Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today, my questions are also for the Minister of Infrastructure, and I appreciate the discussion that he and my honourable colleague from the Sahtu just had. Let's talk about transformational change on reducing gas emissions. Given that our territory's major economic growth potential hinges on new sources of carbon-free power, Mr. Speaker, does the Minister agree that Taltson expansion is critical for not only just our economy, but also for meeting our goals with regard to climate change? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we talk about Taltson, we know it represents an excellent opportunity to develop clean, renewable energy and power, current and future industry in the Northwest Territories. Some Members may disagree with that, but that's my position that I take. As the Member knows, industry is currently responsible for 50 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories. Clean power from the Taltson will allow us to fully meet our Climate Change Strategic Framework target and reduce emissions by 517 kilotonnes by 2030, and meet our Pan-Canadian Framework that we've signed onto. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for that reply. I really appreciate that he described the urgency, in fact, behind having to invest in Taltson. Can the Minister then indicate whether developing the business case for Taltson expansion, is it his and the department's number one priority?
As I previously said, developing a Taltson expansion is a priority of this government. Yes, finance is important for this project to go forward, but we are also undertaking the feasibility and development work to understand this project, and the project's economics; that is stuff that we're working on. Equally important to that, to develop this type of project we have to have the right Indigenous governments on side and stakeholders to be with to us help us support this project. The federal government, I believe, is fully supportive of Taltson moving forward, as they've had other legacy projects in the Northwest Territories that helped supplement development in the NWT.
Earlier in his other role, the Minister spoke about how we have a strong story to tell and we're going around the globe pitching the story about the Northwest Territories being a great place to invest, and he just acknowledged that the federal government may very well be interested in investing in Taltson. So it would be nice if the Minister would clarify a little bit more if the Taltson expansion is, in fact, a federal priority, and will they invest in building and constructing this hydro project?
Yes, I believe supporting the hydro development is a priority to the federal government. The party under the pan-Canadian framework is to support clean technology including hydro and transmission development. In fact, if you look at the NWT appendix of the framework, you'll see that the federal government committed a collaboration with the Northwest Territories to the Taltson expansion.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I was talking about a situation that happened in Nahanni Butte, and my questions will be for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain why the local airline wasn't able to bring the firefighters who are trained in extraction and so on to go into Nahanni Butte to deal with the crash? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with respect to the incident in Nahanni Butte, the med response clinical lead and emergency physician performed secondary assessments and spoke with all of the patients over the phone and was able to get a sense of their injuries, their mobility, the details of the crash, as well as their medical histories. Med response was aware that there were pilots and other aircraft on the ground in Nahanni Butte, and that they were ready and willing to fly patients to Fort Simpson, but advised against the load-and-go scenario, if you wish, suggesting that a medevac would be more appropriate.
Physicians and nurses, firefighters, even, are not typically trained in pre-hospital care. In particular, they're not properly equipped and trained for providing services in an airplane that will be transporting patients from one location to the other. Often, they don't have the aero-medical trauma training, and as a result, even though they might be trained in first aid, it would be unsafe for both the patients as well as the professionals to do so.
It is critical to have properly trained medical professionals to care for patients in the air, particularly with trauma being a mechanism of the injury. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I thank the Minister for the answer. I kind of disagree with some of the stats. The Fort Simpson fire department are trained to package and transport people; they're trained in it. The Minister may shake his head. We actually had a first care paramedic trained who was in Fort Simpson who was on call at that time. So why aren't we looking at using this? Is the medevac opportunity out of Yellowknife all we're going to be using, and is this how we're going to deal with all matters in the future?
I appreciate the desire of the community to help, I appreciate the desire of the paramedic to help, and had we been doing ground transportation, it would have been absolutely reasonable to do that, but we weren't doing ground transportation, Mr. Speaker. This was an air evacuation, and as a result, you need individuals who understand the implications of transporting a patient in the air. There are significant additional risks for putting someone in an airplane and transporting them.
