Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier, I spoke about NTCL. My questions are for the Minister of MACA and he might have to tap into his expertise in Finance and Lands as well.
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NTCL owes about $685,000 in property taxes, last time I checked, to the town of Hay River. Does the department have a contingency plan for this money, if NT can’t pay it, as the town’s an unsecured creditor? Or is the town expected to absorb this cost? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my first advice to the town would be to seek some advice from their lawyer or their accountant and in fact, I would advise all communities that find themselves in this similar situation to seek the proper advice. If the $685,000, or $600,000, just close to $700,000 is owed for property taxes, the town does have the ability to explore the recovery taxes as per the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
As I stated earlier, NT’s probably the largest holder of land in Hay River, by quite a large margin. Is the government aware of how much land will revert back to the GNWT if NTCL does go bankrupt or how much will revert to the town or how much will revert to the feds.
The Member is correct. The company does own a large number of properties in Hay River. As for the actual number of which ones are, if any are GNWT owned, I would have to follow-up and get that more detailed information and how much is owned by the town. I’ll commit to the Member that I’ll try, I’ll work to get a breakdown of exactly where these properties are from, if they’re leased, they’re owned and I will provide that information to the Member.
I thank the Minister for that. My next question is the town, the land that does revert to the town or the GNWT, well, I guess the town is my concern. Much of it is going to need environmental remediation. I mean, NTCL’s been there for 70 years, there’s you know, hydrocarbon contamination on a lot of the sites. There’s contamination from paint, from all this kind of stuff. Is the town responsible for the environmental remediation? Because it could be tens of millions.
Mr. Speaker, the environmental remediation would be the responsibility of the owners. If the town owns the land, responsibility for remediation would be theirs. If the GNWT owns the land, then the responsibility for the remediation would be the GNWT’s. We have an Environmental Liabilities Committee, which would do an assessment whether contamination exists on the land and so the land would go to on our environmental liabilities list and would be remediated according to the GNWT priority and procedures. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where whoever owns the property would be responsible for the remediation.
Masi. Oral question. Member of Hay River North.
I believe this is my last question. My fourth.
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I’m also concerned about the waterways because there’s been barges sitting idle for years and I’m wondering who’s going to be responsible for the clean-up of that? Is that a federal responsibility or is that something the GNWT is going to help out with?
Mr. Speaker, as far as the waterways go, that would still be a federal responsibility, so it seems that in this case, it could be, you know, the town has some interest in it, the GNWT may have some interest in it and the Government of Canada may have some interest. I think it would be wise for the three organizations to get together and decide a plan to do some remediation if the company goes, I mean, the company is in receivership, so we’ll have to come up with a plan going forward. But I do know on the government side of it though, we do have our committee that would do an assessment on any remediation that we might be responsible for.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
