Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I guess on the news the premier said -- of Alberta said it wasn't, you know, their responsibility, and it was up to Imperial to notify the parties that might be -- you know, that are looking at damages. But the one thing I guess with this dispute mechanism, you know, we're doing extra probably testing hopefully. Is there a cost -- an extra cost related to this now, and would that dispute mechanism allow for those costs to be picked up by the Alberta government or Imperial? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Minister.

I'll start, and then I'll turn to the deputy minister. So I know what the premier of Alberta said. We don't have an agreement with the industry. We have an agreement with the Government of Alberta. And I've made that very clear it is with them that they need to be sharing this information. So I need to make that very clear. I've had that conversation today. And so sharing it here today but for further detail on the process, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Deputy minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing I haven't really heard, I guess, in the news or from the department is the involvement of the Indigenous governments in the territories who -- you know, who have comprehensive agreements signed. And in those agreements, you know, they have some, you know, water rights and, you know, the right to, you know, quantity and quality of water as well. So what discussions have been taking place with Indigenous governments within the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Minister.

So as soon as we hit the send button to tell you guys what was going on, two seconds later we reached out to our Indigenous governments and gave them the same information. But that's the process. For further detail on what the staff have done, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Deputy minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to talk a bit about the, I guess, water research and monitoring. And, you know, after a couple years of flooding here, how much additional work is going into that to monitor, like, especially for Hay River and the Hay River watershed, are we doing any extra work so that we can, you know, get some idea whether -- and somewhat predict, I guess, whether we may see flooding? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Minister.

For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy Minister. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON Thank you. Deputy Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you -- I guess, you've identified some criteria there, but I -- can you expand on that bit because, you know, we talk about, you know, volume of snow; we may have some rain down south; we have cold weather possibly that could impact it; we might have -- you know, you say that with ice we -- you know, it makes it difficult to predict as well but, you know, if it -- it just depends what the weather's like we could have thicker ice. If we don't have a lot of snow, that could cause that as well. We have, you know, in the Hay River for instance, we got the mouth of the river and the -- you know, the channel and that's getting, you know -- I guess basically the silt is increasing, the amount of silt that's in there. Does that have -- you know, what kind of impact does that have. We've got two channels there. We've got the west channel and the east channel. And so I'm just trying to get an idea, you know, what we're looking at when we look at flooding aspects. Thank you.

Thank you. Minister.

For that detail, I'll turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I want to thank my colleague from Hay River South for asking a number of the questions I was going to ask, and I want to thank the Minister for pointing out to the premier of Alberta that we signed a trans-boundary agreement with their government, not Imperial Oil. So maybe educating the minister when you're meeting with her tomorrow, getting the premier to actually read the trans-boundary agreement might be helpful.

But I guess I want to get some assurance that there's -- if we enter into this dispute resolution process, that if there is like an independent third party review, extra monitoring costs, work that we have to do, that there's the ability to recover some or all of those costs through the dispute resolution process. So that's my question to the Minister. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

So first and foremost, the meeting's on Thursday, not tomorrow, and I apologize if I gave the misinformation. We would try to get the money back through the process. So we do have a process, and costs are a part of that process. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks for that. Yeah, and I look forward to the letters the Minister's going to table. But I guess I want to go back to, you know, where we started with some of this stuff, and this was the move on the part of maybe the Alberta and federal governments to have some sort of control discharge from these humongous tailings ponds. And, look, I'd rather have a controlled discharge if the water's treated properly than this kind of stuff happening because this kind of stuff is going to happen; it's going to continue to happen until -- it's inevitable. So where are we at with this process to look at whether and how discharges might be allowed from those tailings ponds? As I understood it, Alberta was supposed to do some kind of modeling, some sort of health impact, maybe ecosystem impact work; where is all of that at and what level of engagement and involvement do we have? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, with the process, six information gaps have been identified by oil sands, mine monitoring science team, modeling environmental concentration and effect, human and ecological health risk assessments, technical -- technology-based effluent limits assessment, toxicity testing, enhanced baseline environmental monitoring, and local and regional scale environmental monitoring. And as I stressed to the minister from Alberta, until we see the science we do not want to see water flowing -- treated effluent put in there. But for further detail, with your permission, I would ask the deputy minister to enhance the answer. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy minister.