Bob Bromley

Mr. Chair, that’s all I had.

I do note that I have used both that chicken manure and the Yellowknife composting products in my garden at home and I know many have. Obviously the goals Yellowknife sets out to achieve – waste reduction and making soil amendments available – are challenges facing our communities, all of them. Partners have learned that aggressive public education and motivation are essential for promoting participation.

With community gardens really taking off around the territory and very small transportation distances, there seems a big opportunity to begin establishing the habit of household composting as...

Thanks for the Minister’s comments there. I don’t think they’re very accurate, obviously. I guess I would like to ask the Minister, what has been the greenhouse gas reductions net reductions in these industry emissions in the Northwest Territories for whatever time frame he cares to talk about. I’m very happy to see Diavik taking a leadership role on their own, and I think they’re talking about 4 to 6 percent of their energy being from wind compared to zero from renewable energy. That’s significant. The opportunity, as the Minister said, is there in a way that saves money. It’s not being taken...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today I want to salute the City of Yellowknife and Ecology North as the co-winners of the 2013 Federation of Canadian Municipalities Sustainable Communities Award in the waste category. The award recognizes the impressive achievement of piloting and then implementing the first phase of an organic waste composting project.

From 2009 to 2012, the city partnered with Ecology North on a centralizing composting pilot project to learn about and test the process and to evaluate the feasibility of a full-scale operation. The three-year project looked to composting in cold...

What of those dollars are going to land use planning?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate those comments from the deputy minister. I hope that we will be public with that information because I know there are concerns in the public amongst both our Aboriginal governments and other people that aren’t just from reading the newspaper and opinion pieces and so on. It’s clear that people want to move in the area of sustainability and where we derive our energy, but they also want to know it’s being done properly and with all due care. So I appreciate that.

The last question I have here is the climate change and the Greenhouse Gas Strategy and so on. Both...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make just a few comments here. I think we’re still continuing to miss an opportunity in the forest management area and that’s the area of wild crafting and particularly mushroom harvesting. I don’t know where we’re at on that. I know there has been work to look into that, but it’s an industry that is proving to have some potential but it needs some management to really benefit the people of the Northwest Territories, otherwise the benefits go to people that come in from outside and take away the resources. So one question is what are we doing about that.

I’m...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, Mr. Yakeleya, for helping to bring this motion forward. This motion is in response to the very deeply held concerns territory-wide about the loss of environmental review, oversight and public participation that changes to federal legislation is causing. As the motion lays out in detail, the impacts upon our environmental management regime of the measures concealed in the federal omnibus budget Bill C-38 and Bill C-45 are a major assault upon the land for all Canadians.

Because federal stewardship for our northern natural birthright is so dominant...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table two documents today. The first one is from the students at Aurora College in the Business Administration Program, with a cover letter from Kari Williams, vice-president, Aurora College Business Administration Student Association, directed to Aurora College with an attached petition for extending the program to three years.

The second one is the Dene Nation support on federal changes to the environment motion that was issued on February 13th. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek your consent to return to recognition of visitors in the gallery, item 6 on the Order Paper. Thank you.

---Unanimous consent granted