Thanks, Mr. Chair. In my first set of comments, I neglected to thank the committee members and, obviously, the Auditor General. In fact, the Auditor General himself came to Yellowknife for the hearing. There was a lot of hard work that was put into this report by the committee, and I sincerely thank them and thank them for the opportunity to participate in their review of the report.
I just want to make sure that my Cabinet colleagues focus on the report. This is the most important recommendation that comes out of this whole exercise, and it's about leadership. I am just going to quote one sentence from the audit itself. It says, "Overall, we found that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources did not fulfil its leadership role and meet its commitments on climate change." That is a pretty serious finding. Now, when we heard from the department, the Minister, the deputy minister, on this, they did provide us with a draft action plan in response to the audit findings, and, on this particular item around leadership, the idea would be that there would be an assistant deputy minister's climate change committee set up. Well, actually, it has been in operation since 2016. There were really no other ideas in here, even from the discussion that was held, about how to make sure that the proper authority and structure is in place to make sure that we can do the work that is required on climate change. Committee heard from the department, from the Minister, the deputy minister, and I have looked, we have looked, at the Climate Change Strategic Framework. There were no ideas about how to make sure the proper authority is in place, proper structures are in place, to make sure that we achieve those greenhouse gas reductions that are required as part of the international and national obligations that this government has signed on to. The leadership structure is just not there from what the committee heard.
So committee did some thinking around this. We have made some suggestions about how to make sure that the proper authority and structures are in place to make sure that we can deliver on those commitments. That is what this recommendation is about. A climate change act formalizing the roles and responsibilities is one way to do it. A Cabinet-approved policy is another option. Making sure that climate change is incorporated into the way that Cabinet submissions are prepared, financial management board decisions are made, those are some other ways to ensure that we are able to deliver on the climate change commitments that we have agreed to as a government. So this, as I said, is the most important recommendation coming out of the entire report to make sure that we can succeed at the end of the day, so I really urge our Cabinet colleagues to focus on this one in particular. There are some good ideas here, and I look forward to a positive response from our Cabinet colleagues moving forward so that we can all share in the success of making sure that we achieve our climate change objectives, policies, targets, and move forward together and benefit all of the residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.