Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to give voice today to some concerns that arose yesterday after I learned of changes coming to the Ekati Independent Environmental Monitoring Agency Board.

As its name suggests, this is an independent organization, registered as a non-profit, a non-decision-making, non-management type of organization which provides advice to both the company, Ekati, and government, NWT and federal.

What caught my attention yesterday, what made me concerned, is a proposed action. Well, it is not proposed anymore, Mr. Speaker. It has been decided that three very experienced, very knowledgeable, expert in their field board members will be replaced at the end of this month.

There are no terms to the agency’s board appointments. No term is ending at the end of February, but three board members will be replaced, apparently because they do not live in the NWT and government believes that this very technical board should be populated only by Northerners. There is some validity to that argument, but not enough to remove the extremely valuable expertise, the institutional memory and the corporate knowledge that these board members represent. Not enough to remove them from the board.

Apart from the loss of knowledge and skills, what floored me was that this change is to happen in the middle of an environmental assessment for the Ekati Mine expansion project. The monitoring board is very involved in any Ekati environmental assessment, analyzing documents, reviewing submissions, making presentations to the Assessment Review Board and so on.

Three new board members will be dropped into the middle of this current assessment. They will not have had the benefit of knowing the work done to date. I have no doubt that the new board members will be competent, but they will not be up to speed where the Ekati expansion environmental assessment is concerned, nor will they have the same technical skills as the three exiting board members.

Why would the Minister not wait until this particular assessment is completed, or why not bring new members on while the old ones are still there, to provide for some overlap, a transfer of knowledge

and continuity? Board members have changed in the past, of course, but through retirement not by government edict. Why not replace board members as they retire from the board, instead of summarily dismissing them? I believe that has been past practice and I ask why the sudden change.

As a devolved and presumably evolved territory, we ought to be exercising our new authority responsibly. This action doesn’t suggest that to me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.