Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for a different Minister, the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. There are only two written submissions to the fivemonth long public and targeted engagement on mining royalties and 11 other online submissions.
Can the Minister tell us more about these online submissions and provide a list of who made them? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm glad the Member got my name right. It was the Minister of mines earlier and that of course doesn't exist. There is the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Investment, sometimes known as Minister for the economy for which I'm responsible for the mineral resources sector and all of the work to get the Mineral Resources Act implemented, the mineral resources regulations ready to go. And in the process of doing that, one part of that is the royalties and for that purpose, Mr. Speaker, there was a fivemonth long process, as the Member's made the point of helping me out in explaining. I am grateful for that. That was an extensively long engagement process. That's the formal engagement.
There's actually been, since 2017, when this process began, lots of engagement around mineral resources, mineral resource industry, Mineral Resources Act, the mineral resources regulations, and all of the different parts that go into it.
With respect to this one particular part, unless we, as the GNWT, tell someone that's bringing their opinions to us that we're going to turn around and publish them, it would be fully inappropriate for me to now stand up and read out names of the submissions. The "what we heard" report is a standard process that all departments go through. Once there's been a formal engagement putting the information out of what we heard, the point is to summarize it so that individual people who are making submissions don't have to be putting their names forward.
So I'm certainly glad to commend that report to the House and hope folks out in the public will read it and be reviewing it and can consider whether or not it reflects their views. We're still open to receiving information. I'm always open to receiving information and because the decisions haven't been made yet. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for her statement there. There was also 21 different surveys open only to those holding prospecting licenses. No data from these surveys is compiled or presented in the "what we heard" report. If these surveys had been open to others, there could have been some useful data generated on, you know, possible divergence of views.
Can the Minister explain why these 21 surveys were only open to prospecting license holders and indicate whether any actual data will be publicly presented? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, these were specifically intended to gather information from prospector licensing holders because, of course, they're asking questions along the lines of "do you agree with adopting the PDAC exploration assessment digital data form EADDF for work assessment reports for data submission and digital format including PDF reports or other acceptable files, metadata, spatial map locations, geophysics submissions, including raw field data." Mr. Speaker, the average member of the public does not want to be answering that question. It would not be appropriate. It was targeted to the folks who understand this, who work in this, and who can provide us that valuable feedback. And as with all other things, Mr. Speaker, we are gathering it and it does go into "what we heard" reports in due course. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Colleagues, I think our interpreters are running at full speed here. So please, please take your time. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for the response. Yeah, I actually tabled that information earlier this week in the stuff that I obtained access to information. But, you know, people shouldn't have to buy a prospecting license to be able to participate in targeted engagement.
Ironically the first item in the "what we heard" report from those secret meetings sorry, from the targeted engagement/secret meetings with the mining industry is called transparency and confidentiality. It appears that all ITI is going to do in terms of transparency is to separate resource revenues from mining and petroleum. Quebec and many companies already report this information mine by mine.
Can the Minister tell us exactly what is going to be in the royalty regulations regarding public disclosure of mining royalties? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to the translators, I am sorry; I will try to slow down.
Mr. Speaker, I take issue with the continued characterization of an engagement process as "secret." This has been since 2017 that we have been going out and talking about the Mineral Resource Act and its regulations, before I even came in here. And part of the concern was raised in 2019, when are you going to start to do something and stop keep going and doing consultation processes? We hear that all the time. And, yet, ITI is out doing both public meetings, engagements, forums, sessions, surveys, and targeted engagements with the sector, which of course means Chamber of Mines, operating mines, advanced exploration projects, prospectors and developers, people who are interested in the industry, secondary members of the industry. It is not inappropriate for them to be doing that. It would be wholly inappropriate for them to not be doing that. And what we are at the point of right now, Mr. Speaker, with this is being able to go do the modelling to develop, to take back to the Intergovernmental Council about what should be determined and what types of policy options should go forward for drafting under the royalties. That's the stage we're at now. It is clear that one of those things is going to involve publishing more data from the mines about what types of royalties they have. That's obviously not the system we have now. I can't go out and change that right now. But we've received that information, and we'll be going forward with that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Final supplementary. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I promise I'm not going to call them secret meetings anymore but as long as the department can find a way to share that information with everyone, which they don't do. So they continue to be secret meetings.
But there remains a lot of work and public engagement required for the Mineral Resources Act to be brought into force. The engagement report also mentions other research and analysis on royalties. So can the Minister tell us what other research is being done, whether it's going to be released publicly, not just shared with others, and whether all this work is going to be completed before the end of the 19th Assembly? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, at this point, Mr. Speaker, having received feedback and being aware of interest in the area over the last six years, the department is at the point of being able to do the modeling and to be able to then take that, develop a policy, and develop it in concert, of course, with the Intergovernmental Council and the technical working group with whom we've been developing the Mineral Resources Act regulations from the start. It's part of a codevelopment process. They will make some decisions as a group. That will be what determines what the drafting instructions might look like. And I would just note, Mr. Speaker, one other thing: This is the first Assembly that actually has open to it, a process by which draft regulations do go out for publication. That is a new thing. Typically it's only with bills that would get published. But now there actually is a process where a draft regulation itself would actually be open for input before being final. That's at the one end. There are certainly steps to come in between.
And once we have guidance from the technical working group, we'll be able to provide that and to come back and to speak to where we're at with those directions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
