Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask a few further questions for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I’d like to follow up with some of the things he referenced in some of his answers, one of which disturbed me when the Minister, at one point, said get on with it, we need to get on with the project. It goes back to my unfortunate feeling that everybody connected with that project wants to just get on with it and they aren’t willing to consider residents’ concerns.
The Minister mentioned delays that would be caused by accepting recommendations by the environmental assessment report, but I’d like to know from the Minister, if he can explain to me, why the environmental assessment took five years to get done. My understanding is the government had a great deal to do with the length of time for that EA.
Can the Minister tell me if we, at that point – we, the GNWT – were doing everything we could to move the EA along? Were the delays caused by this government or another government? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that all the parties did the best that they could to move this process along. It’s very complicated and there are a lot of players. There’s a lot of interest, lots of advice and recommendations and all the decisions being made on the process and the decisions made were on what was going to be done in terms of freezing and those types of things all took time. Thank you.
To the Minister, yes, things take time, but I don’t think it should take five years for an environmental assessment. Goodness knows when it took that long for the pipeline, people were screaming that it was far too long.
The Minister quoted from a letter from 2012, I believe he was referencing the Oversight Working Group at that point, and I feel strongly we need an independent oversight group, which apparently has been rejected, or which I know has been rejected. So the Oversight Working Group, from my understanding, has not met since September of 2012, shortly after the letter I think the Minister referenced.
I’d like to know from the Minister if this oversight group has not met in over a year’s time, how am I to be comforted that we have good oversight on that project. Thank you.
As MLA, I think the Member would be very hard to comfort on this issue. It’s clear she wants total acceptance of the report, and no questions asked, cost is not an issue, those types of things don’t matter and somehow that report should be taken totally as is because a lot of people provided their recommendations. They did a lot of work. We appreciate the work, we’re looking at the work and using a lot of the recommendations, but no responsible government would be wise just to take things at face value without taking a look at them, especially when we’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars we have and are going to continue to invest in this project. Thank you.
I have to ask the Minister how he can say that they are taking a look at them when we have a letter from the project team which rejects these recommendations.
We’ve accepted some, we’ve modified some and we’ve rejected some. It’s not accurate to say that we’ve rejected the recommendations. We have an obligation to be thorough and due diligence and look at the work that we’re doing, look at the advice and recommendations from other parties, and we’ve done that. We’ve agreed with some, modified some and some we’ve rejected.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, one of the ones that have been rejected that I’ve referenced several times is an independent oversight. If we have to accept a non-independent oversight body, the Oversight Working Group has been working on an environmental agreement. It’s been worked on for many years. I’d like to ask the Minister when will the oversight group get back to the table and finalize this environmental agreement. Thank you.
We’re prepared to, and want to, engage to resolve this issue. The letter is very positive about what we still see as the potential for the role of an oversight group when it comes to advice and recommendations as opposed to final say and vetoes. So we have to resolve that issue. It’s a very fundamental one, but there’s still a lot of good work that can be done. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
