Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We either have the best incident reporting policy in Canada or we have the worst-kept secrets of oil and gas incidents in the Northwest Territories.

According to a recent CBC report, the National Energy Board, Canada’s pipeline regulators, showed that more than 70 incidents from spills, leaks and injuries or fires were reported in Norman Wells. That’s in six years.

Mr. Speaker, we have a problem. Are our regulatory laws strong enough? I say no, because we need to tighten them up, as per the report that CBC clearly indicated. This has shaken my confidence in our coordinator with our regulatory bodies and our legislation.

When you have Imperial Oil, a big time oil and gas operator in the North, who is one of the biggest violators of these incidents and stating there’s no impact to our land, our water or our air, it’s like having the fox telling us the chicken coup is fine.

First we had leaks of crude oil of thousands of litres. We had 40 million litres of water used for cooling the operation then released into the Mackenzie River going down to the community of Fort Good Hope with indications of levels of copper in them. We had water contamination of hydrocarbons released back into the water. Again, we have Colville Lake people telling us there’s something wrong with the water.

What are the rules? What if we had never heard of these 77 incidents? It frightens me to know that

Imperial Oil can do this and more. What else is it that we don’t know about since 1920 when Imperial was operating? I see more fighting. It’s what we know.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted