Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Giant Mine site is an historic part of Yellowknife and the NWT, but it is a blight on our landscape, and worse, it is the biggest environmental liability in this country, one which we may have in this community forever, for eternity. I have trouble even contemplating that. One hundred years is an amount of time I can rationalize, even several hundred years, but forever? That’s beyond comprehension for most of us and certainly for me.

The federal government has assumed responsibility for the remediation of the Giant Mine site, but we, the GNWT, have also assumed some of that responsibility. Our Minister of Environment and Natural Resources is the GNWT Minister responsible for this project under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. As such, Minister Miltenberger presents our position to the federal government. He represents the interests of NWT citizens in the development of a remediation plan for Giant Mine. That plan includes managing 237,000 tonnes of underground arsenic trioxide dust by ground freezing, remediating the surface, including covering the 13.5 million tonnes of contaminated tailings, managing the open pits, demolition of contaminated buildings, and management of contaminated soils all to industrial standards for future land use, managing site water and releasing treated water through a diffuser in Great Slave Lake.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories also propose that the project would be actively maintained for perpetuity, with vital components replaced periodically. That’s the plan, and that plan or project was subject to an environmental assessment performed by the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, a body established under the MVRMA, Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. That assessment took quite some time from start to finish, but only because the board was thorough. To their credit, they took the time necessary to do the work and to do due diligence in evaluating the proposed remediation and closure project.

I presented at one of the hearings here in Yellowknife, giving voice to my concerns and those of my constituents. I spoke to a number of issues, but I want to mention two specifically.

First, I was very concerned with the lack of commitment and openness from the developer – that would be the federal and territorial governments – to researching and possibly using different methods to deal with the arsenic problem in future years. The other was a concern about the lack of an independent oversight body for the ongoing – well, eternal – care and maintenance of

the mine site. The project proposes oversight by the developer. That’s hardly on. That’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.

My concerns and those expressed by others through the hearings were heard by the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. Their press release of June 20, 2013, which announced the release of the assessment report, stated, “After careful deliberation, the review board concluded that the proposed project is likely to cause significant adverse social and biophysical impacts, including cumulative impacts arising from the potential effects of the proposed project in combination with the effects of past mining activities. It also found that these impacts would generate significant public concern.”

So the review board made some suggestions and put some measures in their report to address this significant public concern, and some of those measures will mitigate those concerns, and they are the following:

•

require that the project time frame be reduced

from perpetuity to a more manageable time frame of 100 years;

•

facilitate ongoing research in emerging

technologies towards finding a permanent solution;

•

require independent reviews of the project every

20 years to evaluate its effectiveness and decide if a better approach can be identified;

•

a comprehensive general risk assessment and

detailed human health risk assessment;

•

human

health

monitoring;

•

investigation of long-term funding options;

•

independent

oversight;

•

diversion of Baker Creek;

•

improvement of water treatment to a drinking

water standard;

•

replacement of the proposed underwater

diffuser near Ndilo with a near shore outfall immediately offshore of the Giant Mine site.

There were other ones, as well, but for me most notable among these measures are the ones that will reduce the time frame for the project from eternity to 100 years, that there should be an independent oversight body for the project, and that there should be ongoing research toward finding a permanent, better solution for containing the arsenic.

To me these recommendations indicate that the hard work of organizations and individuals fighting the plan of the project developers has paid off. The environmental assessment report contains recommendations and suggestions which address those concerns.

As the preamble of this motion states, the report presents a reasonable and sound path to a closure program that will build accountability and public trust in the project. But the report and the recommendations and suggestions within it must now be accepted by the Ministers responsible for the MVRMA, three federal Ministers and our own Minister of ENR, in order for the recommendations to take effect and have an impact on the remediation closure project. These Ministers can accept any or all of the recommendations, and conversely, they can reject any or all of them. Should the rejection occur, it would indicate a complete disdain for the views of Northwest Territories residents as expressed at the hearings, and complete disdain for the work of the review board.

This motion asks for the responsible Ministers to heed the concerns expressed by Northwest Territories residents and to heed the considered and thoughtful recommendations of the review board in regards to the Giant Mine Remediation Plan. It asks the GNWT to accept the measures outlined in the environmental assessment report and it asks the government to urge the federal government to do the same.

If this government truly listens to its residents, truly believes in the work and the autonomy of our boards and agencies – in this case the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board – then the government will vote in favour of this motion. By supporting this motion, the government will be properly representing its people, will be supporting the will of its residents, and be seen to be responding to residents’ concerns.

The report of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board is a considered, valid and just document, one which has proposed measures for the betterment of our NWT society, measures which will improve the remediation project, and measures which, if accepted, will assuage some of the fear we feel whenever we think of the monstrous amount of toxic waste stored beneath our feet not far from town.

I ask all Members to vote in favour of this motion. Thank you.