Mr. Speaker, in 2017, Premier Bob McLeod raised a red alert over oil and gas development in the Beaufort Sea after Prime Minister -- then Prime Minister Trudeau declared a moratorium without consulting the Northwest Territories. At the time, I was fairly critical of that. I was focused on other aspects of the economy, particularly mining, but now I owe him an apology because I see the real value of that red alert in sending a clear signal across the country and the world that the NWT was open for business and fighting to preserve the opportunity to develop its own resources.
Mr. Speaker, today we need a new red alert, a red alert over our mining industry. Northerners were sent -- or the North's economy was sent into shock waves when the Ekati mine stopped open pit mining earlier this summer. Hundreds of jobs were lost. The economy is at risk of losing its most significant private sector contributors through Ekati and all the mine's employment, training, infrastructure investment, face an uncertain future after years of relying on this industry to support our economy, and Indigenous nations who co-manage our regulatory system are soon to lose financial and economic benefits from their agreement with these companies.
Mr. Speaker, mining contributes 24 percent of the NWT's GDP, and if you add in the spinoffs to the larger economy it exceeds 40 percent. This should not be a surprise that the mines were eventually going to close. All mines do. But we stand completely, seemingly, unprepared for this eventuality. No new projects have been meaningfully advanced and are on the horizon to replace the mining decline. The three things that have led to this are declining exploration, outdated systems of mineral tenure, and ineffective policy that have stalled out our mining sector. And despite the urging of industry experts to correct this for more than a decade to both the federal and territorial governments, we only have further inaction and hesitation to show for it. We must act now at the midpoint of this Assembly before it is too late to reverse this decline. And if we don't, it will continue to send a chilling message that the NWT is not open for business contrary to the messaging of the government. It's time for a red alert for mining, it is time for an independent review of mining decline, it is time to expand the mineral incentive program and a North of 60 tax credit, and it is time to modernize the tenure system after ten years of languishing in regulatory process. Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Members' statements. Member from the Sahtu.
