Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. For each horizontally fractured well in the Northwest Territories to date:

What was the source of the water used and how much was consumed?

What was the quantity of greenhouse gases emissions due to flaring, and how many days did flaring occur?

What was the amount and composition of each additive used during fracking, and how is the flow of unrecovered produced water tracked underground?

How much produced water has been recovered to date, what chemicals are in the recovered water, how is it being...

I realize this is not an easy issue, but I also recognize that there’s been darn little done in the seven-plus years and people are unsafe. So, the opposite of a hero is somebody who fails to act and is responsible for accidents, where people get injured or killed. We already know that not far down the line this has happened already.

Is the Minister willing to accept that responsibility without doing anything? He’s got the experts. I’m throwing ideas out there. That’s fine. If my ideas don’t work, come up with one.

Will the Minister come up with a good interim solution and put things in place...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today. I have a very simple question for the Minister of Transportation. I’m sure he anticipates it.

Will he in fact finally address the Highway No. 3 issue between Niven access road and downtown Yellowknife for the safety of our residents during the life of this Assembly? Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A primary function of government is to ensure citizens are safe. In my mind, we are failing on at least one front and within sight of this building yet. I am speaking about the stretch of Highway No. 3 from the Niven Lake access to 49th Avenue.

While GNWT and the city have argued over jurisdiction of this piece of highway and the costs associated with remediation and maintenance of it, an entire subdivision has been built and grown into a busy and vital community right across the highway. But thousands of Niven Lake residents have been left without safe, convenient...

I’ll accept that and maybe just ask the Minister to confirm that so that he does know later. I’m willing to go forward for now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also would like to commend committee and the Minister on all the work done on this bill. I think it has come a long ways from when we first saw it, and I think a lot of people were startled about the amount of consultation with the people being affected that had been done and the shortcomings in that process. I’m sure we’ve all learned from that and that we can’t expect any entity to speak for the people other than the people themselves when we go out and do our consultations. I think that’s a lesson learned in this. Had we been more thorough on that front, I don’t...

Thank you. I appreciate that. So, I would ask the Minister if he would indeed commit to, for example, approaching Diavik to learn about their wind project and how it might be considered in our communities, or some other model that they would recommend and how we can work with industry to establish standards that they must meet so that this isn’t a one-off thing that comes in towards the end of the life of a project. It is a requirement from the beginning, as the Diavik wind expert has recommended, and some of the other things that the deputy minister recommended, I appreciate sharing and...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The second one, I’m not astute enough to understand or have the context to understand that one, but I’ll explore that one maybe out of the House. Thank you for that response.

I also see the increase of operating expenses, and perhaps that’s included in the response I got, but operating expenses of about $600,000 and the Member’s pension expenses are about $400,000. I think that was part of the explanation I just heard. But the first one, are there some details I could have on that? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Very interesting, of course, to see this new division in the department, and maybe I could just start off by getting some clarity on how this department will work with others. I see an energy project-focused division that will lead the implementation of local renewable and alternative energy solutions in NWT communities. Obviously, we need community energy systems that would address the cost of living. That’s probably one of the biggest things along with greenhouse gas emissions. So we’re talking, to some extent, community energy systems. I have to wonder how this...

Is that work anticipated to be completed during the life of this fiscal year, so it doesn’t need to be part of next fiscal year’s project? Thank you.