Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Madam Chair. Is there any new funding in here for implementation of the Forest Act? I know the Minister's we got the "what we heard" report tabled in the House earlier today, and there's probably going to be some significant changes. Is there any money in here to implement that new legislation if and when it passes? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. And I do want to compliment the Minister and his staff because I know that they're pretty good at leveraging money. But how confident are we that we're going to get any money for this? Because as I understand it, this is the funding that goes to support, you know I'm not even going to pronounce all the names right here, but Thaidene Nene and then a couple of other protected areas. These have gone through extensive consultation with Indigenous governments. It's a great kind of comanagement approach. There's guardianship, you know, projects and things happening there, some...

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that the chair rise and report progress. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Merci, Madam la Presidente. I move that this committee defer further consideration of the estimates for the Legislative Assembly at this time. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Yeah, okay, I guess I look forward to successful negotiations with the federal government then to increase this because I think it's really essential work that some of these folks do. So I don't think I have anything else, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. If I wasn't concerned before, now I'm really worried that all of this stuff is happening in secret behind closed doors. This is not good. And I'm not sure we should even be participating in that kind of process. That is very upsetting that look, good that we're getting experts; we're doing our homework to look at this. But if all of this stuff is happening behind closed doors and is being kept secret and we're only going to find out about it if Alberta decides they're going to do a regulation, that's not a good place to be. So I don't know, Minister or sorry, Madam...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I kind of feel like I should be a zombie and I'm going to come back and continue to hammer on this one because this should never have happened in the first place. It's not needed. It doesn't do any work. And it's not a comanagement approach. It just doesn't fit with the way that we do other comanagement here in the Northwest Territories. I don't know what else I can say, Madam Chair. This needs to be reviewed. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, on page 17, I guess there was quite a anyway, back in 20212022, actuals were about $1.4 million and 20232024, it's around well, 545. What happened in 20212022? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thanks. I don't want to get into a debate here but we're not fully secured on some of these sites. You know, Prairie Creek being an example. We don't hold full financial security because a crazy arrangement that the federal government got into with the company and that it still hasn't been sorted out as far as I know.

All right, I'll ask a more pointed question. Reclaim is a model. It's almost like proprietary developed by some consultants but it's a methodology of calculating reclamation liability based on a whole bunch of rather complicated spreadsheets, unit costs, and so on. That hasn...

Great, thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate that level of detail. And I support the department getting the expertise that's necessary to do this work, and I know you got you went out for two RFPs. I think you got another one out there now, so that's good. Is any of this stuff public, and where would you find it? Do we publish, or do we make any of this information, these peer reviews that we're doing, is any of this stuff available for people here to see what's going on? Thanks, Madam Chair.