Masi. Oral question. Member of Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier, I spoke about NTCL. My questions are for the Minister of MACA and he might have to tap into his expertise in Finance and Lands as well.
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NTCL owes about $685,000 in property taxes, last time I checked, to the town of Hay River. Does the department have a contingency plan for this money, if NT can’t pay it, as the town’s an unsecured creditor? Or is the town expected to absorb this cost? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my first advice to the town would be to seek some advice from their lawyer or their accountant and in fact, I would advise all communities that find themselves in this similar situation to seek the proper advice. If the $685,000, or $600,000, just close to $700,000 is owed for property taxes, the town does have the ability to explore the recovery taxes as per the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
As I stated earlier, NT’s probably the largest holder of land in Hay River, by quite a large margin. Is the government aware of how much land will revert back to the GNWT if NTCL does go bankrupt or how much will revert to the town or how much will revert to the feds.
The Member is correct. The company does own a large number of properties in Hay River. As for the actual number of which ones are, if any are GNWT owned, I would have to follow-up and get that more detailed information and how much is owned by the town. I’ll commit to the Member that I’ll try, I’ll work to get a breakdown of exactly where these properties are from, if they’re leased, they’re owned and I will provide that information to the Member.
I thank the Minister for that. My next question is the town, the land that does revert to the town or the GNWT, well, I guess the town is my concern. Much of it is going to need environmental remediation. I mean, NTCL’s been there for 70 years, there’s you know, hydrocarbon contamination on a lot of the sites. There’s contamination from paint, from all this kind of stuff. Is the town responsible for the environmental remediation? Because it could be tens of millions.
Mr. Speaker, the environmental remediation would be the responsibility of the owners. If the town owns the land, responsibility for remediation would be theirs. If the GNWT owns the land, then the responsibility for the remediation would be the GNWT’s. We have an Environmental Liabilities Committee, which would do an assessment whether contamination exists on the land and so the land would go to on our environmental liabilities list and would be remediated according to the GNWT priority and procedures. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where whoever owns the property would be responsible for the remediation.
Masi. Oral question. Member of Hay River North.
I believe this is my last question. My fourth.
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I’m also concerned about the waterways because there’s been barges sitting idle for years and I’m wondering who’s going to be responsible for the clean-up of that? Is that a federal responsibility or is that something the GNWT is going to help out with?
Mr. Speaker, as far as the waterways go, that would still be a federal responsibility, so it seems that in this case, it could be, you know, the town has some interest in it, the GNWT may have some interest in it and the Government of Canada may have some interest. I think it would be wise for the three organizations to get together and decide a plan to do some remediation if the company goes, I mean, the company is in receivership, so we’ll have to come up with a plan going forward. But I do know on the government side of it though, we do have our committee that would do an assessment on any remediation that we might be responsible for.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Masi, Mr. Speaker. Maybe it’s environmental liabilities day or week. I apologize, I didn’t give the Minister much heads up on this. It’s been a busy week. Earlier this week, I made a statement about the significant financial security shortfall for the Cantung mine and how our government really didn’t deal with the issue after we inherited the site under devolution. Today, though, I made a statement about the significant financial security shortfall for the Prairie Creek site. Can the Minister of Lands tell this House whether the GNWT holds the surface lease for the Prairie Creek site? Masi, Mr. Speaker.
Minister of Lands.
Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes, the administration and control of the site has been transferred to the GNWT. However, through provisions of the devolution agreement, any historic liabilities are still the responsibility of Canada.
I appreciate the answer from the Minister. There are terms and conditions in that lease that limit the liability of Canadian Zinc and leave GNWT taxpayers at risk of having to pick up the unfunded liability of the site, which could be as little as $6.5 million or perhaps as much as $19 million. That lease is also in over-hold tenancy right now. Would the Minister tell this House what actions he is taking to close the financial security shortfall under the lease?
Mr. Speaker, as the Member noted, the current lease is in an over-holding tenancy and production is not allowed on this lease. Under the NWT Lands Act, the company will need to negotiate a new surface lease that allows for production and at that time, we’ll negotiate updated securities in the context of the most up-to-date reclamation plan. The Member is correct that there is some liability that’s held there and he mentioned the figure $2 million and out of that, $250,000 was for the surface lease.
