Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of quick ones here. I see the IRMA program has ended and I know that was an important contribution to some of our Aboriginal communities. Is there a replacement? I believe that those were federal dollars. Is there anything being put in place in that stead?

And I’ll just ask my other one here. I want a bit of an explanation of the core funding for the NWT Water Board. How is that amount derived and does it include all costs like for the three-person little subcommittees that we’re planning on having for project-specific things and so on? Thank you.

I’ll leave it at that, Mr. Chair. We’ve already talked about revenue from this, as well, and so on. So, I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

I appreciate that commitment. Will this bunch of documents include an NWT document and policy that requires financial security be in place before the project is approved?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to Mr. Speaker and staff. It’s great to have you at the witness table there. Thanks for those introductory remarks. It explained a lot of questions I had on the budget.

I think the Human Rights Commission funding, I understand we are going to be doing a 10-year review, which is really great. I know one of the issues that I come up against quite a bit is the whole issue of legal support, both for the commission and for constituents who are bringing complaints forward, so I hope that’s part of the review.

I also note the increase of a couple of positions for the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to follow up on my colleague Mr. Yakeleya’s questions. I see our water use fee is $80,000. That’s incredibly low, given the use of this public resource. As Mr. Yakeleya said, 10 billion litres of water at Norman Wells by Imperial Esso. We know, in fact, that that will be put to shame, in terms of the amount, very quickly by the activity with fracking, which is a very, very intensive water use.

Letting industry use these resources at this rate is an incredible subsidy. It’s an environmental subsidy, but it’s much costlier than some; for example, $15 million in the...

The Greenhouse Gas Strategy is great, but it seems to have been a document we can park on the shelf. These guys are out there assessing and monitoring and doing on-the-ground work, so it would be obviously good and appropriate and I’m sure the Minister agrees, so I will look forward to that.

The last one is on the ecological representation network, the Protected Areas Strategy work and a lot of this has been put on hold by the department, apparently waiting for the development of northern tools. What are those northern tools and when will we see them?

That’s all I had. I just wanted to make sure that we have that commitment. I know the Minister would agree that a Giant Mine would not be something that this government could handle casually as the federal government is.

Thanks to the Minister for that reminder. I always forget about those services. My last question is just on the maintenance side of things. So, the maintenance deficit, I see we’re continuing with our investments in that area. It seems appropriate to me. Have we been making any progress, or what is our O and M maintenance deficit these days? I know we’re doing additional work on the infrastructure side. Thank you.

Thank you. We’re getting there. I appreciate the Minister’s comments. I would say the world has balanced itself into a box, a boxed canyon if you will, and I guess I’d ask if the Minister would agree with that on many issues. So, it’s all in that expression of balancing. We have balanced ourselves to death in many cases and we know that we’re losing species at an untold rate and so on.

The Minister notes that we’re responsible for assessing, monitoring, mitigating impacts of development on our forests, water, as well as wildlife habitat, but he doesn’t mention the climate and that’s probably...

Mr. Chairman, thanks for that information. Will greenhouse gasses be part of the monitoring and assessment work that goes on with the projects? Is that now automatic in consideration of projects? Thank you.