Mr. Chair, it is very important as the Minister pointed out. It’s a very serious issue here, what the Minister’s department is dealing with. We’re taking over a new department. The federal government is releasing its grip on this issue here and transferring over to the GNWT which is working closely with our land claim governments, land claim organizations, First Nation governments.
One of the important issues, listening to my colleagues, is the resource management units have a big cast ahead of them. I believe that properly fit and trained and going through the process, they will do their job as they are expected to do for the Lands here such as conducting hazardous materials and spill inspections and abandoned waste site inspections. There’s a lot of that in the North here. Some are category one, two, three or four. We’re just capturing the big ones as potentially causing harm to our people, our land or our animals, but there are also small ones.
Is this also working closely in conjunction with the ENR department as to you’ve identified a hazardous material site or there are spills from years ago to just recently, abandoned waste sites? I talked to the Minister of ENR last year about Drum Lake. There’s an old site there that was built by Shell Canada. I have pictures of barrels and…(inaudible)…but it’s not that important when measured against Giant Mine. This is nothing. But for the people who live in there and use it as a tourism lodge – and this is a sacred site to the Mountain Indians – it’s an eyesore. If we do the inspections, is this also the department that would enforce something like this? That could take one Twin Otter, load it up and get out and there’s nothing there. It sounds simple, but maybe it’s more complicated than that with bureaucratic red tape.
With this department here, that’s why I said it’s very important, trying to capture this as much as we can
within the scope of the work that these resource management officers are going to perform. Thank you.