Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Madam Chair. I love clarity. I want to thank the Minister for that. And, yeah, it'll be up to the next batch of MLAs to watch that line going forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change on the socalled public engagement on the environmental guideline for contaminated site remediation. It also includes the arsenic remediation guidelines. These revisions have taken 20 years, Mr. Speaker. On the heavier same web page, the review period is now about seven weeks, not including the evacuation period. So can the Minister explain why this public engagement is so short and at the very end of the life of this Assembly? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, sorry. I misspoke; I'm really tired. But is this a onetime increase to the shortterm borrowing limit? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I have been waiting patiently for about 20 years for GNWT to finally review its arsenic remediation guidelines. Yesterday I talked about the flawed environmental guideline for contaminated site remediation with its very short public comment period.

Buried in one of the appendices are new arsenic remediation guidelines that significantly lower the acceptable limits for arsenic in soils for various land uses. This appears to be based on new research and background studies. The research shows the background levels of arsenic are significantly lower than what was...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 97319(2), Capital Estimates 20242025, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 97319(2) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

All right. So I don't know, Mr. Chair. I would like to get some clarification of this. But my reading and I'm only a lowly Regular MLA that doesn't have access to the law clerk right now. My reading of this is that it's the next part of the bill that actually would remove dental hygienists under the Dental Auxiliaries Act. And the Minister, in moving, the motion talked about how the profession would be completely unregulated if this amendment is not accepted. And I don't think that that's the case. So I think if there's something the Minister wants to do about the next clause, that might be...

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I love Private Member's bills. I'm 50/50. I appreciate the comments from the Minister but sometimes if we don't have deadlines, things just don't get done. And I'm just going to leave it at that. I support the bill. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, merci, Monsieur le President. Again, I have to go on record as to why I'm going to vote against this bill. I've said, though, that there's good things in this bill like response to at least three independent reviews that were carried out. That work can and should have been done, quite frankly, years ago. So those are the good parts of the bill. The part that causes me a lot of concern is the name change. And I'm not opposed to the name change in principle. I don't personally think it's a great thing. But I think it's not a good I don't condone a process, Mr. Speaker, where we start off...

Yeah, merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that, but posting this to a website I just don't think is going to cut it. I tried to read this stuff last night. It's highly technical stuff. And the document that's out there for public engagement right now is three pages. There's no references in it. It's not very well done in my humble opinion. It doesn't even explain that we're going from 2003 guidelines to a new set of guidelines. I think the Minister needs to beef up the public engagement/public communications component.

So can the Minister undertake to talk to his...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that the chair rise and report progress. Mahsi.