Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories study the government of Saskatchewan Institutional Control Program and develop a Northwest Territories model that better implements the polluter pays principle for the long term and unforeseen remediation of mining sites while providing regulatory certainty with respect to industry relinquishment; and further, that the Northwest Territories model should be developed by the end of the 19th Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.

Yes, thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to highlight what this institutional control program is all about.

In Saskatchewan, the mining that takes place is generally in the northern part of the province. They've got a bunch of abandoned uranium mines there that I guess were federally owned, operated, or regulated and so on; a few gold mines here and there too, but. So they had this problem of these abandoned mines and no way of really trying to deal with them or find funding and so on. So what they did was they thought long and carefully about this, and they talked to people in the mining industry as well. The mining industry wants to get some certainty about when they can walk away from a site after using it. And that's not an unreasonable thing. You know, they'd go in, use an area, and they want to know when they're clear and free.

So what they -- the Saskatchewan government did was ask companies if you're going to leave a site, mining companies, there's two pots of money that you can and should be paying into. The first one is to kind of take care of ongoing maintenance -- care and maintenance at the site. Things like, you know, you might have to do a geotechnical inspection every few years of openings that have been closed or dam structures that have been left on site that, you know, tailings covers, to make sure that they're still working the way that they're supposed to. So those kind of ongoing care costs, you know, that money can be put into one pot.

A second pot, though, is to really deal with unforeseen events, like Mount Polley in British Columbia, where there was a catastrophic tailings failure and tailings went all the way down into Quesnel Lake, polluted salmon-bearing waters - what a mess. So, you know, there's some risk associated with those with some sites, so companies that are at high risk sites, they can put some money into an unforeseen events pot of money and then the government can access that to take care of, you know, potentially, you know, unforeseen catastrophic events.

Now this is a pretty new system in Saskatchewan. It's only been in place for I think less than a decade, and there's only two or three companies that are -- maybe three or four, that are in this program. But at least somebody's thought it through as a way for the government to actually have money in place to deal with sites and operators can then walk away and leave it, and they don't have to worry about the liability associated with these sites. And, you know, when you think about some of these sites, they're going to be here hundreds of years into the future. Where are the resources going to come from to manage them in a collective sense? So at least the Government of Saskatchewan has thought this through; they have a system in place. We have got nothing for Giant Mine, quite frankly, other than the environmental agreement that does I think start to look at some of this perpetual care plan that's going to have to be generated. But as a government that wants to promote responsible resource development, we have a duty to come up with a system that's going to allow industry to have clear and free -- knowing when relinquishment's going to take place and walk away but some public confidence that there's still resources that can look after sites for the regular care and maintenance and unforeseen events. And that's the beauty of this system. But we've got nothing. And I don't know what's happening within the departments to actually look at this issue. So I'll be very curious to see how the Cabinet responds to this recommendation. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion?

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Nunakput.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.

Madam Chair, I'm going to speak to this quickly. We have at least three pieces of legislation -- maybe two I guess, that where financial security requirements can be placed on an operator or mine owner, oil and gas operation I guess if we include oil and gas, maybe three or four different pieces of legislation. So the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has the Waters Act and they can ask for -- or through that process, financial security for water-related use and an infrastructure site can be requested. And there's the Lands Act, Northwest Territories Lands Act for lands-related stuff. And then for oil and gas, you can have other provisions for financial security. And this is not set in stone. You know, what's land? What's water related? Is a tailings dam a land feature; is it a water-related feature? And how is that covered and coordinated between these two types of financial securities that could be requested? There's no arrangement for this to happen other than the land and water boards by practice have said give us one closure plan, we'll figure out what the liability is and we'll recommend a global figure. But even some of the figures that they've submitted with their draft licenses haven't been acceptable to our government because they can't figure it out or they don't know -- they don't want to hold security under one act when it should be for another act. This has got to be sorted out because what it does is it puts the public at risk that we're going to assume more liability in the future. So that's what this recommendation is aimed at. Maybe having a combined department as of April 1st will help resolve a bit of this, but it's also a legislative problem. But it could be solved through a memorandum of understanding or some way of dealing with this better. But what we have in place is causing confusion, double bonding possibly, even -- or you know, for operators or mine owners that's not fair to them. This stuff has got to get sorted out, and I'll look forward to how Cabinet's going to respond to this one as well. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Nunakput.

Madam Chair, I move that the committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories review and amend all legislative requirements regarding the form of financial security for environmental compliance and remediation to ensure financial security must be irrevocable, and absolute unconditional. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, why this is important is under our watch, we had the Cantung Mine go into creditor protection, and the federal government had allowed them to put up the Mactung property as financial security. How crazy is that? But our government didn't change that when we took over the site as a result of devolution. Management of -- or at least environmental management regulation of the site post-devolution. So that's why our government had to go through all of that mess and eventually try to sell Mactung, get some money back. I'm not convinced we're ever going to recover all of our costs. But our government allowed the company to keep Mactung as financial security. That's crazy. Shouldn't have happened quite frankly, Madam Chair. So the Minister now can accept any form of financial security. If you scribble a note on the back of a napkin, a promissory note, promise to pay some money, the Minister can accept that. That is not the way that we should be operating in terms of responsible resource development. So this is about restricting the discretion of the Minister to accept unreliable forms of financial security that put the public at risk. And we need to put this in legislation to restrict the Minister's discretion to protect the public interest. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Nunakput.

Madam Chair, I move that the committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories undertake an immediate review of the oil and gas spills and debris liability regulations to ensure that the absolute liability caps are increased to fully implement the polluter pays principle, reflect best practices and protect the public from liabilities; and further, that the review and increases to the caps should be implemented before the end of the 19th Assembly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, this is a cap that's set in regulations. Cabinet can change this tomorrow if they want to; the Minister could change this tomorrow. The federal government had these caps. We adopted those with devolution. But after devolution, the federal government, the Auditor General came and looked at how the federal government tries to manage public liabilities and the Auditor General recommended to the federal government that they needed to change these caps in the areas where they retained jurisdiction, the offshore in particular. And so the Auditor General said that you need to change this, especially in light of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. So the federal government changed its regulations for the offshore and the absolute liability cap, as I understand it, I think is a billion dollars now. So that's the kind of -- and I'm not suggesting that the same kind of risk or blowout could happen necessarily on the onshore but as a responsible resource developer, you would think that by now we would want to protect the public and at least change the caps that were set by the federal government, artificially low in my opinion, and it's something that our government can do tomorrow. So I've raised this in the last Assembly. I've raised it again in this Assembly. But there just doesn't seem to be any appetite on the other side to actually protect the public interest. So, again, I'll be very curious to see how the Cabinet is going to respond to this because the Minister can change this tomorrow if she wants. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Nunakput.