Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
My statement outlined the fundamental flaws with the current review of the NWT mining royalties. The first one is the total secrecy surrounding disclosure or of even financial analysis of mining royalties. The discussion research papers barely acknowledge the problem and propose no solutions.
Can the Minister explain the absence of any meaningful discussion of transparency and disclosure of mining royalties in the discussion research papers? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is a topic of conversation that I suspect will continue between myself and the Member for a long time. We simply aren't going to fly eye to eye on this one.
The current paper that is out for discussion purposes, Mr. Speaker, went to the SCEDI, to one of the committees of MLAs. It also went through the Indigenous governments or the Intergovernmental Council, IGC, the body the important body to work with composed of Indigenous governments. And when we initially got responses back on the paper, we took it back. We delayed it. Took that paper back. Took the responses in. Revised the paper. And now the paper that's gone out is one that has gone through that process and has been put out publicly with the support of IGC. So what it includes and what it focuses on was done collaboratively.
It does mention the reality and the fact that figuring out transparency within a royalty regime is one of the things that will have to be looked at in the course of this process that we're in right now in the development of the mineral resource regulations.
And I can assure the Member that I have confirmed with the department that when they're in the course of their engagements that they are, indeed, making sure to ask the question of how to increase and change transparency and what way in which we can continue to do that going forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. Of course, the only engagement that's happening is a web page where you can submit comments to an email address but, you know, the other fundamental flaw with the current review of mining royalties is the conflicting roles of her department in promoting and regulating mining at the same time.
Can the Minister explain why this review of mining royalties is being led by her department rather than an independent panel as was the case for the procurement review? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this too is not a new not a new topic of discussion for me in the House with the Member and I acknowledge that this is a longstanding concern that's been raised on his behalf at least with respect to whether ITI should, in fact, be the department leading this.
Mr. Speaker, royalty regime, royalty review is highly technical. When we're doing the procurement review, this is procurement for every department, for the whole of government, and certainly it involved all different types of industries in terms of all procurement that's happening in all industries across government. So it's a very different type of topic.
Royalties, and specifically royalties for the mineral resource sector and petroleum, as I said, highly technical and the expertise relies and lies within the Department of ITI.
The way we structured it is in fact not that different from some of the other jurisdictions in Canada that are similarly sized to ourselves here in the Northwest Territories in terms of our capacity and resources within government departments. And along the way, we certainly have made efforts to do some independent checks through the process.
Having PricewaterhouseCoopers which is an independent entity, having you know, engaging other scholars and academic experts to weigh in, providing the draft reports as I had mentioned earlier to committee and to IGCs and you know, and now going through the IGC protocol that we have around legislation development. So I'm confident at the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, that we're going to strike that balance, having our technical experts but also having opportunity for external experts to weigh in and give us their opinions and views. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that of course. Well let's talk about experts because certainly in Alberta and BC, the best practice is to actually hire independent experts and set up a panel and let them go to it. But, you know, I've looked at the discussion research papers on the engagement web page. The background information there doesn't even include the ITI commissioned report NWT Mineral Sector Review and Benchmarking Study, or even the SCEDI report on Economic Analysis of the GNWT's Approach to the Mining Fiscal Review.
So can the Minister explain why these two key references were not used in the papers that are now been released by ITI, and can these two relevant reports that I mentioned by independent experts, can they be added as resources to the engagement web page? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, folks at home will sometimes hear us saying that we had questions in advance. I do want to acknowledge that the Member does give a bit of a head's up, and that's helpful for the more technical questions like this. It's not that we necessarily know the flavour that we're going to hear in the House but, Mr. Speaker, I have been doing some work to try to figure out exactly what has what more we could do to provide more and further information.
It's certainly my preference to be able to provide more and further information to members of the public or members of industry or other interested parties as they're reviewing this. And I can say, Mr. Speaker, my understanding at this point, with only, you know, a bit of a bit of notice today, the standing committee's report was tabled before the holiday, so in the last session, and we are working quite actively to see that that is reviewed or responded to and once that happens, I believe it would be made available and the response will be tabled so that that can be included in people's consideration after the May/June session.
And in addition to that, Mr. Speaker, the Resource Governance Institutes Northwest Territories Mineral Sector Review and Benchmarking Study is on Engage ITI's website and available in the newsroom. So if I have missed one there that's not been included that the Member would like to see, I again I know the Member's taken the time, and I appreciate it, to sit down with the department on more than one occasion to talk about the royalties paper, to provide indepth comments on the paper, which is one of the times when it went back for review, and if there's something else we're missing, Mr. Speaker, I'll certainly speak to him further about that again. It's better to have more information out there than less. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. And I guess what I'm asking is that those two papers actually be added to the current engagement page, not buried somewhere else on the departmental website. But, you know, the engagement web page the way it has been set up is really biased in terms of extractivism. There's nothing on maximizing revenues to government, ensuring future generations benefit, or a consideration of environmental or socioeconomic trade offs. The next steps and guidelines are also vague, at best.
So can the Minister explain what the actual next steps are going to be in the royalty review, a timeline, and whether this work is going to be completed before the end of this Assembly? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to thank the Member. “Extractivism” is a word that I have not come across before.
But with respect to maximizing profit, Mr. Speaker, that is the whole point of designing a royalty regime and really the entire mineral resources regulatory regime that is made in the North and for the North. That's why we are really proud of the work being done at the IGC, with the legislative protocol that's there, so that when we have completed this process we can say that what we have in the North is made in the North, for the North, that we are, you know, walking the talk of being ESG advanced, so having environmental social governance advanced projects because we've done that work ourselves.
And as far as maximizing profit, Mr. Speaker, if we are in a position where we only maximize the taxation of royalties, then we run a very serious risk of having very few projects from which to take royalties. The balance that we're trying to strike, Mr. Speaker, is one where we are finding a regime that maximizes the royalties from the projects we have, encourages a development of more projects so that we're finding that sweet spot of having lots of projects out there to employ lots of Northerners, have lots of procurement opportunities, and bring in royalties in addition. So it's not all at the expense of one or the other; it's a matter of trying to figure out what that perfect balance will be.
The next step, Mr. Speaker, actually it happens to be a public briefing on April the 11th hosted, thank you very much, by one of the MLA committees. Looking forward to being there at that point then, and we'll be going over the timeline in further detail. That's one of the stops on the engagement process. I know there's active meetings happening with some of the chambers with projects that are here in the North, projects that are looking to explore the North, public engagement website that is available. I'm happy to take other meetings if there's organizations and entities that want to have those meetings directly and not participate on the website. And then I know there's a process that we've lined up after that for developing regulations, taking those to the consultation process with Indigenous governments and bringing them back before the House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
