Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.I know that all my colleagues went on at length and there are many positions to be taken on fracking. The motion does specifically talk about refraining from fracking and it is a controversial way to recover oil and gas from the ground, more specifically shale areas. I definitely know people in my riding, as I travel around my constituency tour, do want to know more about fracking, they want to understand it and our people should. For instance, I don’t believe people know that fracking has been around for almost 50 years. Only now people are afraid. It’s only because they think it’s new that there has been a big, massive campaign by concerned environmental groups and they do well,
they’re well-funded and they get out in the lead and they advertise it. So now people are afraid of fracking, but it has been here for 50 years. There was certainly no concern before that.
But just overall, the reality is that all forms of energy production have some environmental consequences and, yes, this new fracking technique should be held to the same standard as every industry when it comes to safety, when it comes to environment and water.
Devolution and those that were afraid of it was about not trusting us as a Legislature, not trusting us as a government in taking care of our NWT, in taking care of our land and taking care of water. I really think that the Minister wants to go public, travel our communities and create some new fracking regulations. I think it was far better if we stood here this afternoon and had a debate on those new proposed regulations, how to do it, what to put into it, how extensive it should be, and I think Mr. Bromley’s motion speaks to a lot of that as well. People want to know, everybody wants to do it the best way possible, and asking for a temporary ban right now for myself, it’s just not the way to do it. I believe in our consensus style of government. I’m confident that our government can work with our committees, they can work with our communities, they can work with our Aboriginal governments and work towards developing the best regulations.
That being said, there is a pause in new fracking right now, so here we’ve got a huge opportunity to do it. I don’t believe that going all out by saying that there is a ban or temporary ban is the way to do it. So at this point, I won’t be supporting the motion. Thank you.