Mr. Speaker, I have a return to written question number 16-20(1) asked by the Member for Frame Lake on March 13th, 2025, regarding environmental liabilities, inventory, and securities held by the Government of the Northwest Territories

The GNWT follows Canadian Public Sector Accounting Standards issued by the Public Sector Accounting Standards Board. One of the standards issued covers how to account for contaminated sites.

On an annual basis, the GNWT's inventory of contaminated sites is updated each year in accordance with the accounting standards. The liability amount for the fiscal year end is determined based on that listing and cost estimate at March 31. The liability goes up when new sites are added or cost estimates increase, the liability goes down when sites are either removed from the list and/or sites are remediated.

The GNWT publishes through an online searchable database the contaminated sites as reported in the public accounts as at March 31 of each year end.

The public accounts publish the environmental liability information and the amounts at an aggregated level and does not disclose site specific amounts as this could interfere with future procurement processes to remediate these sites. Of the inventory of projects, historically some may have had leases, land use permits or water licenses. Of the list of contaminated sites at March 31, 2024, only one site had permits with a reclamation security required. The total security held for that site was $2.9 million.

Later today I will table a supporting document with more details to supplement this response.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.