Kevin O'Reilly

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have two witnesses here with me today. Mr. Mike Reddy, the legislative drafter with the Department of Justice, is on my left, and I have Ms. Alyssa Holland, who is a law clerk, on my right-hand side. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As chair of the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures, I am pleased to present Bill 24, An Act to Amend the Elections and Plebiscites Act.

Bill 24 is the result of the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures review of three reports submitted by the Chief Electoral Officer in the life of the 18th Assembly. The first, entitled "Modernizing Election Administration in the Northwest Territories," was tabled by the Speaker on May 31, 2016, and reports on the conduct of the general election. The second report is a white paper on the independence and accountability of...

Thanks. I appreciate the comments, and in fact, I try to do that, but given that the traffic there is, like, actually five lanes wide when you consider the turning lane into the hotel, it is hard to see that far, and if another vehicle is sort of in behind, you don't know whether they are stopping or not. I get it; you guys are going to check into that and try to improve it.

That is from the pedestrian perspective, but also, I think, for the drivers, because I have driven that part as well. All of a sudden, somebody's pressing a light. You don't know whether the guy in front of you is actually...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I have two documents to table today. The first is entitled "Policies for Generating Socioeconomic Benefits from Natural Resource Extraction Projects, A Research Report for the Government of the Northwest Territories" by Eric Werker, Maggie Cascadden, and Katherine Zmuda, dated April 23, 2017. Mr. Speaker, the second document I wish to table is entitled "NWT Resource Production 1999 to 2017," one page. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to thank the Minister for that. We are getting closer. In my statement, I said that, if NWT were a country, it would be the second-richest place in the world on a GDP-per-capita basis. We certainly don't seem to lack the capacity to generate more revenues. The report that I am going to table today also says that "more aggressive fiscal and royalty rates" are something that we can do, so how does the Minister plan to work to incorporate more transparent and accountable public reporting of resource revenues in the proposed Mineral Resources Act and the amendments to our oil and gas...

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I referred in my statement to the inability to match up the public reporting of royalties by fiscal years with the value of mineral and oil and gas production by calendar years. Since the royalty amounts of all resource products are lumped together, you can't disentangle the amounts received for individual commodities. Will the Minister commit to begin to disclose publicly the royalty figures for each resource commodity, using the consistent reporting period similar to the value of resource...

Merci, Monsieur le President. During the summer, my office cobbled together information on the amount of money that our public governments get in return for the extraction of our non-renewable resources.

According to figures from the NWT Bureau of Statistics, the value of diamonds mined in the Northwest Territories since 1999 is $29.4 billion. The value of all mineral, oil, and gas production was $38.6 billion. Unfortunately, the public accounts for both the federal and the NWT governments don't report separate royalty figures for each type of mineral, oil, or gas, so it's impossible to see...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I guess what we have before us is a bill that was developed in response to reports from the Chief Electoral Officer; the observations and recommendations that she made in running the election in 2015. There were opportunities for the public to review and comment on her report. Maybe they could have been better, and I will agree with the mover of this motion that we probably could do a better job in terms of the public review of this bill itself, but the Chief Electoral Officer did not raise the issue of party politics in her reports. That's not part of why this bill was...

Yes, I would, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the commitment made by the department to look at those two issues. I will check out the crosswalk again myself in probably a few weeks, after it gets a bit darker, and see how it is working, but I look forward to the department looking at that and improving it. Thanks, Mr. Chair.