Thank you, Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, you know, I guess the topic of water is very important. You know, the Mackenzie River basin I think counts for about has a drainage area of about 1.8 million square miles, which is about 20 percent of Canada's land mass. And you know, it all comes down, you know, funneling through this area. And, you know, as we see more development in south, the bigger the impact could be. And, you know, with the Kearl spill, for some reason we missed it. Partly because, I guess, we weren't informed by the Alberta government. And secondly, I'm not sure if anybody was monitoring, you know, the media or as well the Alberta regulator's pages as well, web pages or whatever. And, you know, I think that it's important that we do that. But anyways, we missed it and now it's big news all over. But one thing that I guess I'm interested in is that we do have these transboundary water agreements. And how many do we have, I guess, with respect to, you know, the Mackenzie River basin? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
So we have three. One with the Yukon government, one with BC, and one with the Alberta government.
Thank you.
Sorry, and we're negotiating with Saskatchewan.
Thank you. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And the minister in I think in the media there had indicated that they would be using a dispute mechanism. And I'm just wondering, you know, how or if that mechanism has been used and how it will be used in this instance with the Kearl spill. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
So this is the first time it's being used. We've tried to do the other process of reaching out to the Alberta government and getting the information this way. But because of the severity of this spill and them not telling us information that we needed, we've implemented this. And for the detail on how the process works, I'm going to, with your permission, turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So there's a number of things that can be done under the dispute resolution mechanism, and we're working with Alberta right now on what this will look like for this one. So there's a discussion of where we would like to go with this.
The GNWT's perspective is that we would like an independent look to come back to the bilateral management committee and tell them what their thoughts are on this. It is under the agreement that Alberta government's responsibility to notify us of spills. That's one of the reasons that we signed the agreement. And part of it was because we were learning about things in the media in the past. And I will say again that, in general, Alberta has let us know about spills in the past. But in this case, we were not alerted to it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess on the news the premier said of Alberta said it wasn't, you know, their responsibility, and it was up to Imperial to notify the parties that might be you know, that are looking at damages. But the one thing I guess with this dispute mechanism, you know, we're doing extra probably testing hopefully. Is there a cost an extra cost related to this now, and would that dispute mechanism allow for those costs to be picked up by the Alberta government or Imperial? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
I'll start, and then I'll turn to the deputy minister. So I know what the premier of Alberta said. We don't have an agreement with the industry. We have an agreement with the Government of Alberta. And I've made that very clear it is with them that they need to be sharing this information. So I need to make that very clear. I've had that conversation today. And so sharing it here today but for further detail on the process, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So for the dispute resolution mechanism, we'll have to see what additional costs are related to that. The monitoring costs that we're incurring could be brought forward to the bilateral management committee as part of this, and I'm we can definitely do that. The cost for the BMC are shared between the NWT and Alberta as per the agreement itself. So the dispute resolution mechanism cost would be part of that shared expense. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing I haven't really heard, I guess, in the news or from the department is the involvement of the Indigenous governments in the territories who you know, who have comprehensive agreements signed. And in those agreements, you know, they have some, you know, water rights and, you know, the right to, you know, quantity and quality of water as well. So what discussions have been taking place with Indigenous governments within the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
So as soon as we hit the send button to tell you guys what was going on, two seconds later we reached out to our Indigenous governments and gave them the same information. But that's the process. For further detail on what the staff have done, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So we sent out information, as the Minister mentioned, to Indigenous governments, also to community governments because we know that they have concerns as well. We're working with the community government in Fort Smith as well as the Indigenous governments on the monitoring, the additional monitoring that is to take place. And we do have, as I mentioned earlier, the Indigenous steering committee that that group, as I mentioned, they nominate the Mackenzie River basin board member but they also nominate the bilateral management committee member that takes part in the bilateral management meetings with Alberta and Northwest Territories. That was done purposefully so that the Indigenous members have links back to all of the Indigenous members of the Indigenous steering committee so there will be a way of sharing information that way as well, including through the dispute resolution mechanism. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to talk a bit about the, I guess, water research and monitoring. And, you know, after a couple years of flooding here, how much additional work is going into that to monitor, like, especially for Hay River and the Hay River watershed, are we doing any extra work so that we can, you know, get some idea whether and somewhat predict, I guess, whether we may see flooding? Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy Minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy Minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So we have a staff of several hydrologists that work diligently on looking at and creating outlooks. They do not have predictive capacity. They do work with their colleagues in the federal government and upstream with other governments. Predictive capacity on rivers that are subject to ice jam flooding is very, very challenging work. What we can do and what we continue to do is look at the snow survey data that is collected and make sure that gets out to the communities. Our hydrologists work with MACA and with communities themselves during these times where the and we do put out public announcements, as you've seen, when there is the potential for flooding. And then there's during flooding, there's daily information that's posted and sent out to folks who are part of a distribution list. And when it's not flood time, there's monthly outlook emails that are sent out that express what's going on with respect to water levels, water levels and snow pack throughout the territory. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you I guess, you've identified some criteria there, but I can you expand on that bit because, you know, we talk about, you know, volume of snow; we may have some rain down south; we have cold weather possibly that could impact it; we might have you know, you say that with ice we you know, it makes it difficult to predict as well but, you know, if it it just depends what the weather's like we could have thicker ice. If we don't have a lot of snow, that could cause that as well. We have, you know, in the Hay River for instance, we got the mouth of the river and the you know, the channel and that's getting, you know I guess basically the silt is increasing, the amount of silt that's in there. Does that have you know, what kind of impact does that have. We've got two channels there. We've got the west channel and the east channel. And so I'm just trying to get an idea, you know, what we're looking at when we look at flooding aspects. Thank you.
