I will seek some more detail on that question from the department. We do realize, of course, that that is an important part of the Guthrie House phased approach, is that, upon release, residents there have continued contact with outreach support, so what happens after the person gets released is clearly a part of the therapeutic community approach. I will attempt to provide more detail to the Member opposite.
One of the reasons that I think SMCC was chosen for this is because there is some private industry there. However, not everyone who is released is going to live in Hay River, so what type of supports are going to be provided for those people who go through this program in their home communities once they return?
That will depend, of course, on the person, the resident, being released and the ability of his home community to provide those types of supports. It will likely be different depending on the resident being released, his character and background, and also the community to which he is going.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It sounds like it's still to be determined, still a work in progress. Again, like I mentioned, Hay River was seen as a good place to try this model out because there is industry and there is access to all of the facilities that are needed. Was there consideration given to having a place where the inmates or residents, once they clear the program, can stay in Hay River, something like a halfway house but one that is a safe space where people can live so they do not have to go back to the conditions that brought them there in the first place? This way, the partnerships with industry can be developed in the community, and they can have access to all of those supports. Was this idea considered? Because I know there is an opportunity to do this in Hay River.
I can advise that there was some discussion or thinking about a halfway house model in Hay River. One of the issues that concerned us, however, was that not that many of the residents at SMCC would likely have as a home community Hay River, so that was seen as an issue, but certainly we did think about it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table to following document entitled "Toward a Plan – Strengthening Canada's Position in the Arctic." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Tabling of documents. Minister of Infrastructure.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Community Access Program 2018-2019 Results Report, Department of Infrastructure." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Tabling of documents. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Supporting Access to Child Care in the NWT 2019-2020 Supplementary Action Plan." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Tabling of documents. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 23-18(3): Report on the Review of Bill 40: Smoking Control and Reduction Act and Bill 41: Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Tabling of documents. Pursuant to section 21 of the Legislative Assembly Retiring Allowances Act, I wish to table "Legislative Assembly Retiring Allowance Fund Financial Statement for the Year Ended March 31, 2019."
I now call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of committee? Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee would like to review Committee Report 33-18(3), Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment Report on Review of Bill 34, Mineral Resources Act; and Bill 34, Mineral Resources Act. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We will consider the documents, but first, a brief recess.
---SHORT RECESS
I will now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we have agreed to first consider Committee Report 33-18(3), Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment Report on Bill 34, Mineral Resources Act. I will turn to the chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment for opening comments. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Bill 34, Mineral Resources Act, was referred to the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment on February 12, 2019. On August 12, 2019, the committee was granted an extension to continue its review. The committee sent letters inviting input from an extensive list of stakeholders, including municipal and Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories, as well as a number of non-governmental organizations and stakeholders.
The committee travelled throughout the territory and held public hearings in Inuvik, Norman Wells, and Yellowknife. The committee thanks everyone who attended these meetings or provided written submissions sharing their views on Bill 34. The committee concluded its review of Bill 34, Mineral Resources Act, on August 15, 2019 with a public clause-by-clause review held in the Great Hall of the Legislative Assembly building.
The committee carried 46 motions to amend Bill 34, of which 40 received concurrence from the Minister. The Minister also concurred with an individual Member's motion that was moved at the clause-by-clause review and carried by the committee. The committee thanks Minister Schumann and his officials for their collaboration in the development of those motions. I will have committee motions to move with regard to recommendations in the report at the appropriate time. Individual Members may have additional comments or questions on the report. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Committee, I will open the floor to general comments on the report on Bill 34. This is not the bill. This is the report on the bill. We will be considering the bill after consideration of the report. General comments on the report on Bill 34. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. As many Members know, I am a committee meeting junkie. I go to all of the different committee meetings that I can, so I had the privilege of attending many of the social envelope reviews of bills, participated in the SCEDE reviews of environmental resources legislation, as well, or bills. I think it would be fair to say that my impression, my takeaway, was that, on the social envelope side, it was often easier to work with Ministers and departments in making progress on improving bills, and I think it was a very difficult process on the resource and environmental side with the bills that SCEDE had to deal with. Of course, this all culminated in the four-and-a-half-hour, monumental clause-by-clause review of this bill that took place last Thursday evening. It's now available for viewing on the YouTube channel for anybody who wants to relive that great event.
