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 snowpack 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.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We have, on many, many occasions, at the DMC, after meetings with ADMs and the deputies, relayed to Alberta how important this is to the residents of the Northwest Territories and, in particular, Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories. We have asked them to engage with Indigenous governments and with the public on this approach. They have not finalized their engagement process that they're going to use for this. The federal government has said that they will engage with Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories on their process.
We have also brought forward that we would like them to provide us with some messaging that they feel comfortable with that we can make public because they have asked us at this point to keep our responses technical and government to government right now, and we've expressed that there will need to be information provided on what this looks like. And they have said that they will work with us and understand that needs to happen once the review process has occurred. So I'll just reiterate we have asked them that when they if they decide to go forward with the regulatory process after they've completed this that it involves public and engagement with Indigenous peoples in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks for that. Look, I think I understand a little bit of the complexity of all this stuff. But if we're submitting stuff, why can't we post that to an ENR web page and let the public know what we're doing. The other guys, they can do whatever they want; they can keep secrets; they can, you know, have misunderstandings about what information they share with us. But why can't we post the submissions, these peer reviews that are being done, on an ENR web page so the public and Indigenous governments know what we're doing? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
I would turn to the deputy minister so she can give you the correct answer. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. These reports are confidential, and the only way that they would share them with us was that our responses were confidential until the report is completed, and they've been able to do the analysis. So they're sciencebased reports and they're confidential reports. We were able to access them through the transboundary agreement and have the ability to provide comments. And at this point in time, Alberta's keeping that confidential. And as I mentioned, we've expressed to them the need to make sure that this information becomes public and that Indigenous governments are aware of the findings. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. If I wasn't concerned before, now I'm really worried that all of this stuff is happening in secret behind closed doors. This is not good. And I'm not sure we should even be participating in that kind of process. That is very upsetting that look, good that we're getting experts; we're doing our homework to look at this. But if all of this stuff is happening behind closed doors and is being kept secret and we're only going to find out about it if Alberta decides they're going to do a regulation, that's not a good place to be. So I don't know, Minister or sorry, Madam Chair, I think the Minister needs to raise this on Thursday with the Alberta environment minister that this is just a totally unacceptable process, for us spending taxpayers' money doing all of this stuff in secret, not telling our people what we're doing. This is wrong. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
I'll start, and then I'll turn to the deputy minister. So we will have the conversation. I can guarantee that Alberta government is listening to what's happening and has been listening to it. I can because soon as we reached out to the minister's office, the staff were reaching out to our staff right away. But for the process, I know the Member's not happy with the process but at least we're getting the information. But for detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Alberta's engagement process, and they're engaging internally within Alberta on whether they're going to do regs or not. And through our transboundary process, we were able to get access and have the opportunity to provide input. Their process at this time is confidential and from our standpoint, we most certainly want to take part in this process because we're able to see these reports as they're being drafted; we get to provide input from an NWT perspective and be clear right from the getgo what the NWT's perspective is. Once the regulations are being contemplated, if the regulations are being contemplated, because Alberta's been clear with us that they haven't made that decision yet, we have been very clear at multiple levels that there needs to be public and Indigenous engagement on this issue in the NWT. They are committed to doing that in Alberta. And as I mentioned, the federal government will be engaging with Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories and Alberta. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Here I know that with the contaminated site it's under the environment protection and waste management. So last year it was near budgeted 344. I just I want to know how much is allocated for the contaminated sites this year?
Thank you. Minister.
For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.
Thank you. Deputy minister.
Madam Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
Can the Member tell us what page she's on. Thank you.
