Mr. Speaker, I was trying to follow where the Member was referring to in this particular letter, and I’m unable to follow it. The thing that sticks in my mind was the dot, dot, dot. I have the report here. I was trying to listen to what he was saying and find it in the report. So I’m unable to clearly respond to that unless I can be pointed to where it is in this document which, while it’s before all the Members, is not really before this House. Thank you.

I appreciate that. That’s a fair response. It’s A.(2), on page 2 of the letter. I’m happy to see the Minister has it in front of him. Basically, there’s the point A.(2) and then the immediate sentence below that rejects the opportunity for GNWT to take on the authority that this mechanism is providing us. Why would we do that? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we’re in the process of pulling in a final response. A lot of what is in this letter, I’m assuming once again… I look at my A.(2) and I don’t know if we’re actually looking at the same document, which is the trouble, I suppose, with documents that aren’t before this House. Thank you.

I certainly agree there that this would have been much easier to do during a

committee process, much more straightforward, and I think my views on that are clear. So let me move on to another question, if I may.

The Joint Review Panel makes many recommendations aimed at the GNWT. To meet these environmental, social and economic recommendations would require a lot of money. Without knowing what new funds are available, it will be impossible for GNWT to tell the JRP how it can respond to these recommendations. Has the lead Minister opened negotiations with the federal government to obtain these new dollars? And I am assuming we’re well along in estimating how many dollars we will need to fulfill some of these recommendations. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my Minister’s statement, this process is only partway through. We have not come to any final conclusions or recommendations. We have to be very careful how we do that because we’re one of the responsible Ministers. We know that before the start of the JRP process there was $500 million that was talked about as a socio-economic impact fund that would be shared by affected regions up and down the valley. In conjunction with the fact that we already spend 65 cents of every dollar on social programs, that there would be some opportunity for integrating and coordinating our responses and resources, but at this point we are not anywhere near nor am I in a position to speak to the specifics of this report, because we’re not there yet. When we’re finally ready to move, I’m one of a number of responsible Ministers and I have to be very careful of our legal considerations so that no one can stand up in the Leg. that they have a reasonable apprehension of bias that we went into this with foregone conclusions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Rather than go on with this charade and have the Minister call this card all the time, I’d like to maybe ask if the Minister will speak frankly to the Members in committee and bring us into the process. I think we would have some contribution to be made to the guidance, to our legal counsel, and part of that would be recognizing Regular Members as part of this consensus government. But maybe I’ll just ask the Minister if we can get that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Member makes a good suggestion. In fact, as we speak, we are pulling together an offer for a joint briefing between myself, as the Minister responsible for the JRP, and Minister McLeod for the National Energy Board process to do a full and thorough briefing to committee. We’ll bring in all the folks we need, all our skilled people, lawyers and such and have the

discussion about this process, which has a multitude of moving parts and lots of considerations that have to be accommodated. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would share this information with the Member that the site in question is 22 kilometres east of Lutselk'e on Krys Point and Stark Lake. In the 1950s some advanced exploration was undertaken on site, which included blasting of a tunnel into the hillside in order to obtain samples for an assay. No milling or ore processing took place. The site was abandoned and the tunnel remained open. In the early 1990s, personnel from GNWT mine safety inspected abandoned mine sites around the NWT for safety concerns. The tunnel at Stark Lake was inspected and determined to be a possible concern and blasted closed. The site is located on Crown land and, therefore, the responsibility of the federal government. Indian and Northern Affairs has the site identified on their contaminated site inventory although it is not known if there are any contamination concerns on site. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I do recognize that the majority of the responsibility for cleanup on land and water within the Northwest Territories lies with the federal government. However, I do feel this government has some responsibility. Mr. Speaker, this is an immediate concern and, hopefully, we can get some immediate solutions. I also would be interested in some long-term solutions. Does the Minister have some sort of cleanup strategy for all of the contaminated sites in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

INAC undertook site reconnaissance in 2009 and identified the tunnel and adjacent blast rock pile remains of a cabin and tent frames and an old beached wooden barge. INAC plans to undertake a

combined phase 1 and 2 environmental site assessment in the summer of 2010. Mr. Speaker, ENR will commit to obtaining the results of the site assessment and share them with the MLA for Tu Nedhe. Thank you.

I thank the Minister for those responses. Will the Minister commit to working with the federal government and the communities of Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e to develop some sort of a strategy to clean up the sites within Tu Nedhe?

Yes, we’ll work with the Member and the communities, and as the environmental assessments phase 1 and 2 are done and we get a sense of what the federal government is finding we’ll be in a position to collectively ensure that we work together to make the right decisions.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Stark Lake seems to be the immediate concern to the people around Lutselk’e, will the Minister commit to getting something done with the federal government and getting something done this summer in as far as actual onsite cleanup.

The environmental assessments by the federal government are planned for this summer. I think that it’s a critical first step to make sure we know what’s there and what may require cleaning up and how. We’ll be keeping an eye on this and keeping the Member informed. Once we have that information we’ll be in an informed position to make the right decisions going forward.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. It has to do with our medical travel. We have a very comprehensive Medical Travel Policy in the Northwest Territories and I would suggest that most of the time it works really, really well. Occasionally, though, we bring to the floor of this House some anomaly, some glitches where there are problems.

The policy is well-known that if somebody requires medical travel it has to originate within the Northwest Territories. However, this does not address the situation that I described today in my Member’s statement where we have a student that’s already halfway towards the facility where they need to receive medical attention from the specialist.

Now, the Minister could solve this with a one-off kind of answer about this particular instance, but I would like to ask the Minister if she would be willing to have her department look at the whole issue of medical travel for students attending post-secondary education and how we might come up with a policy framework that allows for some discretionary type approval for situations like this.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member brought this matter to my attention about 11:00 this morning. My staff and her staff are looking at the specific situation, but I do agree with the Member that we need to make sure that the students who are away and considered NWT residents in any other way should be able to take advantage of their medical travel. So I am reviewing the policy; not the policy, I have to first find out what is going on with this. I’m sure within the policy we can make this happen.

There are no doubt, I mean, the Medical Travel Policy is, no doubt, a very expensive policy and very expensive exercise of the Department of Health and Social Services because we do live in the North and we are remote from some of the very specialized services that are required by our constituents. It’s a very large ticket item. It’s very expensive. Sometimes things are done which might actually seemingly waste money, but the opportunity to save money is here before us.

I’d like to ask the Minister if there is anyone within the organization who looks after medical travel or medical insurance issues who she could see her way clear to give the kind of authority to, that could deal with things like this so that they don’t end up having to reach her desk here in the Legislative Assembly.