Kevin O'Reilly

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, Madam Chair. So I've spent most of my adult life here in the Northwest Territories actually supporting and advocating for Indigenous rights. I came up here in 1985 to work at the Dene Nation. It's kind of ironic I'm at the point now, you know, we've got this bill in front of us to try to implement Indigenous rights, and I've got very serious concerns about it. That is just I'm finding this very difficult. And I think part of it is the way the bill was drafted and put together.

You know, when I look at this bill, there just okay, part of the problem is that people conflate us...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. It may not come as a surprise to the other side, I think this bill was not particularly well drafted. I don't think there was adequate consultation. And to have this bill not apply to GNWT, that's not good. This might actually help fix that through a onetime review that the department would undertake, would have to make public. So I'm going to support this motion. I think statutory reviews are actually good. I think it's a way to hold Cabinet to account. This one would actually be done internally by the department; they just have to make it public. So it's not...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Well, I don't think I can possibly respond to everything that I heard there. But, you know, I'm not here to get my way. If that's why any of us are here, we're here for the wrong reasons. I'm here to try to serve my constituents and try to think about the broader public interest. I've always tried to increase transparency, openness, accountability, as a public government. That's why I'm here so it's not about getting my way. Yeah, I'll leave that aside for now.

You know, I guess the issue here is the only way for Regular MLAs to hold the Cabinet to account with regard...

Thanks, Madam Chair. So the reason why this recommendation is here is that committee tried to get this included in the bill at the clausebyclause review, and the Minister would not concur. So the fallback position for committee is to try to bring it forward as a recommendation and I guess at the appropriate time when we're in the bill itself, I'll move a motion to try to get back to get it in. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah, okay. Well, let me just try it, yeah. I understand that this language comes from other laws of the Northwest Territories passed by the Assembly. So I just want to find a way to confirm that, and which pieces of legislation it comes from.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I said in my earlier remarks before somebody tries to say otherwise that I agree in principle to the idea of shared decisionmaking agreements. And, you know, I think we probably have some kind of examples out there of those sorts of arrangements. You know, you might say that Deline selfgovernment is that kind of an arrangement. But I guess one of the concerns I have here is, you know, we don't really know or understand what the scope of these agreements could look like; how frequent they may be; how many there may be; what is GNWT going to look like at the end of...

Yeah, thanks. I can certainly support this. I am concerned about the level of engagement there was with Regular MLAs in the development of the bill. Unfortunately, it all happened behind closed doors so I can't say much, but it certainly didn't meet my expectation. And the bill, I don't think, really reflected, in my opinion, the legislative proposal, which I can't speak to either, was at such a high vague level that the bill I guess didn't really the bill had a lot more in it than I think I'd expected as a result of the legislative proposal, and there's a number of issues that I'm sure we're...