Thank you, Mr. Speaker. While I appreciate that some other Members are going to speak this evening, possibly with regard to, "Maybe we could have negotiated a better deal," my position all along has been that I do not support a carbon tax, whether it is coming from this government or whether it is coming from the federal government.

I believe that we are already penalized severely for where we live. This is a dark, cold territory for eight months of the year. We are already penalized for being in this region. We are also further penalized by the cost of living. It is 20 to 30 percent more expensive to live here; other than maybe Nunavut, we are the second-highest jurisdiction in the country to afford to live in and do business in.

Thirdly, we are also penalized by not having any options, Mr. Speaker. We do not have any affordable options. We cannot decide to maybe go and buy an electric-powered vehicle, because here, unlike, say, Alberta, where it is 8 cents a kilowatt hour, our power is 38 cents a kilowatt hour. Just the affordability is not there. It just makes no sense to do that sort of thing.

We do not have cheap fuel options. We do not have natural gas like most of southern Canada has, which is much more affordable than diesel. We just clearly do not have the options. We live in a cold climate where we are penalized. We already live in a higher cost of living jurisdiction, and we don't have options to switch over to. Yet, the federal and our government feel that it is necessary to apply such a tax.

We don't need our behaviour changed, Mr. Speaker, and why? Because we are already doing good things. We were doing these good things long before a discussion of carbon tax came along.

Let's look at government. Government, through our capital asset retrofit program, has been making improvements for eons, improvements that are paying back, by the way, making energy efficiency and savings for tax payers. These have a positive return on investment.

Other orders of government are starting to look at district energy systems. We have all been putting in biomass heaters and boilers in all of our government-owned assets for some period of time now. Why? Because these are the kinds of things that we have to look at in order to lower our energy rates.

Let's talk about, for a moment, what government is doing in terms of leading by example in other areas. We have the Inuvik windmill farm that is going to be coming. We see industry using other options. Diavik has a windmill farm. We have solar panels popping up all over the place. We have communities starting to talk about new microgrids and other alternatives. We have potential for geothermal in the Deh Cho region. These are all things that we were talking about and planning and strategizing about long before anybody felt that they need to slap a carbon tax on us.

Mr. Speaker, we are also doing good things as it relates to enacting legislation and regulations. We have been doing that for a long time. Municipal governments have been doing that for a long time. EnerGuide 80 is a good thing that you can look at towards regulations that are starting to have a positive effect now. We put that in a number of years ago. People are building more energy-efficient homes.

The municipality of the City of Yellowknife now has an energy retrofit program that they are going to be able to put in place, because we enabled them through changing legislation of the Cities, Towns and Villages Act that people can now apply to and have a more affordable way in which to put energy retrofits into their house, because they, too, want to live more affordably, first and foremost, but secondly, they want to reduce their carbon footprint.

Again, we are going to be increasing the Arctic Energy Alliance's budget by nearly double over the next four years. That means that we are going to be giving more rebates back to people. That will incentivize them to put in better energy-efficient appliances, pellet boilers, and pellet stoves, maybe replace some windows, things like that.

It doesn't matter where you look, whether it's government, whether it's industry, whether it's communities, or whether it's individuals; due to where we live, and due to not having other options, we have been doing all the right things for a long, long time. It is shameful that the federal Government of Canada felt that the 100,000 people who live in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, who are the ones that are most impacted by climate change, somehow needed to be slapped a tax on so that they could change their behaviour somehow. This is shameful. I will not be supporting this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In reviewing this when we had this before committee, this is how I would have expected to see a clause like this laid out. When you want to put benefits into legislation, remind folks that clause 51(1) is a "may" clause, sub (2) is a "may" clause, and sub (3) is a "may" clause. There is no "shall" here at all, so there is no absolute obligation on the Minister.

What this does is this clarifies, to some degree, what one might expect to see when they go to this clause and read it. It outlines some of, not necessarily all, the benefits, and it doesn't leave one wondering or questioning what the clause was expected to do for benefits for people of the NWT. I will be in support. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I think that committee has the purview where this is maybe one of those crossroads where we are going to have a difference with the Minister and the department in general perspective, at least based on the way that some committee Members view this. I think that we genuinely feel that we want to serve the best interests of the public. I think that, if the public knows that royalties shall be paid to this government, the government that represents them, certainly there should be the obligation to report it on a mine-by-mine basis.

If we were to just leave this in here as it stands right now as it relates to subsection (q), the total amount of royalties paid to the Government of the Northwest Territories under part 6 for that reporting year, if all we were left with was one mine in the territory, then we would know the total amount of royalties coming from that one mine. It's not as though it's not an impossibility to know that. Quite frankly, you would think that mines, to some degree, each individual mine would kind of want the public to know what their contribution is to our royalties, so that the public is aware of what the mines' contributions are.

I am going to be supporting the Member here. We tried to move this motion as committee, and as chair, I was somewhat neutral, but now that it is here before us, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the Minister's opening comments. I think that he spoke well to the bill in general. I just do want to touch one more time on committee's experiences to some degree and just say again that we agree with the Minister that, clearly, this is one of those laws for this territory that is certainly incredibly important for the success of our territory going forward. The undertaking of this review was reflective of that. I think that it was extensive, and we are incredibly appreciative of all of the input that we have received up and down the entire valley as it related to this bill and from all of the important stakeholders and their contributions that they have made.

Committee, again, wants to extend a thank you to the Minister and his staff for the very collaborative approach that we had between us. There were a couple of unique circumstances where we really felt that there was an opportunity to sit face-to-face with the Minister and his staff, along with the committee and our staff, and I think that that really made a difference and allowed for some progress to be made where it may not have otherwise.

There might be other Members who want to speak to the actual bill itself, but I just wanted to share a little bit more about the process that we experienced and that, while it had bumpy roads at times, I am sure that there might be a few more bumps that could be experienced this evening over the next couple of hours, at the end of the day, the result is going to be a world-class piece of legislation that the territory can certainly show off to the rest of the country and others. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends, to the extent it is possible before the dissolution of the 18^th Assembly and for the public record, that the government provide a response to these recommendations, even of a preliminary nature, that committee may publicly disclose. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through this process, I think that we recognize that there, of course, is one of the most important aspects of mining and exploration is drill core, and that it can be a little bit challenging and costly at times to store and/or move drill core, but that its preservation is very important due to what it can provide for history and for future exploration opportunities.

We felt that there was certainly a need to be able to address those challenges that we have as it relates to making sure that we are safeguarding drill core, and making sure that it's going to have some opportunity in the future to be accessible to those who might have some interests in exploration or prospecting in the Northwest Territories, or even for mines. That's the basis of it, but I think others might want to talk around this as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the previously noted implementation plan identify how the regulatory gap related to the matter of removing drill core be resolved. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories develop an implementation plan for the Mineral Resources Act that identifies short and longer-term objectives, such as the development of regulations, and which identifies how key stakeholders will be engaged; and further, that the Government of the Northwest Territories return to the appropriate standing committee in the 19^th Legislative Assembly with a copy of the draft implementation plan for committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some of this was touched on just in our last motion here. I won't elaborate too much. I think this goes to show that there is still a continued desire for public to understand exactly what contributions mining makes to the Northwest Territories in its various forms. There is this desire for more transparency in that regard. We see here in this recommendation and we are encouraging the government to use best practices. Some of the models that we do see are some of the ones that have been named in this recommendation.

Frankly, these are ones that the mining industry generally supports. The Mining Association of Canada, a number of their members already undertake these initiatives on their own volition. We are simply asking our government to use what is considered to be some of the best practices with regards to models of reporting and apply them to the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.