Kevin O'Reilly

I was scrambling looking for the motion about how to finish off the item we are on, but I think I have to move that the chair rise and report progress.

CHAIRPERSON (Ms. Semmler): Thank you. There's a motion on the floor to report progress. The motion is in order and nondebatable. All those in favour. Opposed. Motion is carried.

I will now rise and report progress.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I guess I will take it one step back. Does this government actually support the concept of participant funding in general for environmental assessment, and I'm hoping the Minister's actually going to say, yes. Thanks, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I don't fault the Minister in wanting to follow due process, but of course the Bathurst caribou herd is at a critically low point but our government continues to steamroll ahead with plans for an allweather road that would inevitably cause irreversible harm to the Bathurst herd.

So can the Minister tell us whether or government is prepared to stop or pause the work on the Slave Geological Corridor until a regional study is completed. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. I think that the analysis of what contribution critical minerals can play in the climate crisis is essential before we head down a path of providing incentives, subsidies, or concessions. Can the Minister tell us whether there's been a thorough analysis of any subsidies or concessions for critical mineral development now or when and how that work will be carried out? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that response.

The community of Jean Marie River was particularly hard hit by flooding as we all know. Can the Minister tell us if and when the water treatment plant was put back into operation and what arrangements were made for clean water for the community before that. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'm not going to deal with where this is going. I'll deal with that when it comes to a sup.

What are we getting here for this? The reason why I'm raising this is in the last Assembly, we dealt with a lot of devolution legislation that we inherited. There was a lot of public registries set up. I know I've been critical of Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the past for their protected areas registry, the lack of information, the lack of rigor to it. But here we are spending $3.7 million on something for mining. And the other departments don't seem to...

Merci, Monsieur le President. Tough act to follow there.

On the theme of small communities, this past summer our family took a trip to Sambaa Deh Falls Territorial Park, one of the NWT's hidden gems. While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit Jean Marie River on August 11th to see some of the spring flood damage firsthand. I had contacted the Chief ahead of the visit but unfortunately he had some other meetings that took him outside of the community. I was able to briefly meet with the senior administrative officer and drove around the community.

The community administrative offices...

Thanks, Madam Chair. On page 28, the mineral administration and registry system, can someone tell me what the total cost of that is going to be, or ballpark figure. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, well, if it's not the right place to dig into it, where when do we start that?

We've got $70 million that's being booked here, that we're supposed to approve, and there's at least a couple of Regular MLAs on this side that can't figure out how we're actually going to pay for this over time. Yeah, I think there's a problem here.

But, look, maybe the meeting is probably or briefing or something is the best way to try to figure this out. But as I said, I just find it really hard to understand how $70 million is really going to cut it for all of our assets that are out there right...

Okay, thanks. Well, I've I look at the last couple years on the O and M side for Housing Corp, and it seems to be about $77 million. Some of that -- a lot of that I guess is staff, but some of it actually goes into care and maintenance of homes as well, as I seem to understand, or funding of LHOs or whatever. So do we actually know how much we spend on housing -- or how much we anticipate spending on the capital side for housing next year?