Bob Bromley

In the interests of time, I wonder if I could get the Minister to commit to providing committee with information from the hundreds of inspections of mineral developments operations that have been conducted since April 1st, how many variances have been found and the number of those, if any, that have been taken to court.

I’d appreciate any other relevant information. Are there any permit holders that have repeat variations from what’s permitted, and what action is being taken to follow up on that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m looking forward to learning more about how the department is coming along. A new department here. I know last time we looked at the department and its budget, it had some interesting inspections. I’ll be asking questions about inspections again, and I know that the department has been doing a lot of work on that. I’m interested in how we’re filling those positions and so on. I was concerned at the time, because although we were thumping our chests about the five new inspector positions, we had actually conducted fewer inspections than the federal government had, and...

Music to my ears. Thank you for that. I’d like to move on to illegal occupancy of land in terms of leasing and so on. The department currently sort of picks and chooses the things that it enforces with, for example, the squatters, I don’t know on what basis, but some areas perhaps where clearly the majority of the squatters are not being… The illegal occupants are not being addressed through the enforcement actions of the department. I’m just wondering why and what criteria are used to make a decision not to even sort of investigate illegal occupancy of land.

Thank you. I believe there was a review going on about whether our formula for regional operations and maintenance programs are sufficient. Does this reflect that, or has that review been completed? I know we were doing that for infrastructure, as well, but I just want to get on top of the operations side here.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things. First of all on the inspection side of the equation, when variances are found – and I am thinking of inspections of developments, resource exploitation-type developments – an inspector can recommend court action ultimately if things aren’t being corrected and so on. Under the federal government, in recent times, repeated variances were either ignored and not recommended for court action, or when they were, the federal court system declined to act and prosecute to correct the action as was obviously needed based on the...

I hope the Minister is hearing very clearly the frustration at the time it’s taking to get to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act. Obviously, the LICs are one issue of this fundamental piece of legislation that needs consideration. I appreciate the information that people can go to the bank, so I’d like to follow that up with a question.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister. I know lots of people will be very interested in that and I appreciate that response.

I see that securities are mentioned here and I believe there is a whole division on securities and assurances. Is that because of the two different acts, the Commissioner’s Land Act and the NWT Lands Act? I’m just wondering if securities are still a part of this division’s operations. Thank you.

Thanks for that response, but the question was just asked and responded that we are not looking at these acts at this time. We have a capacity issue. That’s at odds with what the Minister just said.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for that information. That helps to understand the process a bit.

I believe the Recreational Leasing Policy falls in this division, managing and administering leases. I know that there’s a public consultation process going on. I just wonder if we can get a quick update on where we’re at on that, when we can expect results and how the Minister will be responding to some of the points that are being raised. Thank you.

Thanks again for that information. I wonder, as my last point here, if I could ask the Minister if he could commit to providing an update of where the communities are missing an SAO.

Also, I appreciate the comments on training local people for community government jobs. It would be great to know how many SAOs are from the NWT now and how that’s coming along. I’ll look forward to the evaluation report. That sounds great. Thank you. That’s all I had.