You know, I think it's fair to say that committee spent a very significant amount of time reviewing this bill and working very, very hard to improve it. There is obviously a lot of strong public interest in this bill. There were very detailed submissions from Indigenous governments, industry, and NGOs. I don't think that I have seen that level of interest in another bill before this Legislative Assembly, so I want to thank everyone for their very detailed and helpful input.
I also want to note that, at the beginning of the process, there was a lot promised with this legislation, and not all of those promises have been delivered on. Things that were promised included a review of royalties, map staking, all kinds of things, some of which just have not been delivered on, and I think that we probably bit off too much to chew, really. One of the key things that I think did cause some differences between the Minister and the committee when we were undertaking the review was the mixed roles of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Clearly they have a role in promoting mining resource development, and I have always given the department and the staff a lot of credit for the work that they have done. They are very good promoters of resource development, as they can and should be, but they also have a role, under this bill, to regulate mineral rights, and that is what this bill is about. It is not about promoting mining; it is about mineral rights administration, to try to reach a fair compromise in terms of the public interest and the interest of the industry, and I'm not sure that we always achieved the right balance.
This was the kind of mixed roles and responsibilities that the department often brought to the bill in trying to understand the vision that people have with regard to where they want to go with mineral rights and administration management. It was difficult to understand at times, and I think that sometimes there are differences of what that vision can and should look like, and how the balance between the public and private interests should be achieved.
A lot has been promised. There are some things that have been delivered on, and I do want to go over some of the good things and some of the things that I think still need a lot more work. A lot of the work has been left to details. A lot of the very important policy work decisions are left to future regulations. This will take years to roll out. This is not going to be everybody's solution, and it can't even be brought into force right away, because a bunch of other changes need to be made. There needs to be a detailed implementation plan, and we are going to talk a little bit more about that.
There are some good things that this bill does. This is the kind of lens that I think that committee, and certainly myself, have always brought to this legislation: how can we improve transparency and accountability? There will be a public registry or at least portions of a registry that is available to the public. There will be detailed annual reporting. There is some clarification on how dispute resolution is going to be handled; instead of through a panel, it is now going to be a mining rights review board. I think that there have been some improvements made in the bill as a result of committee's review, but I think that there are also some very key sticking areas that have not received the consideration that they deserve. If we had had more time, I think that we, perhaps, could have reached some compromise on a number of areas.
As hard as committee tried, we were not able to reach any agreement with the Minister and the department over what role municipal governments can play and how they can be informed so that we can encourage good working relationships and treat them with the recognition and respect that they deserve. Committee was not able to reach any kind of a compromise or agreement with the Minister on that matter, and that is a huge disappointment to me personally.
I think that there are some issues, still, around zones and whether these are in the public interest and represent good public policy. Royalties haven't been dealt with; that has been punted off to the 19th Assembly. We have some bad actor provisions in the bill, and I think that they are quite weak, quite frankly. We could have done more work to improve them. Montana actually has much stronger provisions based on a whole series of abandoned mines in that jurisdiction. We are not that far different from what is happening in Montana in some ways, and I think that we can and should have done a lot more on that to make them stronger provisions.
I am not going to say a lot about benefits, because I think that that is going to be a big part of the discussion as we move all the way through the bill, but I do think that the benefits provisions, particularly in terms of public benefits, are very vague and uncertain and create not the kind of clarity that this bill had promised. I think that that can and should have received a lot more attention and work to try to fix that up.