I appreciate the response from the Minister. The issue is: the security under the lease is not going to cover what’s actually at the site now. The issue is this company is having some financial issues. I outlined the financial warning signals on Prairie Creek in my Member’s statement. Can the Minister tell us what work his department does to monitor and track the financial stability of companies where we hold financial security and if we have developed thresholds or triggers for us taking action and the action might include things like bumping up security or turning the site back to the federal government.
Mr. Speaker, as I said in my opening response, the federal government has accepted responsibility for historical remediation or liabilities. However, on a go-forward basis, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, they monitor the activities of the mineral and development petroleum companies operating in the NWT and including the financial status of the company and the work is delivered through ITI’s financial analysis and royalties administration division. As much as we would like all the companies operating in the NWT to be financially stable, our main concern is to ensure that we have all the proper securities in place so that if they were to have some financial trouble, at least we would have the protection of remediating any liabilities that might occur.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I appreciate the answer. In the absence of any action by our government to ensure full and adequate security for Prairie Creek, it’ll be increasingly difficult to demonstrate due diligence. Without due diligence, it will be harder and harder to turn this site back to the federal government. The clock is ticking and we have less than three years to sort it out. Can the Minister commit now to voluntarily turn the Prairie Creek site back to the federal government to avoid us picking up the expenses of remediating another contaminated site? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that any remediation that needs to be done at this site when it was, now, is the responsibility of the federal government. On a go-forward basis, we need to ensure that as the Member said, we need to ensure that we’re doing our due diligence to ensure that this government and the people in NWT are adequately protected when we have these sites going up. I’ll explore this further and see if there’s any options out there. We want to ensure that we protect anything that we’re responsible for since taking over those responsibilities through devolution.
Oral Questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister for Transparency and Public Engagement let members of the public and Members of this House know how the open government policy is coming along? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Transparency and Public Engagement.
Yes, Mr. Speaker. Of course, this is one of the topics that’s going to be on our agenda for the summer caucus. We are doing research in this area and we’ll hopefully be presenting some options to caucus when we meet in the summer.
Has the Minister reached out to other jurisdictions and learned what they are doing with open government policies? I know that the federal government has made a commitment to having open government policy by next year.
Mr. Speaker, we have looked at initiatives that are taking place in other jurisdictions. Hopefully, they will provide some guidance to us as to the options that we will be looking at in our jurisdiction.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Does the Minister intend to have a work plan or a schedule completed by the end of the fiscal year? Can he make that commitment?
As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker, we are working on this and we would hope to have such a plan by the end of the year.
Oral Questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve often criticized this government for gloom and doom. It’s good to hear hope from the other side of the House. Can we get a commitment, though, rather than just hopes? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’m not sure of the exact dates, but we will have such a plan in due course, hopefully by the end of the year.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Masi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, these questions are for the Minister of Transportation. The Minister of Transportation said in this house that the Department of Transportation had submitted a detailed business case to the Government of Canada proposing a $700-million investment in an all-weather highway from Wrigley to Norman Wells. We would like to see on this side of the House this detailed business case and I wonder if the Minister can tell us where and when we will receive that. Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Transportation.
I’ll have to check with the department and I know we’ve submitted one on the Mackenzie Valley Highway and see where that’s at. I believe it’s going back and forth with the federal government. I will endeavour to check on to it and get back to the Member on that.
Thanks to the Minister for that answer. Can he tell us at what point he’s going to share this business case in any form with this side of the House?
As I said, I will look into it with the department and see where we’re at with the Building Canada Plan and if we’re available to share that, I will share it with the other side of the House as soon as I can.
Mr. Speaker, I’m also looking for a document that is a macro-economic policy framework blends application to the Fortune Minerals Tlicho road. I’m wondering if the Minister of Transportation can share that document with this side of the House.
Again, I will have to check with the department and see where that’s at, see if we’re able to share that document as it has a bunch of detailed information, I believe, in it that I’d have to check on.
Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, could the Minister of Transportation articulate the terms under which he will share documents for which he is responsible with this side of the House? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Any correspondence that we need to, that we are able to share with the Members of the Assembly, we will share through committee or through tabling of documents in this House…
Can the Minister repeat that? The mic wasn’t on.
I forgot what I said, no.
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I said, yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll have to check on the department, on what we can share with the public and what we can share with the committee and we’re willing to share anything we can through committee or through public release of documents or tabling documents in the House.
