Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In July of this year I heard a news report about the difficulties surrounding the cleanup of the old Treminco mine site outside of Yellowknife. I have some questions today for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs under whose watch this falls.
The gist of the news report was that Treminco had gone bankrupt and that our government could end up paying completely for the cost to clean up the site. This was after the government had auctioned off the buildings and equipment that were out at the mine site in order to try and defray the cost of cleanup. Contractors have been allocated to remove the assets, but they only removed some of them -- I think “cherry picked” would be a good word -- and they left many of those assets behind. As of July, the government had been waiting 14 months for the buildings and equipment that remained to be removed.
Mr. Speaker, I have some questions for the Minister with regard to this situation. I’d like to know the status of the buildings and the equipment at the Treminco mine site at this time. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is absolutely correct; there was some infrastructure that was removed from the site -- cherry picked, as she put it -- but during this past summer we’ve done an inventory of the site and we’re looking at hiring an engineering firm to assess the structural integrity in an attempt to place some value on that. We’re going to look at possibly if it’s feasible to have it go out again, or to see what steps we can take next to do the actual cleanup. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I’m a little distressed, because that was the information that was available in July, was that the government was going to be finding an engineer and placing a value on these assets. So I’m a little dismayed that it’s now October and that it hasn’t been done.
I’d like to know from the Minister, we tried to get rid of these buildings. They’re now deteriorating. They are still our assets because we have reclaimed them because the contractors didn’t do their job. So what recourse does this government have to go after those contractors who didn’t fulfill their contract, didn’t do their job, and what recourse do we have as a government to try and claim back some of the elements of the contract that weren’t fulfilled? Thank you.
This is one of the reasons that making the amendments to the Commissioner’s Land Act requiring security deposits would have helped us in recovering some of those costs. As far as the actual going after the contractors, I haven’t had that discussion and once I have a discussion with my officials, I’ll meet with the Member and relay those on to her. Thank you.
I hate to tell the Minister I told you so, but I’m afraid I have to because that certainly was mentioned by Members on this side of the House before the amendments to the Commissioner’s Land Act came into force, that we really ought to have security for things such as these.
I’d like to know if the Minister could advise if we do find that there’s some value, if we do find that we can get somebody to remove these buildings and equipment for us, how much is that going to cost us. Thank you.
During this winter we’re going to find a feasible solution for the removal of those assets and if we can work with somebody that can get rid of them at minimal cost to the GNWT. As far as an actual dollar figure, I’m not able to provide that right now. Once we have the discussion with the engineering firm, I think we’d be in a better position to have a bit of a dollar figure, but the bottom line is to try and remove these assets with minimal costs to the GNWT. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister for his comments and I appreciate that he’s saying it’s going to be at minimal cost to us as a government. We’ve already incurred some costs; we’re going to incur more, from the sounds of things. I guess I would like to know from the Minister that should we not find a company who can remove these buildings for us, the bottom line is, is the government on the hook to pay for the cleanup of this particular mine site? Thank you.
As far as the actual mine site, we’d have to work with INAC -- because it is kind of a multi-jurisdictional issue -- on the actual cleanup of the mine site. The infrastructure I think is what’s in question here. I suppose if we were unable to find a contractor to remove those, then we’d have to go from there and see what actually it might cost us as a government to remove all of the old infrastructure, because they are starting to age and the longer we delay it, the more dangerous it becomes to have that infrastructure out there. So it is one that we’re hoping to have by the end of this winter, a plan as to how we’re going to deal with it and I’d be willing to share that with the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
