Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to focus in, as well, on the rather extraordinary request for an additional $40 million this fiscal year, tens of millions of dollars the following fiscal year to be brought forward in our capital budget. We have already heard about unexpected expenditures of $50 million and $20 million. That’s $70 million. Possibly it’s more than that in our operating supp here today. Now we are pushing this $210 million, $230 million in unexpected expenditures at this moment in time and with the schedule proposed.

I ask myself two questions. The first is: Is this a prudent...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At long last, through their locally elected representatives and the government they direct, the people of the Northwest Territories have control over Territorial lands. The Land Minister’s recent announcement of his intent to develop a recreational leasing policy, perhaps even with teeth, is welcome.

In the absence of a transparent and publicly reviewed process on recreational leasing in the past, the public has been seeing ongoing loss of the commons, rewards to those who occupy lands illegally, a helter-skelter policy of leasing by the federal government and the...

Yep, 18th Assembly. No more questions.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. If we’re looking at a 20 percent increase every year, would the government exercise that clause without going to competition?

I appreciate that information. So this is a 20 percent leap in this contract. That seems like a pretty steep increase in a year. Have the value of diamonds gone up by 20 percent? Again, I’m assuming that this was not an RFP, but was this contract a competitive thing, and if not, will we be contemplating that in future years?

Mr. Chair, that would be useful. Thank you. I’m sure Social Programs has that information, but that would be useful.

Are we expecting additional requests in subsequent years, I guess, or will those be funded out of the internal budget? Do we know at this point in time?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I enjoy the consistency across the years.

So, $20 million, $20.037 million, we have had some discussion on this, I think, but I just want to note that this sort of expenditure and this specific one is totally consistent with the impacts of climate change. It’s a consequence of the extreme weather events that are happening globally with increasing frequency and severity. The NWT doesn’t have any special dispensation, so these sorts of things we can expect again with increasing frequency and severity and we need to be able to plan for them.

Scientists have warned about this...

Thanks to the Minister. Just driving out to Behchoko, I estimate perhaps 100 cases of land occupancy en route. I have no idea how many are legal or not, but the last time I looked there were two leases between Yellowknife and Behchoko.

The Department of Lands has no inventory of illegal structures on Territorial land, of which we know there are at least dozens, possibly hundreds, despite their mandate, and a list of the legal structures in place through leases. It would seem easy enough to develop such an inventory, identifying all the structures and subtracting the ones which we know – the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for Minister R.C. McLeod. I was pleased to hear, earlier in the session, that the Department of Lands has instituted a moratorium on new recreational leases until a new made-in-the-NWT lands framework is developed. However, this does not address the unauthorized structures and land occupancy that has sprung up in the intervening vacuum.

What plans does the Minister have to address the proliferation of illegal structures we see already built and continuing to be built on public Territorial land? Mahsi.

Government’s failure to listen to the public has slowed the process tremendously and caused expensive and repeated re-workings of policy that never got implemented. The people on the land suffer the consequences, and we know it is expensive as well. There is an opportunity to do better, and I know this Minister has good intentions. It will require full participation of my colleagues and the public to achieve that.

Mr. Speaker, I will have questions. Mahsi.