Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Can I get a commitment, then, out of the Minister to provide that information in the next few days, or maybe even tomorrow? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. First off, I guess I would like to clear the record. Yesterday I said that there were no submissions from the oil and gas industry with regard to the development of these bills, and when I went back and checked, there indeed was a letter from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers dated May 3, 2018. It was sent to the department in terms of development of these bills. It is 13 pages long, and I can confidently say that all of their concerns were addressed and have been incorporated into the bill, which is good news, but the standing committee did not receive any...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay. I don't agree with everything that has been said. I would like to know, after the one-year period, if something goes wrong, who is responsible and who pays? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I wish to report to the Assembly that the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures has reviewed Bill 56: An Act to Amend the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council Act, Number 2. Mr. Speaker, the committee wishes to report that Bill 56 is now ready for consideration in Committee of the Whole as amended and reprinted. Masi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. This clause is about making sure that proof of financial responsibility remains in force during a suspension or abandonment of oil and gas facilities.

I want to thank the Minister for providing a letter to me yesterday. I tabled this earlier in the House. It provides some detail about how this is actually done in practice by OROGO. What this does is require that there be a one-year period after successful abandonment or decommissioning of a facility or an activity, I guess, that the financial responsibility has to stay in place for that long.

I would like to ask the Minister...

Okay. Thanks, Mr. Chair. That is not what I heard in committee, but I will take the Minister and his staff at face value. This could have still created a lot of duplication. It took 10 months for the department and the Minister to get federal concurrence, so this is a time-consuming process on their part. It's not what I heard at committee, but I will take it at face value. I don't think this was a good thing, to be messing around with a bill while it's before committee. I would like to ask the Minister: what are the next steps in terms of reviewing oil and gas legislation? This was step one...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Well, I am not sure I agree with the Minister's assessment. I believe that this is really certainly not in keeping with consensus government principles, to go off and seek federal concurrence while a bill is before the Legislative Assembly. I would like to get confirmation from the Minister and his staff: the changes that have now been made to this bill, they, as I understand it, they will require federal concurrence again. Is that correct?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have a few brief comments, and I do have a couple of lines of questioning that I would like to pursue.

First off, I was quite surprised that committee received absolutely no submissions from industry. Not one. Nothing. There is no record of any submissions made to the department as part of their development of the bill, because all of the submissions are still available on their website. To me, that means that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on the part of industry in commenting on our regulatory regime that they are actually governed by. They don't seem to be...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have raised this issue, again, on the floor of the House. I don't actually agree with everything that is in the recommendation. We don't have to do a comprehensive review of oil-and-gas-related regulation.

This absolute liability cap is in regulation right now. The Minister could change this tomorrow if the Minister wanted, and this should have been within the scope of the changes that were made to these pieces of legislation. I don't understand why the department didn't flag this internally as a problem. Right now, the absolute liability cap is somewhere between about $10...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am not going to belabour this one, because I am going to wait for the Minister to come up, and he is going to answer some questions about this. The public does need to know that the department and the Minister went off and got federal concurrence on the bills, because there is a requirement that that take place under the Northwest Territories Act.

While the bills were before the committee, the Minister went off and sought federal concurrence before committee had even changed them. It is my understanding that, even with the changes that have now been incorporated into the...