Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are in follow-up to my colleague Ms. Bisaro’s questions with respect to the Giant Mine. I’d like to ask the Minister of the Environment, I know he’s aware that there’s a potential conflict of interest here with the proponent, the double role that the government is playing in this case being that there is no mining company and we are both the proponent and the regulator. Now the federal government has developed a firewall to try and keep the processes separate between the regulatory side and the proponent side.
Do we have such a firewall between the two components to avoid such a conflict of interest in the GNWT’s situation? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Yes, Mr. Speaker. We as well try to make sure we work to make sure we have those same type of firewalls. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I’m glad we have that and I hope the Minister at some point can explain to us in detail how that works. But for now, I’m sure I heard the Minister say that he has rejected some of the environmental assessment recommendations, accepted some and proposing to modify some, accept, reject and modify, but I’m not aware of any decisions having been made at the Ministerial level yet on these environmental assessment recommendations.
Was the Minister speaking for himself or was he speaking on behalf of the proponent team, the actual project team, which is the proponent in this case?
At this juncture, I was speaking to the contents of the letter that was written to Mr. Spence and signed off by both governments.
I’m sure we’ll see in the Hansard tomorrow exactly what the words were, but I think they were very plain. The Minister said I have rejected some, I have accepted some, and so on.
Could the Minister tell us what exactly has he done here? Has he suggested that he has accepted, rejected and proposed to modify some to the federal Minister, and where is the clarity on this conflict of interest situation?
No, I haven’t spoken to the federal Minister directly on this issue.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Just the other part of that question, I’ll repeat it here, was: Has the Minister made decisions on these recommendations as to whether to reject, accept or modify them specifically?
What we were talking about in the House today, as I just indicated, was I was responding to questions related to the letter that has been posted and written to Mr. Spence, and that is the extent.
