Merci, Monsieur le President. Although some Members of this Assembly supported a priority to increase resource exploration and development, I believe that subsidies are not the best tool to achieve this. Increasing our overreliance on resource extraction is not my priority but if we are going to provide subsidies, these should be properly configured and evaluated. So I recently reviewed the guidelines and applications forms for the Mining Incentive Program. I'm going to offer a number of observations and suggestions for improvement.
In the last mandate progress report tabled earlier in this sitting, Cabinet says it has completed a review of the Mining Incentive Program but it has not been publicly released, nor has the response to any recommendations been made public.
I've also asked before about a monitoring and evaluation framework for the program which should form the basis for annual public reporting.
I know our mining minister is a big proponent of ESG, or environmental, social and governance criteria, as a way to promote the NWT as a great place to do mining. However, the Mining Incentive Program applicants are not required to disclose or agree that they are in compliance with laws and do not owe governments any money. Clearly applicants should disclose any land use permits, water licences or other environmental approvals granted to support their program and then ITI can check for compliance itself. There should also be a specific declaration at the end of the application where applicants confirm that they are in compliance with all existing federal, territorial, Indigenous government, and municipal permits or authorizations, and that they will secure any additional requirements before they proceed with work. It should be clear that noncompliance must be disclosed to ITI which can then decide to cancel or withdraw support on any current and possibly future applications. Noncompliant applicants should not be funded or rewarded.
I believe that any applicants should not knowingly be in debt or owe any taxes to federal, territorial, municipal or Indigenous governments. This requirement should also be built into the application forms through a selfdeclaration and then checked by ITI.
Lastly, the detailed criteria in the guidance documents do not recognize or incorporate any scoring or evaluation with regard to environmental best practices or innovation to reduce environmental disturbance for any exploration or development work. I'll have questions later today for the mining minister. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Yellowknife North.
