Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my questions to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources with regard to, I think they call it, the Rocky Island barge spill. It was just south of Fort Wrigley. It happened in August. One of the barges ran aground.
The biggest concern, Mr. Speaker, is that there was slow response by authorities to access this spill. The other concern is that because of the slow response, the amount of spillage was not adequately reported. I’d just like to ask the Minister: what is his latest assessment of this grounding of a barge on the island just below Wrigley?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Transport Canada continues to investigate the situation. We, as well, have received the same initial information in terms of the amount of the spill, which was, according to the captain, estimated to be very small, between ten and 15 litres.
I know there have been concerns that there was an oil sheen or a sheen on the water that was quite expansive and extensive. Our people won’t even know. This is a Transport Canada issue. We were one of the first folks there. The issue was dealt with as quickly as possible. The formal numbers for the spill are relatively small.
I would like to commend our Department of Environment and Natural Resources for being there as quickly as they were. The federal department and the Coast Guard were very slow in getting there.
How do we do a balance of the fuel that was in the barge and the actual fuel that they did take out of that compartment? Once again, the constituents who were there on the site, as well, said that with the amount of sheen, the amount of spill seemed that it far, far exceeded the 20 litres that was reported. How can we get a good assessment of this, Mr. Speaker? Also, I don’t think it’s doing anybody any favours to be hiding any excess amounts.
Mr. Speaker, the barge contained 577,000 litres of fuel. The compartment that was punctured had about 85,000 litres of fuel. My understanding of the process is that the barge was hauled in to where it could be dealt with and repaired. The punctured compartment was pumped out, and the amount of litres that were taken out was of course measured against what was supposed to be in there. What those numbers are we don’t know yet. That information hasn’t been shared with us that I’m aware of. It’s still under investigation.
I don’t think that at this point it’s an issue of any kind of cover-up or folks hiding things. It’s fairly straightforward. The assumption is that when we see the report, they’ll be able to show the numbers: what was initially in the punctured compartment and what was pumped out.
I’m looking forward to any preliminary report that does come from the federal agencies or even ours. I’m just wondering if the Minister has any current report with regard to that spill.
Mr. Speaker, the investigation is still underway. I understand Transport Canada officials, the inspector, was in Hay River early in September to interview crew members as part of the investigation. I have yet to see any reports, preliminary or otherwise.
I will commit to the Member for the Sahtu and all the affected…. In fact, I’ll update all the Members once we get the report. Given the concern and the fact that this is a major river flowing down through the Mackenzie Valley, we’ll share that information with all the MLAs.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess what we need, as well, from our Government of the Northwest Territories perspective is a good post-mortem to see why some agencies didn’t respond in time. I’d like to ask the Minister at this time: will he be conducting an assessment from the GNWT perspective as to how effective the response was to this incident?
There is a plan to sit down and do the debriefing. We’ll see what Transport Canada comes up with in terms of the official report. We had officials on the ground in relatively short order, and they have perspective and some information and advice, I think, to bring to bear to ensure, as the Member indicates, that we do a proper post-mortem and debriefing to find out what happened and why and what can be learned from the incident to ensure that there’s no repetition in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
