Kevin O'Reilly

I would like to thank the Premier for confirming that there was no public consultation with regard to the development of that statement. I have had a chance to look at it. It is supposed to be about sustainable development. You could actually take the word "sustainable" out and just replace it with "resources." There is nothing in the document, really, with regard to sustainability.

The classic definition of "sustainability" is to make sure that things that we do today do not take away from opportunities for future generations. It is about intergenerational equity. The Premier himself has...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I don't think I actually heard a response to my question. I will try it again. I think he has leapt ahead to the next one I was going to ask. I was looking for a commitment from the Minister to an independent, evidence-based review of economic rent from mining, including taxes and royalties, during the life of this Assembly. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. He promised to give more information on how this is dealt with in other jurisdictions in the report. It is not there. On October 19th, when he did appear before the standing committee, he promised there would be targeted public engagement on this report. Yesterday, he repeated that promise in the House. Can the Minister explain what this targeted engagement is and who is going to be consulted and when?

Merci, Monsieur le President. As I said, it was disappointing to hear the Minister say yesterday that this important work is not likely to take place during this Assembly. Why did we bother to get devolution when something as fundamental as how much money the public gets from resource extraction is not going to be reviewed? Why should Ottawa give us any more authority when we won't even exercise what we have? Needless to say, Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the mining Minister later today. Mahsi.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I would like to start off on the issue of the land rights negotiations. The Minister indicated that there is an additional $595,000 in this year's budget for it. That is likely a good thing, but this comes after two years of cuts within the department and its capacity to negotiate. It is good that we are trying to work towards that. I guess I'll have some questions about what that funding is really going to be used for.

The other thing I want to say about this is that there is a joint committee of Cabinet and Regular MLAs to talk about some of these issues, but it has never...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I will use my reply to the budget address to set out some of my thoughts on the following, as I did last year:

A quick summary of the 2018-2019 budget and fiscal context;

A review of what I recommended in my reply to the 2017-2018 budget address;

A description of the process for the 2018-2019 Budget and how it might be improved; and

The good and the bad of the 2018-2019 Budget as proposed by Cabinet.

Let there be no mistake, Cabinet continues to cut programs and services to fund surpluses that are being used to pay for large infrastructure projects such as the $67...

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister responsible for Public Engagement and Transparency on his lengthy statement earlier today. He had to reach back in time to 20152016 and quote some figures from the main estimates, but can he tell me what is in the current main estimates of 20182019 in terms of royalties from minerals, oil, and gas extraction here in the Northwest Territories? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that explanation. It sounds like there are a lot of things that are still coming, but we actually have a hard deadline we have to deal with. The federal government keeps moving forward with the national approach on climate change that will allow Canada to meet its international obligations. We now have a deadline of March 30th, about seven weeks away, to make a decision about our own carbon pricing system or rely on the federal backstop. Can the Minister tell us how he intends to meet this federal deadline and still include the input of committee, and perhaps the...

Merci, Monsieur le President. Yes, I can clarify that. Can the Minister of Finance, then, tell the public: what is the position of our government with regard to climate change, impacts on our environment and our people, and whether carbon pricing is an essential tool to address this threat? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. Regular MLAs and the public have heard almost nothing from our Cabinet colleagues on the issue of carbon pricing since the fall of 2017. On July 26th of last year, the Minister of Finance released a discussion paper and public comment closed on September 15th. A public survey was also conducted.

Although the discussion paper shows a heavy antitax bias, the right questions were generally asked in terms of taxes versus cap and trade, revenue use, sectoral distribution, implementation, and reporting. Where are the results of this public engagement? Here we are, five...