Michael Miltenberger

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.

Thank you. In regard to the first part of the Member’s comment and question about which law would prevail, it relates to other territorial legislation. When there’s territorial legislation and federal legislation, then it has paramountcy. It overrules territorial legislation. That’s one issue.

The other issue is I’m convinced that the process that was put in place to approve those two wells, those two applications, was under the NEB, what’s voluntary and what they say in the questions part of their filing is they fully expect the proponents to disclose, which they’ve done. At the same time, we...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Tuesday, November 12, 2013, I will move that Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015, be read for the first time.

No, I haven’t spoken to the federal Minister directly on this issue.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. We as well try to make sure we work to make sure we have those same type of firewalls. Thank you.

We’ve accepted some, we’ve modified some and we’ve rejected some. It’s not accurate to say that we’ve rejected the recommendations. We have an obligation to be thorough and due diligence and look at the work that we’re doing, look at the advice and recommendations from other parties, and we’ve done that. We’ve agreed with some, modified some and some we’ve rejected.