Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources in follow-up on my Member’s statement on the 21st of February and some questions then.

I believe it was two weeks ago today that I described the stalled effort to create an independent oversight body to watchdog the Giant Mine Remediation Project. I pointed out there were six drafts of an oversight discussion paper and eight drafts of an environmental agreement. The work is dead in the water and the working group hasn’t met since August.

On February 21st the Minister committed to direct his department...

I will await the Minister getting in gear. Since the close of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review public hearings, the board has taken the uncommon step of opening up the public record again with the request to the developers – that’s us – for further information on the plan to dump toxic waters into Back Bay. Apparently the board is determined that the project proposal contains insufficient information to make wise decisions on this dilution of pollution solution.

Can the Minister update us on our activities to provide this solution and whether we will push to have this project...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, have serious concerns about the wisdom of building the Inuvik-Tuk highway. The project doesn’t make economic sense. The only thorough analysis we’ve had was prepared in 2010 for a project costing $230 million. Twenty-eight months and $12 million later, it’s $311 million. That 2010 analysis revealed little if any net economic benefit, notably with reductions in oil and gas economic activity of thousands of person years of employment and significant reductions to GDP due to efficiencies.

Today with ice-free shipping seasons and marine transport, pipelines are off...

Mr. Chair, I guess I will leave it at that. I will maybe ask the Premier to bring his plan forward for committee to comment on. I guess I wish I had the confidence he had. I know we have lots of experience at this and, on that basis, I know we know how costly it is. I do want to acknowledge that Aboriginal governments have been very much involved, and I appreciate the opportunity for them to be at the table and keep their people updated. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for 50 percent of the people in the Northwest Territories, so somebody needs to speak for those people. Thank you.

Thank you, and just the second part of that was how many years we will be paying that amount. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today with questions to the Premier on devolution. I’m wondering, first, if the Premier could explain what process of public consultation and validation we can expect following the eventual signing of the draft final agreement on devolution.

Thank you. I know that with organizations and partnering governments there is some confusion about that. So to the extent that we can lay that out and be specific when corresponding or whatever, I’m getting the impression that would be very useful. This has been useful for me and I’ll be taking a look at these agreements as they come to fruition and educating myself on it. But thanks for those comments. That’s all I had. Thank you.

I appreciate that plain language version of what’s actually happening here. To plain language it even more, we’re going to be paying more and more subsidies into the future, so it is going up as time goes by. I guess what’s really important here is to try and deal with the underlying costs of generating power, and we’re not putting much towards that. We are putting some, but it’s very modest compared to these sorts of amounts that I’ve been quoting: last year, $27 million; this year, $21 million. It looks like it’s sort of dropping a little bit next year but, obviously, this amount is going up...

Mr. Chair, I am sure that the Premier can relate when I tell him that I have seen IT eat up a lot more than $22.5 million in a year. I am concerned that we have the participation of our public in this agreement, as the Premier knows. He has listed quite a list of demands on this $22.5 million. None of those were small expenditures.

How are we going to ensure that there is enough public consultation dollars? I say this knowing that the Premier has stated publicly that we are a public consulting government, a leader in North America I think he said on that front. I appreciate that. We obviously...

Okay. So our short-term debt has been in the order of $5 million, I have three years in front of me, it looks like our short-term debt has gone up from $580,000, to $5 million, to the $13.2- roughly million. Am I correct in that? Thank you.