Michael Miltenberger

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that all the parties did the best that they could to move this process along. It’s very complicated and there are a lot of players. There’s a lot of interest, lots of advice and recommendations and all the decisions being made on the process and the decisions made were on what was going to be done in terms of freezing and those types of things all took time. Thank you.

There is not a question of have to be rejected. We did a review of the recommendations. We looked at them closely. We looked at how they all fit together. Some of them are sequential. There are issues related to time, to cost and to scope of the project. In spite of the Member’s comments that money is no object, when you’re in government, in fact, money is a constant object.

But very clearly, the concern is cleaning up the site. We don’t want any delays. Some of the concerns, in our opinion, are that some of their recommendations, because they’re sequential, for example, could add up to three...

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 second time.

This bill makes supplementary appropriations for infrastructure expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m the responsible Minister in this instance, and that responsibility is mine.

Mr. Speaker I seek unanimous consent to proceed with first reading of Bill 7, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2014-2015.

---Unanimous consent granted