The med response was engaged. They were aware of who was available, but for the safety of the clients, the safety of the professionals, it was deemed appropriate to use the medevac team who was properly trained and certified in medical aviation transportation.
The Minister talks about the medevac and how they're trained and all that. Seven hours from the time the plane took off out of Yellowknife to the time the plane took the patients out of Nahanni Butte and Fort Liard. So he talks about ground transportation and these people are trained, Fort Simpson staff, hired staff, could have gotten moved in from Fort Simpson, brought in to Nahanni Butte, gone quickly across the river, and driven to Fort Liard or to Fort Simpson in a more timely manner. So can the Minister explain why it took seven hours for this process to proceed?
Once again, the med response clinical lead and the emergency physician were in contact with the patients and knew the status of the patients and were working with the patients to ensure that they were safe. As a note, and to be clear, med response was activated at 1:20 p.m. to determine the safest way to get the patients out of Nahanni Butte to appropriate medical care. At approximately 3:30 p.m., the med response provided an update regarding the ETA and flight plans. Four medics were dispatched using two different planes; one to Fort Liard with helicopter assistance over to Nahanni Butte, and one to Nahanni Butte. A Twin Otter, in fact, was the plane that was being used, because it's the largest one that can land on the runway. Med response landed in Nahanni Butte at 5:57, which, in my math, works out to about four and a half hours. During the entire time, Fort Simpson staff remained on telehealth services with staff as well as with the patients for monitoring and assistance. Our analysis shows that the timeframe to mobilize staff from one of the NTHSSA facilities to another facility for support would have been around a similar time of arrival as one done through med response.
However, we want to learn from these experiences, Mr. Speaker. A review of the incident occurred. A quality assurance team is reviewing the final report, and it will be submitted to the executive director of Clinic Integration by the end of the month. The report will inform future health authority practice when responding to similar emergencies.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
I appreciate the Minister's response. Again, I'm concerned, but it's great we're learning from it. Will the Minister make a commitment to provide that report back to social development? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm happy to share the finding. I would have to look at the report to make sure that there is no compromising information with respect to identifying individuals. We want to make sure that we're protecting our patients' rights as well our staff's rights to privacy, but I want the information out there; I want everybody to know it as far as what we learned and what we can improve. However, it may not include specific details as to who, what, when, and why. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I talked about the issue of unlicensed tourism operators in the Northwest Territories. I'd like to ask the Minister of Industry Tourism and Investment if he can speak to these issues. Internal documents reveal a significant number of complaints concerning illegal tour operators in the NWT. When was the Minister first made aware of these illegal operations? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, there's immense growth in the Northwest Territories, but with all that, we don't believe there's an unlicensed tourism situation that's rampant with unlicensed operators. The first thing that came to light to me, this is on its second day of its story on CBC, and we take these comments by the news outlet seriously, but I can reassure the Member that this situation is not as diehard as it is projected to be. Thank you, Mr. Speaker
Some of my constituents who are tourism operators have been complaining for quite some time, and I am very surprised to hear that this information has not made its way to the Minister's desk, considering we have operators who are not following our laws and regulations. Since the Minister became aware of it yesterday, what has he done to ensure that all of our operators are compliant with our own laws and regulations?
First of all, for the record, I want to put it on the record that the Northwest Territories is one of few jurisdictions in Canada that asks for operators to have a licence. I want that on the record.
Since this story has come to light, of course, I have been briefed up, because it has been in the news for two days and may be even coming out for a third day. This is something that the news outlet has latched onto. As I have said, I don't think this is a rampant thing happening in the Northwest Territories. Sure, there are problems that come along with success, and success in the tourism industry is huge within the Northwest Territories, and particularly Yellowknife, but I don't believe this is a rampant situation.
Our department has done a ton of work around what we are trying to do to alleviate concerns about this. Some of the complaints that have come forward have not been very substantive, and the accusations that people are providing are hearsay, and they don't want to go much farther than that. We do follow up on complaints. I can tell that, the majority of the time, they turn to be compliant, licensed operators.
