Good afternoon, colleagues. Item 2, Ministers’ statements. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Speaker, Great Slave Lake is the everyday workplace of a proud community of northern fishers who work tirelessly to harvest some of the best tasting fish in Canada and deliver it year round to the marketplace.

Great Slave Lake represents a huge and sustainable resource. The product offerings are excellent and the stock is healthy and well managed. Yet, most of the fish available to NWT residents in grocery stores and on restaurant menus is imported from southern Canada or elsewhere.

The government’s NWT Economic Opportunities Strategy highlighted the importance of both revitalizing our territory’s fishing industry and encouraging and growing domestic and export markets for NWT products.

In January the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment took a step towards addressing both of these elements of our grassroots economy with the introduction of a marketing and awareness campaign aimed at promoting domestic sales of fresh fish from Great Slave Lake.

The Fresh Fish from Great Slave Lake logo and brand was officially launched at a highly successful simultaneous media event held at the Hay River Super A and Yellowknife Direct Charge Co-op.

In addition to supporting direct sales by industry fishers and NWT storeowners, the new logo and marketing campaign will be used by restaurant owners to promote fresh Great Slave Lake fish on menus.

Mr. Speaker, to further improve opportunities in commercial fishing, we are working with NWT

fishers to find ways to establish effective product distribution systems and ensure security of supply.

Under the Northern Food Development Program, we are working to advance capital, freight subsidies and additional market supports to Great Slave Lake fishers that will allow them to better and more effectively distribute their product to consumers.

It is important to highlight that this program also applies to other fisheries in the territory. For example, one of the crown jewels of the NWT fishery is the pickerel fishery in Kakisa. This fish is highly sought after in both domestic and export markets. We will soon be meeting with producers in the community to determine how to adapt our marketing program to meet their needs and generate greater returns for the community.

We are also developing an entrant strategy to attract new fishers from inside and outside of the NWT to our industry, and we are looking to make key investments to construct a new export grade plant and to help our current fishers modernize their operations

.

Mr. Speaker, growing the economy is an important part of creating a prosperous territory that gives NWT residents the opportunity to support themselves and their families. We believe that our fishery is an area in which we can realize significant economic growth and we are acting to stimulate a new era of self-sufficiency for the NWT’s fishery, rebuilding it with new markets, new fishers and new infrastructure to return it to the leading economic contributor it once was. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Lands, Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Lands has made significant progress since taking over the management of public land in the Northwest Territories as part of devolution last April.

Much of the department’s progress to date has been due to the hard work of its employees. While

about 75 percent of our positions were filled by existing federal and GNWT staff when devolution came into effect, the remainder of the department’s positions had to be staffed.

Mr. Speaker, April 1st was just the beginning. Since

its creation, the Department of Lands is setting priorities, planning and managing new issues as they arise. As a new department, Lands is responsible for developing or revising policies and frameworks that will guide how we manage and administer land in the NWT. Extensive work has been undertaken to develop policy frameworks for recreational land management, land use planning as well as environmental liabilities and financial assurances. These are not short-term projects, Mr. Speaker, and involve a considerable amount of research, consultation and analysis.

The Department of Lands has engaged with Aboriginal governments, stakeholders and the general public in all regions of the NWT to gather input on a variety of initiatives, and will continue to do so in the future.

One of the first organizational changes to be made in the Department of Lands was the establishment of the liabilities and financial assurances division. I announced the creation of this office last fall. Since that time, the division, with the support of ITI, ENR and the Department of Finance, has been working on a comprehensive policy framework for making decisions related to the nearly $600 million we have in posted securities. As well, work was done to conclude a surety bond for $253 million for the Ekati water licence. All this while job descriptions were being finalized, staffing actions started and work on an informatics system to manage securities for the entire GNWT was being commenced.

This division has also provided expert advice, support to government-wide decision-making and departmental coordination for significant resource development security reviews.

The transfer of responsibility from the federal to the territorial government for setting up the Surface Rights Board was a major milestone for the GNWT. I expect to announce the appointments to this board by the end of March, with members assuming their substantive functions on April 1, 2016.

At the core of the Department of Lands is the Land Use and Sustainability Framework, and its implementation and monitoring represents one of our key responsibilities. A component of this work includes promoting and supporting effective land use planning in all regions of our territory and developing a land use planning policy framework. A critical step in doing this is engagement. Earlier this month the department hosted an interdepartmental workshop to develop best practices for reviewing and implementing land use plans. In March, external engagement will begin with a forum for

Aboriginal planning partners to allow open dialogue and to develop relationships with our partners.

