Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about future cost of the devolution agreement for the GNWT. I have questions for the Premier. Why did this government agree to an AIP that does not place full responsibility on the federal government for inflation and the cost of running the regulatory system? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member’s statement earlier, leading up to these questions, made a number of comments about secret negotiations and so on. I will say for the record that there were no secret negotiations. All bilateral discussions that may have happened between the GNWT and the federal government, specifically because there are areas that we clearly are for or would be, those issues and discussions were shared at the main table with all of the partners that were at the table.
As for signing this agreement, there are many things to be negotiated as we go forward. One of those is the escalation of the dollars identified for doing the work that would be required of us as the Government of the Northwest Territories.
The negotiations up to establishing the numbers for the initial transfer were very intense, as we clearly stated that we felt, under the existing authorities, we need to do a job that would require more resources than is being expended now. We have that agreement. In fact, that is one of the reasons why we would say that we are in agreement with signing this.
Other areas that are of concern to many of the Aboriginal groups, as well, are around waste sites and monitoring and management. There is a chapter 8 that goes through quite a number of issues that look at addressing what we would do as we enter into negotiations. I think this is another reason why having the Aboriginal groups and governments come back to the table to help influence the discussions is probably one of the biggest things, since we hold our environment in such high regard in the North. That would be one of those that would draw us back to the table, I would say. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, what is the Government of the Northwest Territories doing to ensure that the waste sites that are listed or that are contemplated in such devolution agreement in the future are cleaned up in a timely fashion? What is the time frame for this? Is this going to go on forever or is there going to be a time frame for a clean-up of these waste sites? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, by signing the agreement-in-principle, we actually kick in the year of process that has been under discussion for quite some time. We have already done a fair bit of work in the North around waste sites that are there, looking at historical programs that were run under previous and ministrations and decisions made under previous governments, federal governments as well. That is why there has been such an emphasis put on this document. It triggers the work that needs to be done. For example, in the responsibility of waste sites, chapter 8, point 3 talks about Canada will be responsible for management of waste sites on public lands which were wholly created prior to the effective date and it speaks of what our responsibility would be after the effective date of final agreement, and then it goes into a lot of detail about some of those subject areas. But, clearly, by signing the agreement-in-principle, we also trigger work that is going to be done on clearly establishing what is out there and comparing that work. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, my last question is the area of time frames. There is a possibility inside the devolution agreement that these sites could be just left as is for extended periods of time. Also, in the economic measures in the AIP, they indicate that economic measures could be accrued to Aboriginal governments. This is an opportunity for Aboriginal governments to clean up with the GNWT at the federal government cost to clean up those sites. Why isn’t the government insisting that the federal government take responsibility in a kindly fashion for cleaning up industrial sites established under their control since 1984? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the identification and the categorization of waste sites, those were decisions made by previous governments that, as I said, the preliminary work was done. Quite clearly, we leave the responsibility for decisions made by the federal government prior to the signing of the final agreement is their responsibility needing to go forward, but they still have to share that work with us and come up with a budget that we would have to negotiate on dealing with the full remediation of those sites or that they would remain holding onto the liability of those sites. For example, by signing the agreement-in-principle, Canada will develop at its own expense a preliminary inventory of waste sites, and in compiling such preliminary inventory, they will have to share that initial summary with us through their own historical records and current records and we will, as well, do our own work in reviewing that. That will help us as we go forward and coming up with the right negotiation for dollars in remediation going forward and who holds onto that liability going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Dene people see this as a loophole by the federal government. It does not seem fair when the federal government designed and implemented a regulatory system, will take 50 percent of the royalties on these developments but won’t pay for the cleanups. This is a loophole. Why is there no definite plan in place to place full responsibility for the remediation that’s needed on the federal government? Thank you.
Thank you. Clearly, we know the importance of our environment to northern peoples and that is why so much effort has been placed through the working group of our Aboriginal partners and the Government of the Northwest Territories. We’ve learned from some of our own previous transfers and transfers to other provinces and territories, in making sure we’ve set up a process that will clearly identify the challenges, the risks, the liabilities and who they belong to. So as the Member is saying, why haven’t we done that? That work is about to be done because we’ve signed the AIP. Otherwise, we would continue to work on the basis we have in the past of identifying those sites.
The federal government has remediated a number of sites across the North and are in the process of remediating sites as we speak in a number of areas. So that work continues, but as we now, through the signing of this agreement-in-principle, will be able to clearly identify going forward into the future what those challenges are, what the risks are and who should hold onto the liability and then the budgets of what needs to be done going forward in that area. So we do place a high priority on this.
Again, when it comes to the identification, we talk about this preliminary inventory of waste sites in the Northwest Territories, talk about the location, the nature of the site, the summary of information going to Canada about the waste site, including location, former use, current use or status, known operation, groundwater analysis. So many things will begin to be shared by Canada with us and they will have to share such information with all the parties. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