What we have done as a department, we have moved to how we are going to set up to improve enforcement, particularly in the North Slave region, because that is where most of this issue is happening right now. We have staffed our regional office to facilitate, manage, and police expanded use of our parks of aurora tourism. We have now a dedicated manager of tourism in the North Slave. We are completing weekly tours and inspections of the aurora touring operators.
For enforcement purposes, we have given enforcement authorities to our tourist development officers, as well as our full-time and part-time parks officers. We have changed the deadlines. This is one of the big ones that we have done lately. We have changed the deadlines of our tourism operator licence renewals so that the tourism development officers can better balance the renewals with enforcement duties.
All tourism operators in the NWT are required to carry a card confirming they are registered and compliant under the Tourism Act, and as a pilot project this winter, I can inform this House that we are introducing a new vehicle identification sticker for aurora operators in the North Slave so that they can be easily confirmed as compliant tourism licence holders.
I was going to say comments about fake news, but it appears the Minister has actually got some substantive replies, and I appreciate that.
One of the concerns that has been raised by, again, the internal correspondence that has been revealed through some of this reporting is that tourism officers don't feel that they have the resources to properly track the growth of these businesses and properly maintain enforcement.
The Minister talked about staffing positions that are currently in place, but based on what we are seeing, and based on these issues, is the Minister going to bring forward additional resources to support the staff who are having trouble keeping up with the growth of the industry?
I have clearly laid out what we are doing to improve enforcement in the North Slave. We are just rolling some of this stuff out, and once we get some more data and feedback, if this problem becomes more rampant, then we can certainly have a look at it.
It is no different than the discussion that we had in this House a couple of weeks ago, asking me to put more resources to tourism. There is only so much money to go around, but at this point, right now, we will track this concern and keep a close eye on it. I know that tourism is a very important part of diversification of our economy, and this type of news that gets out there like this does not certainly help to attract people to come to the Northwest Territories.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I disagree with the Minister. I don't think this is a deterrent to tourists coming; I think it might be a deterrent for people who might be wanting to operate unlicensed operations.
The Minister said that we are the only jurisdiction in Canada that requires licences. What is the specific policy rationale for that, if no one else deems this necessary and it is not an industry standard in Canada? Why are we requiring additional red tape for something that the Minister says isn't a problem? Thank you.
For the record, I didn't say we are the only jurisdiction; we are one of very few.
One of the reasons that I believe that we need to keep track of the operators is, first of all, we have had some safety concerns, and that has been raised by other Members in Yellowknife, and particularly around the Ingraham Trail. Safety plans have to be incorporated. This is a whole new industry for the people of the Northwest Territories. This is an evolving business situation where it is growing so large and so fast that the city can barely keep up with it. We can't even get a hotel room in this city half of the time.
One of the reasons we need to track this stuff is to make our operators compliant, particularly around safety issues, how they operate in the Northwest Territories. Winter and summer tourism are two different things, but there is safety that needs to be in place, and we need to make sure that our operators are operating within the laws and follow procurement with how we follow it in the Northwest Territories through our BIP and our procurement programs as well. There are many things that we need to do, and that is why we track these sorts of things.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I outlined my efforts to pry the contracted publicly funded report, Policies for Generating Socioeconomic Benefits From Natural Resource Extraction Projects, from his department. First, I was refused the report. Then, because I wanted to make it public, I insisted upon an ATIPP request, and the report was posted deep on the ITI website without public notice.
Can the Minister explain how a government purportedly committed to openness and transparency would only make such a report publicly available after an ATIPP request from an MLA? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the record, the report was made public. It was not accessed through ATIPP. I want that on the record as well.
We had not originally anticipated releasing this report publicly. It was commissioned for research purposes. The Member is well aware of that. When you have a look at it, it clearly states that is what it was for. We shared it once in confidence with the Member. In the interest of transparency, and the response to a request from both the MLA and SCEDI, we then released it publicly.