Mr. Speaker, the department is the home department for the Informatics Shared Service Centre. This division supports Lands; Industry, Tourism and Investment; and Environment and Natural Resources. We are working towards the establishment of the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics. The centre is an opportunity to improve strategic partnerships between our stakeholders, including Aboriginal governments, federal departments and academic institutions by providing better information, coordinating remote sensing projects and developing operational monitoring programs. The establishment of this new office in Inuvik will build regional capacity to use remote sensing tools and technology for baseline monitoring that supports economic decision-making and enables ongoing environmental management. This is also a great opportunity to encourage our youth to pursue this type of career path.

All of these major accomplishments occurred while the department was busy doing its “day job” of managing and administering land and resources in the NWT. Lands is managing hundreds of leases and other land dispositions and has conducted over 600 inspections as of December 31, 2014. We have created five regional superintendent positions and set up their associated offices, developed plans for new garage and equipment storage facilities for two regions, conducted a full inventory review and developed a Movable Assets Management Plan for our equipment. As well, our superintendents and senior inspectors have developed a comprehensive entry level recruitment and training program for our new resource management officer 1 inspector positions. I will have more to say on this later in the session.

Finally, led by our project assessment branch, Lands has also coordinated our government’s input into several large-scale project preliminary screenings and concluded our first decision as the Minister responsible for environmental assessments. This demonstrates our government’s commitment to supporting balanced, responsible development of NWT resources and timely decision-making.

Mr. Speaker, we have a strong and hard working group of employees and I am confident that we will continue to make significant progress on the priorities that have been outlined for Lands. The department is committed to working with all landowners to responsibly and sustainably manage the lands, waters and natural resources of the Northwest Territories for the benefit of current and future generations. That is our mission, because land is life. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Item 3, Members’ statements. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Late in December 2014, the Department of Transportation issued a notice regarding the proposed amendments to the Deh Cho Bridge Regulations. These regulations established a legal administrative framework for the tolling system of the Deh Cho Bridge, and with any amendments, they must first undergo a public review.

Registered owners of northbound commercial vehicles over 4,500 kilograms crossing the Deh Cho Bridge are required to pay a toll. Thankfully, private vehicles are not required to pay this toll.

The Minister and department know exactly where I’m going with this today because I believe we are tolling one classification of vehicles wrongly and penalizing a small but influential group in the Northwest Territories. This group is the hardworking small business owners.

Many small business owners, for the purposes of business, buy two-wheel and four-wheel drive trucks. In fact, just drive around the North and spot all the half-ton trucks and three-quarter-ton trucks on the roads with commercial plates. Keep in mind these commercial vehicle trucks travelling northbound on the Deh Cho Bridge in themselves are under the 4,500 kilogram threshold for a toll. However, the moment you attach a trailer, a holiday camper or a boat, you almost immediately cross this threshold. According to even the basic Ford F-150 regular cab, when equipped properly has a maximum conventional towing capacity of 5,500 kilograms, well above the 4,500 kilogram load for the Deh Cho Bridge toll limit.

So what does this mean, Mr. Speaker? Simple. This is a cash grab from the hardworking small business owners who might be just using their fully legal small business truck to promote tourism, go fishing, go hunting, or maybe help a friend move. So, to the question, what business is it of the

GNWT to single out this one classification of small business owners and expect a $95 toll? What does this accomplish? My suspicion is very little in terms of revenue, but a huge inconvenience for small business owners.

Instead, I challenge the Department of Transportation to use an honour system that small business owners with half-ton and three-quarter-ton commercial trucks. The policy could be simple. They pay a toll when they are indeed crossing the bridge for business purposes and be allowed to use this bridge freely when pulling a boat or trailer or an RV.

Mr. Speaker, you want to lower the cost of living? It starts with tolls that make sense for Northerners. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise again to speak about dredging in the Hay River area. I think this is, at a minimum, the tenth statement I’ve made on dredging and the requirements of dredging to be done in the Northwest Territories. I’ve made this statement to two different Ministers and to several different departments.

There is no progress in this activity, and it’s frustrating for me and for my colleagues in the area that know that there’s an interest that dredging be done in the Northwest Territories.

This government has indicated that there’s lots of infrastructure money going towards all kinds of roads but very little, if any, going to marine and especially going to dredging.

I’ve had numerous excuses given to me that it’s a federal responsibility, but it’s our government that needs to step up and put a plan together to get dredging done. We have committed and taken our task of building roads. That used to be a federal responsibility alone; now we’re doing two-thirds/one-third. Where is the government’s one-third on dredging to get the federal government to do dredging?

