MEMBER’S STATEMENT 967-19(2): MACTUNG AND CANTUNG CONTAIMINATED SITES MR. O'REILLY: Merci, Monsieur le President, that's a tough act to follow. Another day, another contaminated site mismanaged by our government. This time it is the Mactung exploration property in the former Cantung
Mine. Cantung and Mactung are mining properties in the Mackenzie Mountains. The Cantung Mine was a tungsten producer from 1962 until it closed in 2015.
The owner, North American Tungsten, went into creditor protection on June 9th, 2015 after we agreed to take on this operation under the Devolution Agreement.
Somehow the federal government let that company put up the Mactung property as part of its financial security for its water license. When our government inherited the management of the Cantung site under devolution, nothing was done to change that arrangement even though GNWT had total discretion over the form of the security. That's another preventible liability that has cost our government millions of dollars. So much for Polluter-Pays Principle and the devolution promise of responsible resource development.
As part of the creditor protection proceeding, Cabinet ended up purchasing Mactung for $2.5 million with a special warrant that bypassed the Legislative Assembly.
In that way we were told GNWT could hand Cantung back to the federal government for remediation. When we acquired the Mactung property, a lot of junk and hazardous materials were on the site even though I had been told that there was nothing there. GNWT spent $172,000 on a partial site cleanup of that property.
Then GNWT hired a southern consultant to prepare and submit a land use application to the Yukon government for an imaginary exploration program in an attempt to hike the value of the property.
As far as I can tell, GNWT has owned Mactung now for seven years and all attempts to sell the Cantung and Mactung properties have failed. These two properties are 140 kilometres away from each other by air and 700 kilometres by road. It's not clear to me why we are marketing these properties with the federal government.
There is little chance that some buyer will take on these mining properties that are now contaminated sites without significant concessions and subsidies. Needless to say I will have lots of questions for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment about these properties, our failure to manage them properly, and whether we can ever expect to recoup the money spent on them.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Thebacha. MEMBER’S STATEMENT 968-19(2): ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE RCMP TERRITORIAL POLICE SERVICE AGREEMENT MS. MARTSELOS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on November 29th, 2021, I had made a Member statement on the RCMP Territorial Police Service Agreement with the NWT. I asked questions of the Minister of Justice about RCMP accountability in relation to the police service agreement and I did not receive any good answers to my questions. In fact, I walked away from that exchange with more questions than answers about the RCMP regarding transparency and accountability in the NWT.
Mr. Speaker, according to the 2022-2023 Main Estimates, the Government of the Northwest Territories is paying over $50 million for policing services in the NWT which is already nearly $2 million than the 2021-2022 revised estimates. That's not even considering the additional $3.5 million for increased RCMP salary costs for their new collective agreement.
There's also an additional $8 million that our Department of Infrastructure is paying to provide maintenance and utility services for the RCMP commercial and residential properties in the NWT. All together that amounts to $61.5 million that the Government of the Northwest Territories is paying to the RCMP. With costs like that, what are we getting from it?
How are these increasing costs for policing making policing services better for the people of the NWT?
Mr. Speaker, there is much talk in numerous jurisdictions about cutting or reducing funding to the police yet here we are increasing those costs. Do these increased policing costs make people safer? Will they lead to a reduction in crime across the NWT? Are police doing more patrols throughout the communities? Are there ways to measure whether police are improving the quality or level of public safety within our communities? These are legitimate questions given the amount of money we are allocating here.
Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago Statistics Canada released two articles with detailed analysis of the perceptions and experiences of people in Canada, with particular focus on black and Indigenous people. Mr. Speaker, I speak unanimous consent to complete my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted. According to these studies, black and Indigenous people are twice as likely than non-Indigenous non-visible minority people to report that they have little or no confidence in police. Additionally, the studies also state that one-third of Indigenous people reported experience in discrimination from people in the past five years.
Mr. Speaker, policing and police services is something that affects everyone in our society regardless of color, race, or background. Upholding and maintaining public safety is the core duty of policing. It is also a core duty of governments to ensure proper transparency and accountability is maintained in all police services in all jurisdictions. I
