Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Committee concerns

On September 15, 2021 committee held a public hearing with the sponsoring Member. Committee also invited public presentations. The public hearing was live streamed on the Legislative Assembly channel. Presentations were provided from the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines with the Mining Association of Canada, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, as well as the sponsoring Member.

Members held varying positions on the bill. There was concern regarding the bill duplicating the information found through the federal Extractive Sectors Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA). Under ESTMA extractive companies must publicly disclose payments made to governments in Canada and abroad. ESTMA helps the Government of Canada deter corruption in the extractive sector. It was recognized that royalty payments made by mining companies to the GNWT could be located here however it was also noted the royalty payments reported through ESTMA do not match the royalty payments recorded in the GNWT's public accounts.

The GNWT public accounts report the royalty revenues from mining, oil and gas received annually as an aggregate total (i.e. it is not broken down by mine or by company). There are other additional reasons why the royalty reported in the public accounts do not match the royalty reported in ESTMA (not limited to differences in fiscal year reporting, and the number of operations a company may have in the NWT).

Canada supports global financial transparency efforts and aligns with Extractive Sectors Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards through the reported information made publicly available through the ESTMA. Canada was a major player to develop the global standard on mandatory extractive sector transparency payment disclosures and is a contributing board member to the initiative. Although Canada doesn't report under EITI, it is a supporter of the initiative and requires company payments to be disclosed through the information made public under ESTMA.

There was concern that Bill 29 implicated the mining oil and gas sector to disclose confidential information without requiring other sectors that pay royalties (such as quarrying, forestry) to do the same. It was noted that the information disclosed would be information already provided to the Minister and the Minister could decide to share the information with Members of the Legislative Assembly or Indigenous governments. Committee recognized that even if Bill 29 was enacted, the Minister will still hold discretion whether to disclose confidential information.

There was concern among committee with the unknown risks regarding potential breaches of confidential information made possible through Bill 29. Following the public hearing, committee proceeded with the clause by clause review of the bill. I will hand it back to the Member for Nunakput. Mahsi.