Mr. Speaker, I talked about the incidents that the CBC reported on Norman Wells being the number one community of oil and gas leakage, fire, injuries and pipeline integrity. I want to ask the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources if there is a reporting protocol and why doesn’t it include any type of notification to the public on these incidents that CBC had to tell the world on this type of stuff that’s dear to our hearts.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. ENR does have a spill line. It’s operational 24 hours a day. Plus, as well, we rely, as the Member well knows in his constituency, on reports from folks that are on the land. They have been very, very helpful in spotting leaks, especially on the pipeline. There is that opportunity there. The National Energy Board has responsibility for responding to leaks at production sites and exploration sites, but clearly, when you look at the map across Canada where spills occur, I mean, it’s very clear that when there’s oil and gas, this type of situation is going to occur, given the volume of material being moved and thousands of kilometres of pipelines and such that are in operation.
According to reports from Imperial in 2009, 127,000 litres of water contaminated with hydrocarbons that was used to force oil up from the underground also poured into the water. Even though we do have a report-a-spill line for all these types of incidents, with the Minister of the Environment, what are the consequences to ensure for these illegal releases of contaminated water in the river?
There are licences at play, there are remediation costs, and there’s a review to make sure that this issue is cleared up, the culpability is determined, and that the proper steps are taken to clean it up and make sure that we try to avoid those things in the future.
With the increase of oil and gas in our region and the development that’s going to certainly increase if the proven resources are there in the Sahtu, what type of level of increases of spills could we expect, based on the performance of the pipelines and the companies and the reports that we’re just finding out now from the CBC report? I’d ask the Minister.
I want to make it clear that we’ll want to look at the numbers clearly. If you use a global number of spills, some of them are going to be very small; some of them will be larger, as the Member has indicated. We have to set up the processes as we take over. We want to make sure that we have the capacity to monitor, to do a better job, to work with the industry, to work with the National Energy Board to bring a better focus to bear, but there is a reality that if you have this type of activity with that type of material being moved, and given the fact that they’ve been in operation for decades, some spills will happen. The issue is going to be to make sure we catch them quickly, that they’re small, and that, in fact, we aim for zero spills, as difficult as that may be.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, the National Energy Board and the Government of the Northwest Territories are certainly going to enter into a partnership where we will become the employer and the National Energy Board will become the employee on April 1, 2014. I want to ask the Minister: Would he set up a meeting with the Sahtu Secretariat Incorporated, the GNWT, the National Energy Board – because they’ll be our new regulators – and Imperial Oil to look at this report here and look at, going forward, where do we need to work together to put a zero effect of oil spills, pipeline corrosion, any type of incident, that would assure our people this work can be done in a safe manner?
As we move towards devolution and as we move towards the Government of the Northwest Territories setting up its northern-based regulatory regime, we will very certainly be meeting with industry, with the regulators, with the land and water boards, with the folks in the regions, in the Sahtu and other regions, and offshore as well, and absolutely, the issue of this type of damning report will be looked at carefully. We’re going to want to make sure that we’ll be able to provide comfort and certainty to Northerners that due process and due diligence and rigor has been applied to this issue, and as the Member said, the ideal would be to have no spill and what do we have to do to get there.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
QUESTION 410-17(4):
INDUSTRY CONTRIBUTIONS TO
WINTER ROADS
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Transportation. I recognize that the Minister is quite new to this position, and I’d like to start by offering my congratulations, and I hope he’s ready to get on with things in his new role. My questions are on the issue of public highways and what happens when resource exploitation puts extra pressure on them. My constituents on the Ingraham Trail are concerned that the secondary winter road to the diamond mines may not be built this year. They are concerned that this will cause an increase in truck traffic on the Ingraham Trail that will damage the highway that has just recently been repaired.
I’m wondering: Does the Minister agree that the lack of a secondary winter road to the diamond mines will cause increased highway maintenance costs for the GNWT through damage to that highway?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A joint venture group has been building the secondary winter road on the Ingraham Trail to handle the increased traffic. However, the department understands that they will not be constructing that road, or unlikely that they will be constructing that road. The department’s first priority is safety and we will be looking at stepping up some of the highway patrols there and putting some people on there for security for 24 hours a day during the winter road season. However, the road is being rebuilt and I’m not sure that the increased traffic is going to do damage to the main road to Tibbett.
Thanks to the Minister for that response. I’m glad to hear he’s all over the safety issue. That’s number one, of course, and that happens with this increased traffic now on the Ingraham Trail.
I’m sad to hear confirmation that the secondary road will not be built and I hope the Minister will look into working with industry to see if he can get them to put it in. We do a number of things, because, I mean, it’s clear that this damage does happen with truck traffic. Any resident out there and the Department of Highways can tell you. We do things in a number of different ways up here. The winter road to the diamond mines is paid for by the mines, while the Ingraham Trail is paid for by the GNWT, the Mackenzie bridge, a combination of trucking tolls and government funding.
Can the Minister explain his understanding of how this should work? Should industry pay for what industry uses or should the public pay for everything? Mahsi.
Thank you. Although I haven’t gotten into the details, how I think it should work is if industry is bringing a lot of resources into the Territories, then the government should be there to support industry to allow industry easy access to resources so they’re able to pay for the resources that are taken off the land. Thank you.
Thank you. On our trip to North Dakota, we saw that fracking requires a huge number of trucks; so many trucks that they were wearing 10-inch-deep ruts in the asphalt and causing the state to go to concrete road construction at substantial cost. Now this government is promoting fracking for the Sahtu.
How does the Minister plan to ensure the public roads we have already built are not destroyed and the public is not paying for roads and repairs that should be paid for by the extraction industry? Mahsi.
Thank you. The Department of Transportation has certain load limits and certain speed limits on roads when there is hauling going on and so on. Those are designed to ensure that the roads do not fall apart and deteriorate quicker than is normally expected. So with the speed limits, the amount of weight that is carried on the tires that the truck is using and so on is all calculated so that the roads last a certain period of time. With those calculations, the Department of Transportation is not concerned that this piece of infrastructure will deteriorate any faster than what we anticipate. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can confirm that residents, based on 15 years of real experience, are very concerned. I hope the Minister also becomes concerned about this.
Could the Minister please explain how that same philosophy that industry should contribute to the cost of roads they are using and degrading, how has that been applied in the case of the new Inuvik to Tuk all-weather road? How will industry contribute? Mahsi.
Thank you. From what I understand, the Inuvik-Tuk highway is funded heavily by the federal government. The intention there is not solely for the extraction of materials. That highway is not going to be in and specifically designed for the resource developers to use. It is there to put a highway in to the Arctic Ocean.
So for sure resource developers will be using it, but it’s funded… Again, the majority of that road is funded by the federal government. They put the money in there. That’s why the road is being built, but it’s not really tied into the resource extraction in that area. Thank you.