I think that those are all the remarks that I have for now, Mr. Chair, but I do want to congratulate the committee for the fine work that they undertook in reviewing this bill, and particularly the chair, who had to deal with an unruly mob at times amongst the committee Members alone. His chairing of the monumental clause-by-clause review meeting was much appreciated and helped to keep things moving along, so I do want to recognize his efforts and thank him personally for that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to try to confine my comments as much as possible to the substance of the report and the committee's experience in reviewing the bill.
Not getting into the substantive merits, flaws, or concerns around the actual piece of legislation, committee's process was, I think, an interesting one, where the steps were taken to collaborate with the sponsoring Minister on how we could find common ground on improvements to the bill, but there were some very hard lines that were established in our process. That kind of intransigence is very difficult to deal with in a system of government where the Minister is ultimately the gatekeeper of changes made to the bill.
Oftentimes, the lack of certainty and clarity were really the fundamental concerns of committee, and it took a lot of public engagement to address some of those concerns with substantive changes to the bill and the necessary improvements. I think that should be a reminder of how important public engagement is and how important public views are in shaping the legislative process in this House. We have to constantly endeavour to ensure that that takes place, because sometimes both governments and Members can miss the point of things that are important to Northerners and to our partner governments and, of course, in this case, to industry as well.
I still think that we could have had a smoother process if committee had been more engaged and involved with the drafting of the bill and had a better understanding of how that was managed. The committee will be bringing forward a more comprehensive report on this, but in the case of this bill, in particular, the co-drafting exercise, which I think is a necessary step in the evolution of governance in the Northwest Territories and establishing a very clear role for Indigenous partnership in drafting public laws, there still needs to be a role of legislative oversight and the ability of both the public and of Members of this House and appropriate standing committees to alter, change, improve, or otherwise make amendments to sections that have been previously agreed-upon at the drafting level.
I think that that needs to be a very clear part of our process that intransigence and hard lines drawn on changes to bills really have to be carefully considered. The viewpoints that are shared with the committee need to be carefully considered by government Ministers as well, because, again, they are the ultimate gatekeepers on what can be changed at the committee stage, and if the committee feels very strongly that changes need to be made and that is backed up by public viewpoints, it can be a very frustrating experience to not be allowed to make those changes, even when your convictions say that they ought to be made.
That being said, there were plenty of other areas of common ground that the committee was able to find with the sponsoring Minister and direct relationships with staff on both ends of the table, that helped make some of those compromise adjustments to the bill. It's not all bad, but certainly the largest concerns I do not think really found the cooperation necessary to address them in a timely fashion, which is one of the reasons by the clause-by-clause was a four-hour review, late into the night. I hope we can avoid this in the future, especially around pivotal pieces of legislation like the Mineral Resources Act, and I hope we can broaden our engagement at all times when we are passing laws like this, that are fundamental to our economy, fundamental to our territory, that involve as much public input and stakeholder engagement as possible.
That should be an important lesson learned for all Members of the House, but in particular governments who are bringing forward legislation: do it early; don't do it late; give time for committee to request extensions when needed to do their due diligence; and make sure that bills are ready to go forward so that we are not in a situation where we have to go back later on and make improvements after all of this process has gone by and that the public feels like there is actual opportunity for this House to change bills in a way that the public supports because that fundamentally is our role. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Further? Mr. McNeely.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will reserve my opening comments once we get into the actual bill itself, not the report. I just want to put that on the record. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McNeely. A bit of a teaser there from Mr. McNeely. Anything further? Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories develop the curriculum for prospector training, working with Aurora College, the Mine Training Society, and in consultation with industry experts who can offer expertise in the applied content subject matter. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. There is a motion on the floor. It is being distributed. The motion has been distributed. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a motion where we felt that part of what the government will be undertaking is that, when prospectors or potential prospectors and explorers are applying for a prospector's licence, part of that process now will include that they take some courses that have to do with providing some degree of awareness so that prospectors and explorers can and will be informed with regard to the activities that would be taking place, and especially if they are not from around the Northwest Territories, that they receive some degree of awareness as it relates to certain sensitivities, let's say, with regard to prospecting and exploring in the Northwest Territories. So that is the intention behind this. The Mine Training Society, Aurora College, and others, and in particular industry do have a history here in the Northwest Territories of working collaboratively to put forward programs that are relevant to exploration and mining. We have seen in the past some prospector programs. We have seen a geoscience field technician-type program. We believe that this is a good motion to support. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. While I support the motion, I think it needs to be clearly stated on the record that there were others who felt that they had expertise to offer in terms of prospector training. I think Indigenous governments, Indigenous elders, would have some perspective, some expert knowledge that they could share in terms of cultural awareness and awareness of the land rights agreements and our co-management system that mining is required to operate within. I know NGOs also expressed an interest in having an opportunity to look at whatever kind of curriculum was developed.
