Thank you, Madam Chair. I think my colleague Mr. Hawkins, chair of the EDI, I agree with all the points that were made. Basically, the concerns in particular were emphasized on the development of the Mineral Development Strategy and I think were well laid out in the report.
Just to do a quick review, basically there was a stakeholder engagement panel made up of industrial representatives put together by the Minister. They went out and did consultation. We had serious concerns that the public interest was not represented on that panel and that a lousy job – speaking straightforwardly here – was done on consultation compared to the economic opportunities panel, which spent their full budget doing participation and the panel was made up, of course, of people with expertise in public interest policy. It was an extraordinary situation, I would say, for committee, and on that basis, we contracted the Pembina Institute, selected the Pembina Institute after looking at a number of possibilities based on their record, and they developed a report, entitled “Responsible Extraction and Analysis of the NWT Mineral Development Strategy Panel Report,” which was tabled last October, a year ago October.
Again, that report started off by mentioning first of all…and it was an important time. It was just before devolution, so this is going back a little bit now, and
they recognized that that was an important time to be getting it right and making sure that consultation was very thorough and that public interest was well represented.
When this report was presented to the Minister repeatedly, there was a refusal to consider the points raised in this report, and that was also of significant concern to the committee. The report, as well as noting that it was sort of a pregnant time with devolution just around the corner, they also reviewed the draft mineral development report, in recognizing the 17th Assembly’s vision of a socially,
economically and environmentally sustainable Northwest Territories, and they supported that in their review.
I think the Pembina report presented some very important perspectives including in the area of industry subsidies, need to review economic rent – that’s the capture of appropriate value from the exploitation of public resources by industry; the role of communities, for example, in helping identify the right pace and scale of the exploitation; providing mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing that pace and scale of exploitation; allocation of resources and inspection and monitoring – areas we know are very critical; implications of the NWT Heritage Fund Act; requirements to address reclamation – we know there are serious gaps there; follow-up to environmental audits which are required under the MVRMA every five years and now our responsibility; reviewing alternatives to the free entry system, something we’ve talked about for quite a long time; and completion of the Protected Areas Strategy.
The report, the Mineral Development Strategy, is essentially silent or completely industry directed in almost all of these topics, I would say. We need a critical look when we seek to develop strategies, and especially to be aware of our responsibilities for the public good. I’m not at all convinced we did achieve that with the Mineral Development Strategy, but going forward, committee has thoughtfully presented those concerns and some recommendations to guide future efforts and avoid these pitfalls.
What I’d like to do today is propose committee motions to formalize reports, which are on page 3, and they’ve been formalized with some help from our staff. I’ll just move right into that, if I may, Madam Chair, the first motion?