Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. Last week, I made a Member's statement about the great post-devolution resource giveaway, where the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment issued 10 significant discovery licences that tie up petroleum resources forever without any benefits to NWT residents. The original exploration rights were issued by the federal government. Can the Minister tell us whether the federal government made any provision for fees or work requirements in the issuance of those original rights? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do have just a few brief comments that I would like to make. I want to thank the committee for letting me sit in on a lot of the meetings that they had regarding the report. I am quite pleased with the recommendations that came out of the report.

911 is something that was being worked on when I was on city council back in 1997 to 2006. This was not in our mandate, and I do appreciate the work of a couple of Ministers to bring this forward. I want to commend them for their hard work in getting this bill to us and that this is finally going to happen in the life of this...

Yes, thanks, Mr. Chair. I will just read a quick quote from the review board. The board found that the so-called whole-of-government approach, and this is the quote, "has limited the ability of evidence and expertise from GNWT departments about the potential impacts, concerns, and mitigations on issues within their respective mandates and jurisdictions." That, to me, is pretty damning. That is not coming from me. That is coming from the review board, so I want to encourage the Minister, and I think he is made a commitment before that he is going to review how this policy has been working. I...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The Minister is starting to make my case for why I think ISSS is a bad move in the first place. Here's a department that is creating a new position so that they can get timely access to the kind of services that ISSS is supposed to be delivering. That sort of goes counter to the whole reason why this thing was being set up in the first place. I don't agree with it, and I think the people who were being moved out of Lands into the Department of Finance should stay with Lands. This just, I guess, confirms my belief that this is a bad thing to do, this ISSS, when we have a...

Thanks. That is great. I appreciate that sentiment from the Minister. I did want to reply to one of Mr. Hagen's comments. It's not me saying that the GNWT did not participate well in the Tlicho All-Season Road. That comes from the review board itself, in the developer's assessment report. The review board was highly critical of our government on the Tlicho All-Season Road. TerraX is not proceeding with its exploration this winter. This project assessment policy does not seem to be working very well. The Minister talked about how there is going to be a "lessons learned" coming out of the Tlicho...

Bingo. I think I've got it now. Why is the department hiring a geomatics analyst -- as I understand, these are computer people who do computerized mapping and all that kind of thing -- when it seems like all of those functions have been removed from the department and are now parked in Finance? Can someone explain to me why this person or why this position is being added to the Lands budget? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Thompson?

I am trying to understand the answer. So, in last year's business plan, is this where we would have found all of those wonderful GIS people who in this budget would have been moved out to the Department of Finance? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay. I am going to leave that one alone for now. I remain concerned that we are spending money on this without the federal government being at the table. I want to move forward on a couple of other areas in here. Can someone explain to me why there has been no progress on developing policy legislation to help prevent more public liabilities? There is a unit, I think, located in here, securities and project assessment. It was announced with great fanfare by the previous Minister, and nothing seems to have happened. I am not aware of any policy on mine site reclamation that...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Actually, I think it is further down where land use planning is found. Yes. Okay, I have it. Sorry, I'm just getting my notes together. Sorry, the items that I have are further down into the business plan. Thanks, Mr. Chair.