Bob Bromley

Many Members have recommended that this be raised. Why was it not raised in this budget?

Thanks to the Minister. I’d like to respond to that. Tar sands ponds that leak six million litres of contaminated tailings per day into the Athabasca River, steamed crude oil bubbling up through northern Alberta wetlands in multiple sites, coal mine tailings ponds collapsing. That is the record of the Alberta Energy Regulator in just the last six months.

Do we really grow responsible capacity, as the Minister says, by bringing so-called experts with such a poor record and pro-industry bias into our regulatory system? Why did we not simply continue with the National Energy Board? Mahsi.

Thank you. This is obviously related to the internal auditing and so on as well. I’m just wondering if we know what those issues are that have caused the Minister to suggest that this should be reviewed by the program review office.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see again a substantial increase here. Could I just get a little summary of what that’s all about? Thank you.

Thank you for that information and I appreciate this is a five-year average. With Ms. Bisaro’s questioning, the deputy minister mentioned that adjustments would be made in the Department of Finance and reported in there. I’m wondering if we’d know what the amount of those adjustments will total.

Can the Minister at least tell us that he’s telling the Prime Minister that the lack of transparency is an issue here?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I had one more question. The budget for this division is going up about $13 million. I would like to know what proportion of that is being covered by the devolution implementation dollars. Thank you.

Thank you. All I can say is, huh? The Minister just said that in fact he was issuing tags and now he says he’s going to check with his people to see if they’re issuing tags. The Yellowknives Dene have offered a reasonable alternative to the tag system. They’ve offered to hunt up to 150 caribou and report back when that limit has been reached.

Why has the Minister rendered Bathurst caribou even more vulnerable by not accepting this entirely reasonable alternative to the tag system, or at least work with this Aboriginal government to come to a mutually agreed upon plan of action as this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to follow up quickly with a couple of questions about our CETA negotiations. I learned that we are trying to protect our communities, or at least stay in touch with them, and that there are procurement thresholds.

The numbers I’ve seen, and I’m not privy to all this information at all, but in fact would allow most of our infrastructure projects to be susceptible to getting through these agreements. I think partly because our infrastructure is so expensive, and this obviously is a concern. So I’d be wanting to know what the ministry is doing to protect our local...

That’s essentially baloney. We know, we read the papers, we listen to the radio, we watch the news on television, we watch the oil bubbling up because of this regulator’s failures in northern Alberta more and more and more daily without a resolution. We are not talking about a responsible… Around for years? This agency has undergone three name changes, I think, in the last three years. It’s an industry-led regulator. That is not what the people of the Northwest Territories are looking for, thank you very much. Let’s go on record here. Let’s use evidence-based decision-making for a change.

I had...