I will have questions for the Minister of Transportation again. Where is the dredging for the Hay River area? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This government needs to do more to tackle the high cost of living. In the remote communities the cost of food and

household essentials are double or even triple what you pay in Yellowknife. Nutrition North, which is run by the federal government’s department of Aboriginal and northern affairs, has replaced the old Food Mail Program.

In theory, Nutrition North makes healthy food more accessible and affordable. Its key mechanism is a transportation subsidy given to retailers.

A litany of complaints from northern residents and legislators about the program’s effectiveness was the driving force behind the Auditor General’s investigation, which was completed last fall. As many Northerners predicted, the federal government doesn’t know whether northern retailers are passing savings on to consumers. Merchants aren’t required to report their profit margins. The Auditor General advises that this information is essential to determine whether the full subsidy is actually being passed on.

Another question about a component of Nutrition North is that subsidies are applied to foods like bacon and processed cheese spread. These aren’t healthy foods, Mr. Speaker. The Auditor General isn’t the one confirming suspicions of northern residents. An article in the Canadian Journal of Public Health says that Nutrition North has a flawed reporting structure, which means there’s no meaningful way to gauge its effectiveness.

The federal program isn’t doing an adequate job of offsetting exorbitant food costs. More than that, our own territorial government has a responsibility to tackle food insecurity in our remote northern communities.

I’ll have questions for the Premier at the appropriate time. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Christmas season I was helping a constituent with their Energy Efficiency Incentive Program and they were filling out the paperwork and asked me for some advice. I started to look at the Energy Efficiency Incentive Program that was created years ago and, of course, some great work had been done. Included are things such as rebates on washers, refrigerators, freezer chests, wood stoves, lightbulbs, and the list goes on. But what I happened to quickly notice was there was a glaring gap between the fact that there wasn’t any efficiency program design around insulation, windows and doors. I even wonder why alternative energy isn’t being considered at this particular time.

Most people will tell you, who are familiar with this industry, that the largest part of energy going into

your house is, of course, heating it. Now, we could be talking about power bills here today, but let’s focus in on the efficiency of how you run your house.

If your house isn’t protected from the elements, and that’s certainly the exchange between hot and cold and we certainly live in an area that gets a lot of cold, you have energy seeped out of the windows, through the roof, through the walls, underneath the door. We spend a lot of time worrying about trying to make wood stoves efficient or our furnaces efficient, but why aren’t we making the walls and the roof and the windows and the doors as efficient as possible?

I guess I’m saying this: It has finally come to the realization that instead of worrying about saving pennies – which are very important, by the way – on getting better faucets and toilets, we should be looking at the fact that we could help Northerners save dollars and hundreds of dollars by better insulating their homes.

Many homes will cost thousands of dollars to increase the insulation on their house to improve the envelope to ensure that they’re using their energy more efficiently and wisely. I think it’s time that this government starts to realize that we could be helping Northerners through insulation programs, window programs, door programs and certainly alternative energy programs such as solar.

Just to wrap this up, we do have people in the Northwest Territories that make a big commitment. I was in Hay River not that long ago and I was speaking to somebody who makes windows, and I was speaking to someone here in Yellowknife who does doors, and they do local products in Yellowknife even such as insulation. We have northern people coming forward with northern solutions in our northern climate that can help every Northerner across our territory. Let’s now take a review of this particular program and add the biggest bang for our buck. Help Northerners save where it matters most.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to spend some time today talking about decentralization. I’ve been pretty much silent on the subject to date, but I can no longer be silent. I have grave misgivings about this policy and its implementation.

We have only to look eastward to Nunavut where they are reversing their previous actions and bringing positions back to Iqaluit. Why? Because decentralization is not working. I appreciate the intent of the policy, but, and it’s a very large but, I

cannot condone the current mindset around the implementation of the Decentralization Policy.

The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment proudly announced last week that three more positions had been decentralized. Two of those three positions have incumbents. Premier McLeod stated yesterday in relation to this policy that, and I quote from Hansard from yesterday, “It’s a program decision.” He went on to say, and I quote again from page 63 of unedited Hansard, “It’s what’s in the best interests of fulfilling this decentralization priority of this government.”

That tells me that decentralization is nothing more than a numbers game for the government and that it is decentralization at any cost. But there are costs associated, both financial and personal.

