Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. My Member's statement is about Francophone education in the Northwest Territories, and I'll deliver it in French so people may want to change to the right channel there. [Translation unavailable]

Yes, thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to highlight what this institutional control program is all about.

In Saskatchewan, the mining that takes place is generally in the northern part of the province. They've got a bunch of abandoned uranium mines there that I guess were federally owned, operated, or regulated and so on; a few gold mines here and there too, but. So they had this problem of these abandoned mines and no way of really trying to deal with them or find funding and so on. So what they did was they thought long and carefully about this, and they talked to people in the mining industry...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes, I want to make sure that we have some very hardworking enforcement staff in place now, and I want to make sure that this is not perceived in any way as a criticism of the work that they do. What this is, is a reflection of findings from the environmental audit that took place in 2020 that wanted you know, that pointed out that we want to make sure that there's an adequate inspection, and I'm going to quote here, "ensuring adequate inspection capacity as well as timely and transparent inspections, reporting, and follow up." So in no way is this is a criticism of our...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I want to commend the chair and members of the committee, that included myself, for the hard work that went into this. We had a lot of support in getting these presenters before us and in compiling the report. And, you know, why is this important? You know, our government has assumed tens of millions of dollars of unnecessary public liabilities as a result of measures that were not taken to prevent contaminated sites. And, you know, the biggest one is just, you know, five or seven kilometres down the road here, the Giant Mine, where our government is now contributing...

Okay, thanks, Madam Chair. And I understand that one of the provisions of this bill are to allow for greater information sharing between the I think it's the Canada Revenue Agency and our government, and maybe that sort of goes both ways. But committee has raised the issue of trying to understand and get, you know, precise figures for a number of tax credits that we have, like for political contributions and so on. And because I guess in the interest of transparency and accountability, it would be nice to be able to put dollar figures on the value of the lost revenues associated with some of...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Who could have thought tax bills would be so exciting? But the committee report raises a few questions for me, and I did have the privilege of sitting in and listening to the review of the bill. There was some amendments made to the bill, and some of this, the provisions now, are being made retroactive to like more than five years ago. And I just had wondered why these changes were going back five years in time. Was there some delay on our part in getting some of this implemented? And I think the Minister said that that was not the case. But the report also says that the...

Merci, Monsieur le President. And I do want to acknowledge that this Minister has taken a constructive approach with CSFTNO, from everything I've heard so I want to give him credit for that. And I understand now that we've got these census numbers, which is good, but I can't even count or remember the number of times GNWT's been taken to court and lost over Francophone education rights in the NWT over the last 15 years.

So can the Minister tell us how he intends to keep GNWT out of courts over constitutionallyprotected Francophone education rights? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that because he's of course getting into my second question. The problems in Hay River are different and, in some ways, very similar, though, to what Yellowknife was like before the expansion of Ecole Allain StCyr. Ecole Boreale has been forced to keep its senior students in a portable for 13 years. Count it 13 years. And there are continuing issues with heating, water, and sewer services. The students also need to compete for gym time with the nearby public school.

Can the Minister tell us what he is going to do with regard to...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, this is a cap that's set in regulations. Cabinet can change this tomorrow if they want to; the Minister could change this tomorrow. The federal government had these caps. We adopted those with devolution. But after devolution, the federal government, the Auditor General came and looked at how the federal government tries to manage public liabilities and the Auditor General recommended to the federal government that they needed to change these caps in the areas where they retained jurisdiction, the offshore in particular. And so the Auditor General said that you need...

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