There was a delay in us doing that because we had to go back to the appropriate author and get permission and give due notice to individuals and companies whose businesses and comments were specified. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to thank the Minister for that, but it is very clear this report was only made public after I filed an access to information request, and he publicly promised to provide it.
The government publicly launched consultations on the Mineral Resources Act on August 2, 2017, four months after this report was received. The news release announcing the consultations quotes the Minister saying, "It is our duty to maximize the benefits of responsible resource development."
With this stated objective and the requests of public stakeholders and Regular MLAs for this type of information, why was this report withheld from use in the consultations for the development of the Mineral Resources Act, and why did I have to use an ATIPP request to force its public disclosure?
The research was not commissioned solely for the work of the MRA. It was commissioned in support of the review of the socioeconomic agreements being undertaken by the Program Review Office. That work is ongoing.
In relevance to our work with the Mineral Resource Act, it was clear, and the research was also incorporated to inform an ongoing drafting of a new Mineral Resource Act. As the report itself states, it was a limited-in-scope project designed to spark a discussion about socioeconomic benefits, and we are using it just to do that.
I would like to thank the Minister for that, but he didn't tell me why the report was withheld as part of the public consultations for the development of the act.
One of the major findings of the report is that there "may be potential for a comprehensive NWT strategy for resource-led development" and that "a consultative process could get a consistent approach to tackling the hard questions that might otherwise divide the NWT's various constituents." Does the Minister intend to act on this recommendation, and how will this be included in the development of the Mineral Resources Act?
Everything this government does is centered around the consultative process. We have used it in developing the resource legislation. ENR is using it for their climate change. We use it in the development of the energy plan, the Petroleum Resource Strategy. As a matter of course, we have engaged Indigenous governments and our fellow departments and stakeholders to find best solutions. We will continue to do so.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like to thank the Minister for that, his emphasis on consultative processes, but when important information is not made available, it's withheld, it doesn't help those processes.
The report contains a lot of very helpful comparisons and lessons learned about benefit retention and other jurisdictions. This work may have played, should have played, a major role in the development of the Mineral Resources Act. In fact, it was within the scope of the discussion paper that was released. Given my difficulties in prying this report from his department, can the Minister assure me that there is no further cross-jurisdictional research that was conducted during the development of the Mineral Resources Act that his department has not yet disclosed to MLAs and the public? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
There has been a great deal of research and consultation completed in the development of our MRA. Our job as government is to synthesize this work and release it publicly and the discussion papers in "what we heard" reports that we have developed. This is a formal thing for government to do. Governments do not just post research on the web and ask for the public to do their work. We have offered the Member and standing committee a review of our work on the MRA. I will reiterate that I offer, if you have questions, let us have those discussions in a forum designed for that purpose. I don't mind sitting down with committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nahendeh.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was asking questions to the Minister of Health and Social Services about the accident that happened in Nahanni Butte. He told us that it was four and a half hours by the time medevac were there. Can the Minister advise us: how long did it take before the planes left there? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said, med response was activated at 1:20 and the plane landed at 5:57 p.m. I don't actually remember the time where the plane actually crashed, but there was time on the ground before med response was actually engaged. I think that might have been an hour or two, which would take it to the seven hours. As far as the amount of time it took the plane to get in once engaged, it was four for a half hours. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the Minister's answer. I guess my question was: what time did medevac take off from Nahanni Butte and Fort Liard? That's the time I'm looking at.
The plane landed in Nahanni Butte at 5:57 p.m., at which point they would have had to assess patients, make sure that they were stable for air transport, make sure that it was safe to do so. That can, depending on the severity of the injuries, take a little bit of time. They would also have to transport the individuals from the health centre where they are being treated to the airplane.
I don't know the exact number of minutes or seconds it took for them to get from there to taking off, wheels up, but I will ask the department to get me that information. I will certainly share it with the Member.
