Wally Schumann

I think that might be a little premature, about doing a SEA. These guys haven't even put a drill in the ground yet, but they are very bullish, as I said, on their project. The department has demonstrated time and time again that we want to focus on getting benefits to residents in the Northwest Territories, to the people working, to small businesses, and getting all benefits we can out of resources from these types of projects. We will be following these guys closely.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I am well aware of the Astro gold project in the Sahtu. They have been doing some work out there. They actually accessed our geodatabase that we have housed in the Northwest Territories geoscience department. In discussions with them, when I was talking to them at roundup, this actually came from a presentation when the Premier and I were at PDAC, and the department laid out a water-till sample that they did in the Sahtu region, and that is where these guys got some actual information to start having a look at that district. Evrim also used our Mining Incentive...

As I have said in my previous comments, not everybody will be happy with everything in this bill, including me. This bill is built on the collaboration and consensus of the people of the Northwest Territories. I support the bill that we are bringing forward. I believe it is the bill at the right time, for the right industry, that we are doing this through the devolution process. This is a bill that people of the Northwest Territories are clearly interested in. As I have said, this is probably one of the biggest and most important ones in this Legislative Assembly. If the Member does not like...

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Wednesday, February 13, 2019, I will move that Bill 35, Supply Chain Management Professional Designation Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That might be his approach, but not mine. From the Government of the Northwest Territories' approach, we have done our due diligence on this act.

As we know, this is probably one of the most important pieces of act coming forward in the 18th Legislative Assembly. We have involved the intergovernmental council right from day one on this thing, along with their technical advisory panel, which is the North Slave Metis Alliance and the Dehcho First Nations, who also attend this meeting. We have met with special interest groups, environmental and non-government organizations...

As I've said, I'm willing to have a conversation with anybody, but this is a conversation that has to include more than just me. As I said, this is something that happened, not under our watch, under the federal government's watch. There are other opportunities for those people to have those discussions at different venues, as I've said. I'm willing to have those discussions, and I suspect through more consultation with Indigenous governments and their leadership on moving this project forward, I can raise this question of around the impacted residents, and we'll see what the leadership wants...

As I mentioned in my statement yesterday and in one of the questions that I answered, I have had discussions with the Akaitcho, which does include Deninu Kue, at the table at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we can do that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As we have done a number of technical work and stuff that was done previously in the previous Assemblies on this work, that stuff is going to be part of the updated stuff that we will have to work on. The transmission system is still under study, so it would be premature to speculate what that new cost would be because it's a whole different type of system, as I have said before in this House. We are looking at the first underwater, high-voltage, direct-current line under Great Slave Lake. We are waiting for those costs to still come back, but, once we compile these types of costs, I would be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to read my notes because this stuff is from all different sources. The funding is coming from two federal sources, with some additional funding from the GNWT. From CanNor we are receiving $480,000, with an additional $120,000 from the Government of the Northwest Territories funding. This is an allocation for technical and commercial work on the project. From CIRNAC we are receiving $619,950. This money will be used to support Indigenous partnership. Funding for technical questions is only sufficient to take us to the end of this fiscal year.