there’s interest to share with committee, we could do that.
I just want to make sure what the fees we’ve got slated for the residents of the Northwest Territories are indeed in line with what we acquired through AANDC, so again just a baseline. If the department wants to provide a baseline, I’ll definitely welcome it as a Member here, but I’ll leave it up to the Minister to decide.
On the subject of water use fees at $80,000, on what basis did the department set those fees at? Again, is this another number they got from AANDC?
Mr. Chairman, it’s the same process that was used with AANDC that we had talked about previously. Thank you.
