Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A mining advisory board to “provide advice to government to ensure mining regulation is in place that encourages economic growth while maintaining high regulatory, environmental and social standards.” To quote the Minister of ITI’s press release seems a worthwhile exercise. However, digging deeper, I find that the board will be comprised of only ministerially appointed people with “direct experience in the NWT minerals industry.”
The Mineral Development Strategy itself was developed by an industry panel. The Minister three times chose to ignore public interest policy input, despite committee insistence that it be considered. The Minister is now extending this lack of respect for public interest to the appointment of an industry panel to further guide public government action, which to date seems to consist of ever more subsidies for the industry.
A similarly misguided approach to mineral development in the past has left us with a depleted environment, billions of dollars in transferred cleanup costs to the public, uncompensated cultural costs to Aboriginal residents and unmeasured impacts in health costs to residents. Clearly, having a mining advisory board comprised exclusively of industry representatives will continue this business-centred path and ignores even industry’s basic understanding of the requirement to meet the public interest in their exploitation of public resources.
We need a broader base of public voices on this board. If the board is to meet the Minister’s goals of representing regulatory environmental and social standards, these perspectives need to be represented along with the mining industry at the table.
Multi-stakeholder boards that truly represent a broad range of interests are valuable tools. Case in point is the NWT Protected Areas Strategy Steering Committee, which includes the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Without representation from environmental and social representatives, the advice of the mining board will not reflect the broad public interest necessary to re-establish the social licence and performance standards the public rightly expects of industry. In fact, the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines already provides this lobbying service to the Minister and does not need to be duplicated.
Is it too much to ask that this government think in terms of lessons learned in today’s modern understanding of responsible, sustainable development?
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
Is it too much to ask that this government think in terms of lessons learned in today’s modern understanding of responsible, sustainable development? A mining advisory board that doesn’t include members that bring Aboriginal government, social and environmental perspectives to the table will fail to meet public interest yet again. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Colleagues, before we continue I’d like to welcome back to the House former Member, former Premier, Mr. Jim Antoine in the House today.
---Applause
The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
