Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank my colleague Mr. Yakeleya for helping to bring this motion forward.

This motion is in response to the very deeply held concerns territory-wide about the loss of environmental review, oversight, and public participation that recent federal legislation passed and proposed is causing. Known as the federal omnibus Bill C-38 passed in June and C-45 currently under consideration, the impacts of these legislatives are more strongly felt and immediate in the North because the environmental management regime is largely federal here. This motion asks our government to speak out on these impacts, consider how to fill the voids created, and to tell us how the funds will be found to enable responsible environmental management across the NWT while supporting sustainable economic development.

Some might say this motion is partisan, to which I would say, balderdash. This motion is, purely and simply, about the need to have and protect clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and healthy food to eat. Everyone understands these basics.

There are also some amongst us, in every culture, whose understanding of the environment goes beyond these basics. These are people who understand at a cellular level that humans are a part of the environment and depend on its well-being. Such understanding is often realized through recognition of the aesthetic and often spiritual importance of the land in its naturally healthy and fully thriving state. First and most importantly, these are the very people excluded from full participation in the environmental review process that new federal legislation enabled through Bill C-38 last June. Why on Earth would any government exclude people wanting to speak up on behalf of clean air, food, and water, and who have nothing to gain in

doing so, other than clean air, water, and food for the benefit of everyone, your family and mine.

Every culture that has survived over the aeons has learned the critical role of our environment in supporting us as a society. Every culture has learned that we ignore this fact at our peril. In the past, stakes were high, but nowhere near what they are today when we have already stressed the integrated system of ecosystems across the globe to near breaking point. Canada helped lead this understanding in today’s modern sense and many of our Aboriginal governments are playing key roles and reminding us of this understanding, yet how are we showing that understanding today.

The federal legislative changes have weakened the Fisheries Act to the point where we no longer have the ability to sufficiently protect food fisheries and water quality, and protect Aboriginal harvesting rights. Prior to Bill C-38, the Fisheries Act prohibited any work or undertaking the results in the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat. The amended act only applies where there is “serious harm” and where the fish harmed contribute to a commercial, recreational, or Aboriginal fishery. Apparently, the ecological services they provide have no role. Former federal Fisheries Ministers Siddon, Anderson, Fraser and Dhaliwal have expressed strong concerns with this reduction in scope of protection for fish and fish habitats.

Before the C-38 amendments, the Fisheries Act allowed the Minister to grant authorizations to destroy fish and/or harm habitat. The C-38 amendments allow for regulations which can exempt broad categories of activities or projects like pipelines. It also allows for regulations to exempt some waters from prohibitions against serious harm to fisheries.

Finally, they provide the opportunity to suspend the federal act in favour of provincial legislation, highlighting the concern about regulatory gaps in the territories where we do not have such legislation in place.

Without any consultation, information, or input from the NWT or other jurisdictions, the Government of Canada has rewritten the Environmental Assessment Act, and in the process made significant changes, offloading provincial governments as further advanced through the new authority of the federal Minister to defer a project to provincial DA processes. Under these changes, fewer projects will be referred to aid because the project must be of a type to be listed in regulations. Previously the default was that projects would be reviewed unless there was a specific exemption. Many people are concerned that the process is now politicized because an opening has been provided for industry to now lobby the Minister to keep a project off the list of those to be reviewed. Further,

there will no longer be environmental screening of environmental impacts for offshore projects and pipelines for areas previously studied. Others previously regulated by other legislation will now be assessed in-house by the National Energy Board.

Still, with the new Environmental Assessment Act, the definition of environmental effects has been restricted from its broader form that included any change that the project could cause on the environment, as well as any socio-economic effects of any such change. Those who know the challenges and clean-up limitations for Arctic offshore drilling must be shuddering at our vulnerability here, let alone the failed opportunities for public accountability and mitigation of environmental and socio-economic impacts.

Again, public participation will now be restricted to “interested parties” defined as persons “directly affected” by the project or having “relevant information or expertise” in the opinion of the responsible authority. Obviously, this could block the participation of Aboriginal people or organizations from contributing their important perspectives and knowledge.

Finally, the federal Cabinet may now be involved in decision-making, declaring effects “justified in the circumstances,” deciding whether to approve or reject pipeline recommendations, and requiring the NEB to reconsider its recommendation on a pipeline. This seems to be the epitome of politicizing a previously objective process.

Changes to the Species at Risk Act have ended the application of the act to pipeline projects and lifted provisions for periodic permit reviews with reasonable timelines of three to five years to open-ended permits. The Minister, of course, can extend any time limit or decide that it simply doesn’t apply. Also, requirements for minimizing pipeline impacts on critical habitat of species at risk are henceforth exempted, and the important work of the National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment will be no more, this institution having been eliminated, as has the requirement for a report on the greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Bill C-45 currently under consideration in our federal Parliament proposes to rename the Navigable Waters Act to the Navigation Protection Act, reduces federally protected water to a list that currently includes only three water bodies in the NWT: Great Bear and Great Slave lakes and the Mackenzie River. Current provisions being considered would enable local authorities to add to the schedule. Protection of water quality in Canada has resulted from important clauses in our Environmental Assessment Act, our Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Act working in an integrated fashion. This last amendment, given all those legislative changes to other acts described

above, throws to the wind the protection of most waters in Canada.

I believe everyone is interested in improved efficiencies in environmental review and enhancing opportunity for environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development. However, the legislative changes I have described here briefly go far beyond such a tune-up and, unfortunately, leave us in the NWT with the consequences. Here, now, I am speaking about the administrative and financial consequences, not the obvious environmental ones.

The NWT is regulated by the federal environmental management regime, so we do not have backup fisheries and other legislation that provinces typically do. What are the regulatory gaps being left behind? We do not have the financial resources to fill in the growing void. Many will say that devolution is the answer, yet I can’t help but wonder how many times we have turned to this handy response and, in consequence, how many times over we have vicariously spent the financial benefits to be realized. We need to begin seeking resources to take on the environmental oversight being set adrift, a review we know is required and expected by our people.

To this end, we are asking that this government inform the Government of Canada of our concerns and to register our protest at not having information provided nor the opportunity to be consulted. We are asking our government to become familiar with the impacts of the changes to federal law, something they clearly and unbelievably have not yet done, and to begin to estimate the cost to restore a responsible environmental management regime. Finally, we are asking them to determine how and where we will find the dollars necessary to implement this work.

Some might say, but what about the consequences to our discussions with the Government of Canada about devolution or other major partnership discussions underway? We are a small player on the national scene but I have to ask, what does this question say about the relationship we have with the federal government, our supposedly closest partner? What is the mettle of this relationship?

I appreciate this opportunity to bring this motion forward today. I also appreciate the discussions I have had with my colleagues on the merits of this proposal and I seek their thoughtful response as we vote today.

Land is life. It sustains and nourishes us spiritually, culturally, physically, economically and socially. Working together, Northerners will responsibly and sustainably manage the lands, waters and resources of the Northwest Territories for the benefit of current and future generations.

This is a quotation from the draft vision of this government’s Land is Life: Towards a GNWT Land Use and Sustainability Framework issued this June. I think it’s a great vision. I also think that today is the day to start implementing it.

Thank you again, Mr. Speaker. I will be calling for a recorded vote. Thank you for the future comments here of my colleagues.