Thank you. Minister.
For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair Madam Chair, my apologies again. Not having a good day with that; I'm sorry.
So all of the factors that the Member mentioned are things that are considered and all of those things, including the existing water level from the like, from the previous year, if it's high, are all things that are challenging with respect to predicting if flooding is going to occur. Our department works with the federal government, Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, to refine methods to create inundation hazard and risk floodplain maps in locations that experience ice jam flooding. So this will result in preliminary inundation maps for Hay River, Aklavik, and Fort Simpson. They also monitor and evaluate water, snow, and climate conditions prior to ice breakup. They share those snow surveys that I mentioned as well as a spring water outlook. And I also spoke about those daily updates during critical flood times. And then there's a monthly water monitoring bulletin to the public. Our scientists have written initial reports for MACA on the recent flooding events that describe the factors that contributed to the flooding as well as the uncertainty of direct linkages to climate change. I guess those are the types of things I think that the Member is looking for. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I want to thank my colleague from Hay River South for asking a number of the questions I was going to ask, and I want to thank the Minister for pointing out to the premier of Alberta that we signed a transboundary agreement with their government, not Imperial Oil. So maybe educating the minister when you're meeting with her tomorrow, getting the premier to actually read the transboundary agreement might be helpful.
But I guess I want to get some assurance that there's if we enter into this dispute resolution process, that if there is like an independent third party review, extra monitoring costs, work that we have to do, that there's the ability to recover some or all of those costs through the dispute resolution process. So that's my question to the Minister. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
So first and foremost, the meeting's on Thursday, not tomorrow, and I apologize if I gave the misinformation. We would try to get the money back through the process. So we do have a process, and costs are a part of that process. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks for that. Yeah, and I look forward to the letters the Minister's going to table. But I guess I want to go back to, you know, where we started with some of this stuff, and this was the move on the part of maybe the Alberta and federal governments to have some sort of control discharge from these humongous tailings ponds. And, look, I'd rather have a controlled discharge if the water's treated properly than this kind of stuff happening because this kind of stuff is going to happen; it's going to continue to happen until it's inevitable. So where are we at with this process to look at whether and how discharges might be allowed from those tailings ponds? As I understood it, Alberta was supposed to do some kind of modeling, some sort of health impact, maybe ecosystem impact work; where is all of that at and what level of engagement and involvement do we have? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, with the process, six information gaps have been identified by oil sands, mine monitoring science team, modeling environmental concentration and effect, human and ecological health risk assessments, technical technologybased effluent limits assessment, toxicity testing, enhanced baseline environmental monitoring, and local and regional scale environmental monitoring. And as I stressed to the minister from Alberta, until we see the science we do not want to see water flowing treated effluent put in there. But for further detail, with your permission, I would ask the deputy minister to enhance the answer. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So both Alberta and the federal government are looking at regulations for this. Alberta has told us that they're doing this assessment of information gaps to determine if this is the approach that they want to take. They have they're saying that they have not made a decision on treated release of treated effluent yet. We have received four of the six reports on the information gaps. We are in the process of reviewing them. We have external experts that are reviewing them with us who have experience in all of these fields. There has been one that we have responded to, and there's been technical meetings on a couple of the other ones but we have not responded to the other three that we have at this point, and we expect to get the other two as they complete their work. So the water experts at the GNWT, combined with expertise outside that we've contracted, are reviewing these and bringing forward any concerns, and then they are being brought forward through the bilateral management committee to Alberta government. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Great, thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate that level of detail. And I support the department getting the expertise that's necessary to do this work, and I know you got you went out for two RFPs. I think you got another one out there now, so that's good. Is any of this stuff public, and where would you find it? Do we publish, or do we make any of this information, these peer reviews that we're doing, is any of this stuff available for people here to see what's going on? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister.
