Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of ITI. I want to ask the Minister on the Canol Heritage proposed Doi T'oh in the Sahtu region. The Minister has been aware that there has been work by the federal government remediation and contamination team. Their assessment report has been dealt with. There are discussions with the land claim organizations. There is a park management committee framework set up.
I want to ask the Minister, what is his department doing in regard to working with the land corporations, the federal government and the remediation team to clean up the mess that’s on the Canol Heritage Trail?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; the federal government has made a commitment to remediate the area. They say it’s going to take five years. Sometimes they say one thing and it may take, in fact, longer than the five years that they’ve committed to. But the other issue here is we had wanted them to take the class 1 sites – there are four of them to be remediated – but the fact remains that they have that entire stretch of 222 kilometres, one kilometre on either side of it. It’s a big area and it’s going to require a lot of work to remediate.
We continue to look at that as an opportunity to put in infrastructure. This summer we are going to be putting in a cable crossing at the Twitya River. I had the opportunity to travel with the Member into the area recently. We are making those investments.
We’ve also worked with local organizations on some willow clearing on the first 25 kilometres. That work, I believe, has been completed or will be complete soon.
We’re continuing to move forward, but again, one of the big hang-ups for us is the remediation that the feds have committed to on the Canol Trail itself.
Just for correction, it’s 222 miles. I want to let the Minister know.
The remediation sites that need to be cleaned up, I want to ask the Minister, is this part of the transfer of lands from the federal to the territorial in the context of the territorial government taking over these lands? Is the territorial government in discussion with the feds so that these lands then can be transferred over to the territorial government so the Sahtu Dene and Metis can own, manage, develop and run the Canol Heritage Doi T'oh Canyon Park?
The federal government excluded the transfer of the entire section of the Canol Heritage Trail – and the Member is correct; it is 222 miles, not kilometres – reserved for the Doi T’oh Territorial Park from the final Devolution Agreement. Subsurface rights were, however, transferred to the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories. The Government of the Northwest Territories can still apply for transfer of administrative authority from the federal government, and the Government of the Northwest Territories will be seeking to have the land transferred for the Doi T’oh Territorial Park before the end of this projected timeline of five years that I mentioned earlier.
The contaminated areas, if you look at the report, it’s pretty thick but it’s very, very interesting. Just on the pricing of the fuel, one of the statements in the report says if they were to do the project, in costing out the project, a barrel of oil would cost about $1,000. You know, the expense of doing business in that area.
I want to ask the Minister, given what we know from the remediation assessment and the contamination and work that’s been done on the 222 miles of that stretch and what happened in the 1940s as of today, does the Minister, does his department understand the enormous step that we’ve taken to protect our lands and also the enormous amount of energy and effort it will take to clean up these specific sites along the Canol Heritage Trail? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The proposed park, of course, follows the now defunct Canol Pipeline built during World War II, of course. It includes several waste sites with abandoned buildings. I know the Member and I have toured some of those abandoned buildings, equipment and vehicles interlinked with an old roadway. These sites present hazards to human and animal health, including oil spills, exposed asbestos, structurally unsafe buildings as well as almost 650 linear kilometres of copper coated steel telephone wire. There’s a lot out there that needs to be remediated, needs to be looked at.
I think for us, we need to continue to impress upon the federal government the desire to have that remediated. I guess looking at it in a positive view it will be economic activity hopefully for some companies in the central Mackenzie Valley in the Member’s riding, to help remediate the Canol Trail. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Minister have an estimated dollar figure as to what the possibilities are the federal government is looking at? I say this because at one time the federal government said, looking at the Canol and funding, it is almost close to what it costs to clean up that we’re still cleaning up the Giant arsenic mine here, and that’s the equivalency of cleaning up the Canol Heritage Trail, and that’s just on a hiking-type of discussion I had with the federal government representative.
Can the Minister tell me if he has any type of numbers?
The Member probably knows the area better than anybody, having spent as much time up there as he has. He would also know that there is an infrastructure there. Sometimes the only way to get in there is to hike in or to take a helicopter. The cost of remediating and cleaning up, you know, what are remote sites, is going to be very, very expensive. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess today on what that would cost, but it will be a tremendous figure to clean and remediate the old Canol Trail.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
