Michael Miltenberger

We see this as a territory-wide issue, and once again, tomorrow as I present the budget, in the budget we articulate what our thinking is and our intent to involve Northerners across the board, and of course, in this House we’ll commit to full engagement of the committees and the Members opposite as we look at ways to address this issue in a constructive way.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of areas that have been a source of persistent concern in regard to the issue that the Member raises. Things like the fly-in/fly-out population, things like our own vacancy rate, things like the amount of students that we pay to go to school, as the Member indicated in her opening comments, that we don’t recruit back here. We need to do a better job. We’ve put in place an immigrant Nominee Program, as well, that we believe needs to be improved and beefed up so that it can, in fact, help address some of the many jobs across government, not only across...

No, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was a triggering event out on the line caused by some of the heavy icing events that occurred prior to the cold snap, causing one of the cross members to collapse. It had a line on it which triggered a series of cascading events. We were not alone in the country as we experienced all of these significant severe weather events. Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and on a comparative basis when you look at the three hours it took here to get things back and running compared to the, in many cases, weeks that it took in other jurisdictions, while it was unfortunate and...

With the issue of oversight, there has been a general agreement. There were, in fact, letters written where the Giant Mine Remediation Project Environmental Monitoring Advisory Committee would not make decisions with respect to the operations of the project. Operation responsibilities and decisions would remain with the developer in a joint letter in response to the review board on June 11, 2012. The question is what type of an oversight, and there’s a difference of opinion between the oversight meaning a veto and oversight means best advice and recommendations as we on the operational side as...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015, be read for the third time.

I can assure the Member and this House, and everybody listening, that I am indeed very cognizant in my responsibility as the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and my responsibility to make sure that we do in fact protect the environment.

As the government, one of the governments involved, the federal government and territorial government, we have a responsibility to clean up one of the worst environmentally contaminated sites in the country. It’s going to be a billion dollar project at the end of the day, and we are hard at work doing that. We get advice and recommendations from...

I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave, that Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

Thank you. Those concerns are captured in the approvals and in all the conditions that were attached through the approvals for those two projects. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate this motion being brought forward. It supports the work that has been underway for some time with Justice and Finance on looking at this issue, looking at whether we need to change our legislation or whether in fact it can be done through community municipal bylaws. The City of Yellowknife expressed some time ago, as well, an interest in having this matter explored so that collectively we’ll get to where we have to go. As this is direction to Cabinet, we will be abstaining. Thank you.