Thanks, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank the Minister for raising the financial security provisions in the Commissioner's Land Act which have been in place. They were actually brought into place on February 14, 2011, and those do require that financial security for industrial and commercial purposes would be mandatory so that this has now been in place for seven or eight years, over eight years. That was largely based on the experience from what happened with Giant Mine, where our government assumed a liability of $23 million because the surface lease that we had, GNWT had for the property, there was no financial security that was requested, zero, and, in order to move forward with the remediation of the site, our government signed in 2005 a cooperation agreement with the federal government where we agreed to provide $23 million towards remediation costs because our government did not ask for financial security for a surface lease for the mining operation.
Our government has also assumed financial liability of we do not know exactly what that is at this point, for another abandoned mine down the Ingraham Trail, at the Ptarmigan Mine site. Our government did not fix up the financial security around Cantung. Our government has not fixed up financial security in relation to the Prairie Creek mine site. I think, largely, this stems from the fact that Ministers have discretion. I would like to know from the Minister: if this provision for mandatory financial security has been in place since 2011 under the Commissioner's Lands Act, why do we need to change it now? What is the evidence of any kind of problems, complaints? Why does this need to be changed now? Thank you, Mr. Chair.