I note that, in Ontario, there are already online training modules that people have to walk through and pass a test, essentially. I have looked at that information myself, and I think we can and should adopt some of the ideas that Ontario already has in place. However, it's not just industry experts that I think have something to offer here. There are other parties that can and should be engaged in the development of training materials, and they have asked for that opportunity, so I am sure the Minister will ensure that they have an opportunity to get engaged in the development of this information, as well. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Further general comments on the report or, rather, sorry, we are on a motion here. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Thank you. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories work with the NWT Association of Communities and municipal governments in the Northwest Territories to develop solutions to resolve the challenges of rights issuance that overlaps with municipal boundaries, in order to better protect municipal infrastructure and ensure public interest is protected; and further, efforts should also be directed at protection of lands and waters where critical municipal infrastructure is located or planned. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. There is a motion. The motion is on the floor and in order. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that the motion sort of speaks for itself. What we discovered when we were travelling with the bill in a lot of the regional centres and in particular Yellowknife is that there is a genuine concern with regard to making sure that the public's interests are protected, especially as it relates to the critical infrastructure. A couple of good examples are things like quarries and say for example water intake lines. These are areas of interest to the city that they are concerned with when it comes to people being able to put some kind of claim or stake over these particular interests, and so, you know, we made some certain attempts to try to address this through way of various motions to this bill. Unfortunately, none of those passed, and so this is a recommendation on behalf of committee that says that the government needs to pay attention to these needs that municipal governments have as it relates to protecting the best interests of their citizens, especially as it relates to those critical pieces of infrastructure that they need to basically protect and promote the interests of their residents. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, yes, committee did hear concerns around the impacts of mineral exploration and development within municipal boundaries and where this has led to some issues of land use conflicts, particularly in Inuvik. I am certainly well aware of a number of prominent cases that have been in the media around land use conflicts in Dawson around Placer Mining. Although committee tried to work with the Minister on this to try to find ways to provide notice and opportunities for temporary restrictions linked to municipal interests and purpose within communities boundaries and so on, we weren't able to make any progress because amendments required ministerial concurrence and he was not prepared to go there. So this is an attempt to try to get the Minister to address this issue and our government to address this issue on a policy basis going forward.
You know, realistically, what you would expect to happen is, once a community has identified key municipal infrastructure, like potable water, that there be a way to protect potable water sources permanently from activities that could impact potable water, source water. I think that was even some efforts that were being done by Environment and Natural Resources to protect potable source water for municipal governments. As municipalities grow and change, they may need to look at areas outside of their boundaries for sewage treatment, municipal landfills, recreational opportunities, that are even outside of their own boundaries.
We want to make sure that our communities have the ability to make sure that their investments are respected and so on. The efforts that committee was trying to go through were to try to prevent land use conflicts from happening in the first place and encouraging good neighbour relationships. TerraX has a great relationship within Yellowknife, but we wanted to find ways to try to instill that into the bill. Unfortunately, they weren't successful, so here is an attempt to try to get our government to deal with these issues on a policy basis going forward. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
