Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On January 15th of last month, the City of Yellowknife reported a sewage spill in my constituency of Kam Lake. An estimated 1 million to 2 million litres of sewage was spilled, entering Kam Lake at two different locations, migrating from Kam Lake Road through drainage infrastructure and into the lots of several property owners, while the rest flowed downstream near the City Garage.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the City of Yellowknife for their prompt action to clean up this sewage spill, quickly collecting liquid sewage from the ditches and transporting it out of Kam Lake for disposal. However, frozen sewage is a more difficult matter, and one of the excavators hired to complete the clean-up work near the city garage broke through the ice on Kam Lake, further complicating the clean-up effort.

Mr. Speaker, this issue is more than raw sewage, although I cannot imagine a more unpleasant situation for homeowners to have to deal with. It is about ensuring the environmental health of our residents and, in particular, the residents that I represent in this House. It is important that we communicate clearly and in an effective manner with the public on this spill and provide the confidence to my constituents that all levels of government are on the case working to ensure the neighbourhoods are clean, healthy, and safe.

That's why I am pleased to report that tonight an open house will be held at Yellowknife City Hall, and I urge all those affected and other interested parties to join me at this public information event. I applaud the city for also taking the lead for ensuring that this clean-up is being done in a transparent and open manner. Although we are well into the month of February, there is still much more work to be done to ensure this spill is taken care of, and given the overlapping mandates of various governments on environmental protections, clean-up is not solely the responsibility of the City of Yellowknife alone to resolve. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is responsible for the Government of the Northwest Territories' response to the sewage spill, and I will have questions to the Minister responsible on the role of the department in assisting the city to restore the environmental health of my constituency. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.