Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The federal government’s latest rampage against environmental protection and this government’s silence in areas of critical public interest demand comment.
Thursday, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board was informed of budget cuts. It will reduce its staffing by half, crippling its ability to carry out full consultative reviews. Because of the independent status of the board, the federal government can’t tamper with board decision-making, so repressive control is exerted through funding cuts, reducing and restricting the board’s ability to operate. Funding cuts will hit, most severely, its ability to do full information gathering, such as community scoping meetings and meaningful assessments. Assessments, in fact, will be a desktop exercise.
Seven new mines are in the office and these plus other large projects being proposed require meaningful review to be done responsibly. With this latest blow in the federal assault on the environment and with the new, sometimes unrealistic deadlines, ongoing ministerial decisions and banning much of the public opportunity for participation, we are going to see incomplete reviews, increased environmental impacts, and the depleted ability of our land to meet people’s needs, and, I suspect, a vulnerability to Section 35 court actions that will freeze development.
The MVRMA – Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act – boards, including the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, are the mechanisms created to fulfill the promises of consultation and joint decision-making made in the land claims. Undermining the capacity of boards reneges on these promises to our Aboriginal government partners. The federal government will fail to meet its fiduciary duty and, to satisfy Section 35 requirements, the duty to consult and accommodate.
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada’s own environmental audits of 2005 and 2010 pointed out repeatedly that previous underfunding hurt boards’ abilities to assess projects fully and promptly. These further cuts fly in the face of their own reviews and set the stage for the promised destruction of our own regional boards.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
These measures threaten our ability to protect our northern environment. They gut the board that this government will rely upon for our management advice following full devolution. All this without a public word of protest or concern from territorial leaders.
How long will devolution negotiations muzzle this government, and what on earth is it going to take before the government finally speaks up on behalf of the citizens and their land? I will have questions for the Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
