Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort our witnesses into the Chamber.

Minister McLeod, if you’d be kind enough to introduce your witnesses for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. Mark Warren, deputy minister of lands. To my left, I have Brenda Hilderman. She is the director of finance, Department of Lands.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Warren, Ms. Hilderman, welcome back to the Chamber. Nice to see you folks back here again.

Committee, we’re going to go to general comments. Is committee prepared to go to detail? Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m looking forward to learning more about how the department is coming along. A new department here. I know last time we looked at the department and its budget, it had some interesting inspections. I’ll be asking questions about inspections again, and I know that the department has been doing a lot of work on that. I’m interested in how we’re filling those positions and so on. I was concerned at the time, because although we were thumping our chests about the five new inspector positions, we had actually conducted fewer inspections than the federal government had, and we know their record and what that’s costing Northerners and Canadians.

I’m also happy to see the investment in the liabilities and financial assurances division. Again, we’ll look forward to asking questions when we get to that division and seeing how that’s developing and what sorts of evaluations are in place.

The positions for a new coordinator, legal advisor, obviously there are some things happening with the intended changes, the Mackenzie Valley intended amendments to the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and so on. I’ll be interested in what sort of impacts that might have on the department in its coordinating role in a review of the environmental aspects of development and initiatives.

I’ll leave it at that. Maybe just on the funding to help diversify and help grow the economy, I guess I would be interested in a little bit more about the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics in Inuvik and what exactly they’ll be doing. Again, just by way of advance notice, I don’t necessarily need responses to these until we get to the divisions where these will come up, but I appreciate the opportunity just to thank the Minister for his comments and say he had lots of interesting things to point out and I will be looking forward to learning more about those.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll allow Minister McLeod to comment.

Actually, Mr. Chair, the Member, I think, said he would save his questions

for detail once we get to those specific areas, so we will look forward to having the discussion.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. General comments? Is committee prepared to go to detail?

Thank you, committee. We will defer page 325 until after consideration of activity detail. I’d like to turn your attention to page 326, revenue summary, information item. Any questions? Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are two numbers here which caught my attention. The first one is $225,000 for non-renewable resource revenue. I thought that those revenues were collected under ITI so I would like an explanation of why this amount is here. Then under general revenues, the lease figure has gone down considerably from 2014-15. If I could get an explanation for that as well.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Deputy Minister Warren.

To go back to the non-renewable resource revenues, the deputy minister mentioned quarries. Is that the only things that this revenue is coming from, because the text says minerals, oil and gas royalties. I’m not quite sure if it’s just quarries or if it’s minerals, oil and gas. If it’s all of those, it seems awfully low.

I guess I would just suggest that perhaps the definition be a little broader or a little more specific next time.

General comment there. Minister McLeod, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ll make that commitment to make it a little… Again, this is 11 months into the process so we’re just figuring out how we go about our business plans and presenting them to committee, but we will make that commitment to be a little more specific going forward.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Committee, we’re on page 326, revenue summary, information item. Any questions? Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to complete for my mind, unless quarries are gravel that is being called minerals here, maybe that’s the issue. If that’s the case, understood. Would we ever expect any oil and gas royalties in this division? I guess I’ll ask the question.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We will capture that for the record. I will turn it over to Mr. Warren.

Thank you, Mr. Warren. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you. That clears that up and I understand that minerals would include the aggregate resources, so that explains the quarrying revenues here. I’m a little surprised. I believe I heard the Minister or the deputy minister say that there were more substantial revenues even in this fiscal year. I’m curious about why that doesn’t show up in the revised estimate. Was it a matter of timing with respect to when this was put together? Maybe I’ll ask what that amount is up to now just so we know.