Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before we begin I’m going to say it has become crystal clear in the work that we do here that hydraulic fracturing certainly has become the most important ideological question of our time. True leadership is the willingness to put the question sometimes to the people, rather than trying to say, “Here I’m a leader and I make all the decisions in isolation.”
Knowing that, the government is still trying to understand and balance its role as land and resources regulator. We’re starting to see the ITI Minister take on some of these responsibilities for regulating oil and gas and mineral projects, but at times you see him almost like with a two-headed job. Of course, the Minister only has one head, at least that I can see, and you can see the Minister certainly has a tough job promoting the industry one day, but then, of course, trying to give the final word of the application in a most fair and appreciated manner.
So, what is it really? I know the rules, of course. They’re spelled out so the Minister can only do so much so far and he has sworn he has delegated the authority, which we’ve seen on paper, but sometimes it causes you to wonder. Of course, now we have the review of the regulations of the hydraulic fracturing in process. The question really, in my opinion here is starting to weigh, is where is the public’s good being weighed in on this question? Of course, we’re reviewing the regulations before we have the good will or certainly the permission and support of the public to this particular fracking.
As well, at the same time, I have to paint a face on it that Minister Ramsay I’m not sure is as open-minded as he likes to try to tell the public he is with his public comments that he has made in the media that fracking is needed for economic growth and we believe, he says, “it can be done in a safe and secure manner.” So I’m not really sure, with that type of perspective and those types of words from the Minister, why he even bothers wasting his time with the public at that point. I mean, we all know we’re being driven to a further resolve.
If I go a little further, in an e-mail the Friday before, it says, “Resources in this area will require hydraulic fracturing to extract them.” So again, what we’ve got here is a situation with the Minister saying one thing and we’re putting the board sort of in between the old proverbial rock and a hard place. We’ve got the applicant that one day may or may not come forward with an application to frack. The board is supposed to be independent in how to do these things, and we’ve got the Minister’s opinion saying, “Its safe and we have to do these things.” We all know boards don’t want to upset their Minister, even though they are independent.
I should at this time request unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Thank you.
----Unanimous consent denied
Thank you. The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