It seems to be quite acceptable to make a position more expensive through decentralization. Yet, in the same breath the government states that our financial situation is not sustainable. There’s more than a bit of controversy in that. The Minister of Finance has said that our fiscal situation demands action, that we must leave no stone unturned. Well, this is a stone we must turn over and look beneath.

There’s also a personal cost, one which apparently is not a factor, considering the Premier’s comments yesterday. How many families have been uprooted since we started this initiative? How many are still in the public service? How many have left the NWT? Does the government know? Does the government care?

For the sake of adhering to a policy, we are willing to lose experienced, competent, long-term employees, willing to lose their corporate knowledge, willing to throw away the investment and training that we have in them. The government’s population strategy looks to increase our population. The current callous application of the Decentralization Policy will see people leaving the North.

We say we value our employees, but recent actions completely refute that.

I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

It’s a completely different situation if the position being moved is vacant or a new position. In that case, there are no people to be uprooted, no families thrown into turmoil. That should be the government’s thinking. It can be like reducing staff costs through attrition. The only positions that should be considered for decentralization should be those which are vacant or new positions.

I will have questions for the Premier at the appropriate time.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As much as I’d like to do a rebuttal to the Member’s statement, and the importance… Actually, I will.

This government is focused on increasing the health and the wellness of people across the Northwest Territories. As a fact, increasing our economy, increasing our skill force, increasing our education and our health care systems in the regions through the Northwest Territories, and I believe this government’s been doing a great job in decentralizing the jobs in the communities, bringing families to communities. In Inuvik alone I know that the opening of a couple offices has helped the small businesses, the local businesses, helped the daycares, which I was going to talk about today actually, but under this statement I know that the importance of decentralizing, looking at places throughout the Northwest Territories whether it’s the Beaufort-Delta with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link, up and down the valley corridor in terms of investing in our people and investing in the projects, the road and other issues along those lines, looking at our schools, looking at our health centres that people in the small communities speak up so much about, our health care system, our nurses that we don’t have in eight of our communities.

So I think what the government is doing in trying to create a Decentralization Policy, that is not only going to help people across the Northwest Territories, it’s going to help people here in Yellowknife as well. It’s going to open up better communications in how things are working in the small communities and in the regions.

So, like I said, I was going to speak on licenced daycares today, but I honestly couldn’t bite my tongue on this one and I do have to speak up for the people in the regions, speak up for the people in the small communities and speak up for people that need the programs, need the services, need the jobs so that they too can have a lifestyle. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A mining advisory board to “provide advice to government to ensure mining regulation is in place that encourages economic growth while maintaining high regulatory, environmental and social standards.” To quote the Minister of ITI’s press

release seems a worthwhile exercise. However, digging deeper, I find that the board will be comprised of only ministerially appointed people with “direct experience in the NWT minerals industry.”

The Mineral Development Strategy itself was developed by an industry panel. The Minister three times chose to ignore public interest policy input, despite committee insistence that it be considered. The Minister is now extending this lack of respect for public interest to the appointment of an industry panel to further guide public government action, which to date seems to consist of ever more subsidies for the industry.

A similarly misguided approach to mineral development in the past has left us with a depleted environment, billions of dollars in transferred cleanup costs to the public, uncompensated cultural costs to Aboriginal residents and unmeasured impacts in health costs to residents. Clearly, having a mining advisory board comprised exclusively of industry representatives will continue this business-centred path and ignores even industry’s basic understanding of the requirement to meet the public interest in their exploitation of public resources.

We need a broader base of public voices on this board. If the board is to meet the Minister’s goals of representing regulatory environmental and social standards, these perspectives need to be represented along with the mining industry at the table.

Multi-stakeholder boards that truly represent a broad range of interests are valuable tools. Case in point is the NWT Protected Areas Strategy Steering Committee, which includes the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Without representation from environmental and social representatives, the advice of the mining board will not reflect the broad public interest necessary to re-establish the social licence and performance standards the public rightly expects of industry. In fact, the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines already provides this lobbying service to the Minister and does not need to be duplicated.

Is it too much to ask that this government think in terms of lessons learned in today’s modern understanding of responsible, sustainable development?

I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.

---Unanimous consent granted

Is it too much to ask that this government think in terms of lessons learned in today’s modern understanding of responsible, sustainable development? A mining advisory board that doesn’t include members that bring Aboriginal government, social and environmental perspectives

to the table will fail to meet public interest yet again. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Colleagues, before we continue I’d like to welcome back to the House former Member, former Premier, Mr. Jim Antoine in the House today.

---Applause

The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.