Bob Bromley

Thank you. I will now rise and report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to continue my comments. I’ve listed a number that I’m hoping the government will fight for as some of the mandatory steps.

Regarding cost to government, the mitigation of social and environmental impacts resulting from the project will involve huge costs. I have urged our Ministers for some months to supply their estimate of the increased program costs that would result from the project and I ask for this again now. I’m sure the people of the Northwest Territories would love to hear this; they’ve been asking too.

The lack of participation, real participation and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, let’s not forget Mr. Anthony W.J. “Tony” Whitford, the environmentalist.

---Applause

And I mean that as the best kind of environmentalist. This is a person who simply personifies environmental responsibility. He’s not out there harping and hollering like we real greenies; he’s out there doing. We see him with his walking shoes on just about all the time, making his way from point A to point B and on the way picking up the bottles and turning them in and donating to a cause, and picking up garbage and so on. He’s been telling me about his 12-inch insulated...

Thank you. That’s easy to say, but obviously it wasn’t easy, it was impossible to deliver in the past, it wasn’t delivered. What exceptional effort is the department putting in to getting this done in a way that will actually achieve the goals the Minister just mentioned? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask questions of the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources about caribou management of the Bathurst herd. I’d like to start with the withdrawal of a question from the Supreme Court on the ability of GNWT to fully restrict the caribou hunting by aboriginal people in certain areas.

Obviously, I think it’s clear to the Minister the biggest issue is with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, and they clearly did not want this question withdrawn from the courts. So I’m wondering why indeed Cabinet decided to withdraw this question from the courts. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would also like to recognize all the folks who worked on the NWT Water Strategy, fantastic work. I figure there must be residents of Weledeh in such a good group, so...

---Laughter

...there we go, thank you very much. And as well, of course, I wanted to...

---Interjections

---Laughter

I agree. There are major, major challenges here. We should forget this agreement, this socioeconomic agreement, so called, and start from a new page now that we have the JRP’s excellent insights into our needs.

I also want to comment on the transparency and peculiarity of this public process. Well before these governments’ initial responses were drafted, the National Energy Board held its final public hearings to gather the comments of others with a critical stake in this outcome. These groups had to do that without knowing how governments would react so their comments could not be informed by...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because the scope of the JRP is so broad and detailed and because this Cabinet has failed in its duty to provide the Members with adequate opportunity to provide input into this response, I will confine my comments to specific remarks on the most major recommendations and general comments on broad subject areas in the report.

I would first like to quote from the JRP report’s observation in the section Public Confidence and Government Preparedness. “Many participants in the panel’s review expressed a major concern about the readiness of governments to respond to and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I appreciate the comments from the Minister. I hope that he is successful in that commitment. It is a big challenge and we do not want... Obviously, nobody wants to end up where we were here recently. Caribou don’t benefit and neither does anybody else. Will the plan that’s being developed here take into consideration both the numbers we know and the poor condition and low survival of calves that seems to be indicated with the most recent information as a result of looking at the hunted animals in that range? Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, I appreciate those remarks from the Premier. I hope that there was some communication with the Yellowknives Dene on this and some agreement before that decision was made, but it does beg the question: what is the government doing now to work with the Yellowknives Dene on the caribou management issue to ensure that a quality, fully supported caribou management plan is in place by this fall? Thank you.