Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will deliver the budget address on Thursday, February 6, 2014. Thank you.

I know the rules of the House are clear in terms of me reading a long, detailed response chronology that lays out all the events, so in order to respect those rules of the House, I will take the question as notice.

Of course, we will commit as a government, as a department to ensure that the people of Norman Wells are fully informed and conversant as to what is happening. In fact, they are key players that need to be involved and consulted, as well, on an ongoing basis as they have been to date. We want to continue that relationship.

In regards to the federal government, I will double check with the department once again, but my recollection is, if I look around the landscape, I see Norman Wells, I see the territorial government and I don’t see a lot of presence from the federal government on this...

Given the wonders of our communications system, as we speak in this House the Member can rest assured that staff are making notes, tracking the discussion here, and I’ll commit to the Member to report back to him before the end of this month, definitely before the end of session, so that we can have a discussion about what are the particulars and what is currently in place and what gaps there may be. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe so, especially based on the edifying comments and statements I’ve listened to the Member make in this House over the last couple of weeks about the issue of fracking, the trips and some of the particulars as it relates to those particular practices. Thank you.

What we were talking about in the House today, as I just indicated, was I was responding to questions related to the letter that has been posted and written to Mr. Spence, and that is the extent.

At this juncture, I was speaking to the contents of the letter that was written to Mr. Spence and signed off by both governments.

We’re prepared to, and want to, engage to resolve this issue. The letter is very positive about what we still see as the potential for the role of an oversight group when it comes to advice and recommendations as opposed to final say and vetoes. So we have to resolve that issue. It’s a very fundamental one, but there’s still a lot of good work that can be done. Thank you.

As MLA, I think the Member would be very hard to comfort on this issue. It’s clear she wants total acceptance of the report, and no questions asked, cost is not an issue, those types of things don’t matter and somehow that report should be taken totally as is because a lot of people provided their recommendations. They did a lot of work. We appreciate the work, we’re looking at the work and using a lot of the recommendations, but no responsible government would be wise just to take things at face value without taking a look at them, especially when we’ve invested hundreds of millions of...

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...