Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not quite sure where to address my questions today. I want to follow up on some of the questions I asked on Monday about the North American Tungsten and the Cantung Mine and some of the liabilities and securities. I’m confused whether I should be dealing with the Department of Lands or the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
I talked to the Lands Minister on Monday and I’m going to try and talk to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources today to see if I can get some clarification on who does what with regard to these liabilities.
It would seem, in talking with the Minister of Lands the other day, that we have taken responsibility for the development at the Cantung Mine, that we’ve taken responsibility for that development without any idea of the liability that we are accepting. In June the securities required, I gather, was up to $19 million, but we only hold $11.6 million, apparently.
My first question would be to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. If we have required the mine to provide securities of $19 million, how does that compare with what the actual liabilities for cleanup of that mine will be?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What is currently there is just a shade over $11 million, I believe. The revised amount that was being pursued prior to the fiscal issues was to increase that to about $30 million.
If I could presume, and I will ask the Minister to confirm, would we expect that it will cost about $30 million to reclaim and to clean up that mine?
I’d like to try and understand from the Minister, about a year ago there was an announcement that we were establishing a new division in lands, a liabilities and financial assurances division. That was about a year ago, last November. I’m trying to understand the difference between who does assessments for mines of the liabilities of a mine or any other development, and who actually handles the securities. My understanding is that Lands handles the securities but I think maybe ENR does the assessments. I’d like to get some clarification on that.
This is a shared responsibility under the water licences and environmental assessments. The majority of the money is handled by and flows through ENR through that process. We are looking at, as a government, how do we best structure ourselves to better provide oversight for all these outstanding securities across the land. We recognized very clearly after devolution that the federal government wasn’t paying anywhere near the attention they should have to this matter, and we’re currently at work internally still sorting out what’s the best way to structure ourselves to do that.
That kind of helps. With regard to all the developments and the potential liabilities that we have, I know that there is a listing of those, because through devolution there was a listing of everything in the territory, what the GNWT would take over and what would remain with the feds.
I’d like to know, at this point, have we done assessments on the majority of the developments that we are responsible for or that we hold? One of the examples that comes to mind for me is the Ptarmigan Mine out on the Ingraham Trail. It’s been sitting there for a very long time and nothing has been done with it. It needs to be cleaned up. Do we have an assessment of what that would cost, for instance, and do we have an assessment of all the developments in the Northwest Territories?
We do have what we inherited assessments. We have also, like Cantung, we’re looking at increasing the amount of securities, and that process is going to require time. There are some discrepancies, as the Member has pointed out, and we are very conscious about making sure that we have the proper securities. In the case with the Cantung Mine, we’re in discussion. The federal government is still part of this process and if that mine fails then there will be discussions with the site reverting to a federal site.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. It is gratifying to know that we may be able to offload this, since I don’t think it’s our responsibility if push comes to shove.
I’m trying to determine for assessments, in general, where we’re at in terms of assessments for all the developments for which GNWT is now responsible. Have they been done, and if they are not done, when do we expect that we will have an assessment of the liabilities that we are responsible for?
We have about $570 million that we hold in securities. That number has gone up from initially it was about $500 million. As we are getting into this business, there are constant reviews being done and if there are discrepancies then we work through the regulatory process to address those.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Dolynny.
