Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further into my statement on landfill disposal, Mr. Speaker, this is a joint effort. In preparation on an affordable shipping schedule, Mr. Speaker, this winter, Husky Energy will be delivering a winter closure project in the Tulita area. My first question to the Minister of ENR: in cooperation with MACA, Infrastructure Department, and Husky Energy, can the Minister commit to working with our regional office to coordinate backhaul arrangements from the landfill to licensed disposable sites in the south? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in September and October of this year, ENR worked with two community governments and their contractor to identify and consolidate all their hazardous waste in preparation for transportation on the Mackenzie Valley winter road to an approved disposable facility. The following hazardous materials were a part of this package. There were a number of pallets of used oil, glycol, and this was from a couple communities, vehicle batteries, fuel, contaminated water. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm glad to hear that from the Minister. That leads me to my next question: will the Minister direct his regional office to work with the Industry company, in this case it's Husky Energy, on identifying backhauls that could be loaded up with some of the landfill materials from the five communities in the Sahtu region for this coming winter season?
As part of our waste resource management strategy, we had a number of conversations across the Northwest Territories. We had a lot of regional meetings, and we had some online questionnaires that people could fill out. We have produced a "what we heard" document. The reason I bring that up is a number of the items that the Member is talking about, some of the priority from the respondents was they would like to see bulky waste packaging and tires, appliances, vehicles, and that removed from their landfill. We continue to work with whoever we need to work with. We have to work with industry if there are opportunities to remove some of this waste site.
As I stated earlier, they are consolidating all their hazardous waste right now to haul out of the area to an approved disposal site. I'm not sure exactly what transportation company or how they're using that, but I will find that out, the details of that, and share it with the Member.
I thank the Minister for taking that active department response to try to get the waste out of the area. We have two seasons to do that, for the land management of disposal. One is during the barging season. One is during the winter road season. In this case, if the Minister could commit to working with I do believe it's Braden-Burry Expediting that has the supply chain management for shipping, if we can coordinate that between the regional office and this company to coordinate backhauls of landfill products?
As I stated earlier, we'll take any opportunity to work with who we need to work with to try to take advantage of some of the empty backhauls that are going out. I can commit to them, and I'm sure our folks in the region are working with them. Again, we have the discussion paper that we released. We have a draft implementation plan that we're looking at presenting to Cabinet very shortly, here. Then we will seek further input into the implementation plan.
So a lot of work has gone into this. We had a number of respondents to our questionnaire. We had 109 people, I think, show up in a lot of the engagement sessions. It is an issue that is out there, and people are conscious of it, which is good. We just need to do what we can as a department and as a government to support those who want to remove a lot of hazardous waste from their communities.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is not a question, but I will help the Ministers office here, help by coordinating the contacts or supplying the contacts in preparation for the trucking season. Having seen the landfills in some of the communities during my summer visits, I can really tell that they're getting overstocked with these waste objects, so I'll provide that information, any way I can help. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'll take that as a comment. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
