The 2008 McCrank Report entitled Road to Improvement: The Review of the Regulatory Systems Across the North, and the 2010 Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Report, Northerners’ Perspectives for Prosperity, both recommend timely board appointments to the numerous regulatory boards across the Northwest Territories.

“Why won’t the government respect the importance of timely action on these appointments,” said Bevington in a release sent out by his office last week.

One example he provided was the Gwichin Renewable Resources Board which, for the last year, has only had one third the number of regular members as it should.

“The GRRB has only four regular members out of 12 since 2010, which means this board has had no quorum and cannot function or make legal binding decisions,” he said.

Eleven of the Northwest Territory’s 13 Regulatory and Land Claim boards currently have vacancies and over the next six months, many of the currently held positions on the boards will be up for renewal or replacement.

“The Harper government continues to fail in its responsibilities to ensure these boards can operate fully and effectively. Their inaction is fulfilling their own arguments that the regulatory process is flawed,” said Bevington.

“This government needs to be proactive on this issue, and these appointments need top be dealt with in a timely fashion.”

It’s funny how many incarnations the Recreation Centre ice surface can take on.

“When I woke up this morning I thought about your accomplishments,” said master of ceremonies, J.J. Hirst.
“I put myself in your parent’s shoes and was ‘smiling ear to ear’ proud. You’ve made everyone very proud today.”
Dennis Bevington, M.P for the Western Arctic, expressed his feeling of privilege to stand in front of a graduating class in the territories at this point in time, a population whose responsibility he said, will be called upon in the very near future.
“You will be in demand, there’s no question about that,” said Bevington.
“We’ll need you to take part in our society. You have the tools and can take that direction any way because you are socially sensitive, tech savvy, and you understand tolerance.”
MLA for Hay River South, Jane Groenewegen told grads to pay attention to this snapshot in time.
Lyle Fabian, councillor for K’atl’odeeche First Nation compared connections on Facebook with those made in small towns like Hay River, and the sometimes obvious six degrees of separation.
He told students to remember these ties. Groenewegen encouraged students to take pride in making their own decisions.
“A lot of times up until this point people were probably making a lot of decisions for you,” said Fabian.
“Soon you will be making these decisions on your own. That can be exciting. That can also be very scary. So learn to lean on your friends.”
Key speaker, Hay River District Education Authority member Louise Schumann, encouraged students to be mindful and always remember their abilities.
“Some measure success by how happy they are,” she said, “some on the success of their careers, others on how much time they have to spend with family and friends. Whatever your motivations are, take time to live in the moment and find balance in your busy lives.”
Adam Lakusta’s valedictory address brought some touching yet comedic moments to the ceremony.
It was Mayor Kelly Schofield’s gift to a few lucky members of the class that unsurprisingly got a raucous review—two tickets to go bungee jumping in West Edmonton Mall.
But the incentives didn’t come without a life lesson or two, or three.
“You will most certainly make mistakes,” he said. “But use these as learning tools. Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks, but do this with a level head and a sense of responsibility. Find joy and excitement in all you do, and if you are in a job you don’t like, do it well.”
It could be many or none of the words spoken at last week’s graduation ceremonies that could residually resonate with students as they continue on their path of life.
Or, they may only need to look at the vibrantly coloured structure to spark memories of lessons learned, indicated Schofield.
“Wherever you go, be proud of where you came from. This is your home,” said Schofield. “And, tell everyone you meet that you graduated from a purple school.”

Dennis Bevington has been named as the Official Opposition Critic for Northern Development for the 41st Parliament.

“Over the next several years the North will see major changes and I will continue to ensure all Northerners are heard and not just those favoured by the Conservatives.”
Bevington also received a nomination as vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.
He lost the position of critic of transportation to Olivia Chow.
The position for Aboriginal Affairs critic was given to Linda Duncan, the MP for Strathcona-Edmonton.
On May 2, Bevington was elected as the Western Arctic riding’s Member of Parliament where he will be sitting in the House for his third term.
This time around, the NDP has the role of Official Opposition, having a total of 103 representatives in the House of Commons.
During the last election the NDP only won a total of 35 seats.
Parliament resumed on June 3 with the Speech from the Throne and a revised copy of the Federal Budget was tabled on Monday by the Conservative Government.

The Western Arctic riding is coloured orange once again, as New Democratic Party member Dennis Bevington was elected as the sole NWT representative in Ottawa.

“I’m feeling very good about it,” said Bevington of his win. “It was my strongest win yet in the riding, out of my last three elections.”
He said that this time it’s different, as he will be sitting in a completely changed House of Commons.
“I feel I will be going back to a parliament that is very different,” he said.
He believes that having the NDP as the Official Opposition, he and the other NDP members of parliament will be able to better represent their constituents.
“I will have the ability to work better for the people of the NWT,” he said.
“Two very different points of view are being expressed in the House of Commons.”
Bevington added that he was pleased by the voter turnout in the Northwest Territories, and attributes that to the young voting population.
“It is up almost 8 per cent from last time,” he said.
“I really believe many more young people came out to vote.”
He said that the population’s interest was peaked by the election, and that was reflected in the final numbers.
“For an election people didn’t think was important, I think it turned out to be a pretty important one,” said Bevington.
The results “realigned parliament” he said and have “major ramifications to national unity” -  all in a positive way.
Bevington said that the priority for both him and the NDP would be working to get an appropriate budget passed for Canada.
“(The Conservatives) say they are going to bring out the same budget, so we will see about that,” he said.
He also noted that the cuts are still a concern, citing the $300,000 cut to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.
“In the next couple months, these are things we are going to be looking at,” he said.
A date has yet to be set for the MPs to return to Parliament.

Canadians have spoken, voting in a Conservative majority government after five years of minority leadership.

The unofficial count saw the Conservatives win a total of 167 seats, and the NDP collecting 102.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May made history by winning her riding’s seat, making it the first Green seat in the House of Commons, and Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe announced he would be stepping down as party leader after seeing Quebec shift politically towards the NDP.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was beaten in his riding in Toronto Monday night, but did not comment on whether he would remain party leader.
The local political landscape did not alter as much as the federal had, with Bevington taking the sole seat representing the Northwest Territories.
He won with a total of 7,140 votes or 45.8 per cent, with the Conservative candidate Sandy Lee close behind with 5,001 votes and a percentage of 32.1.
Liberal representative Joe Handley received 18.4 per cent of the vote, with 2,872 ballots cast in his favour and Green Party newcomer Eli Purchase with a total of 477 votes and 3.1 per cent.
Local candidate for the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, Bonnie Dawson, received a total of 87 votes.
A total of 15,577 votes were counted as valid, resulting in a voter turnout of 55.2 per cent in the NWT.
This will be Bevington’s third time representing the Northwest Territories in Ottawa since he was first elected in 2006.
The unofficial overall turnout for the country was near the 61 per cent mark as of 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, higher than the approximate 59 per cent turn out during the 2008 federal election.
None of the candidates from the 41st federal election were available for comment at midnight when the final count was verified by Elections Canada for the Western Arctic riding.

The five residents of the NWT looking to represent the territory in the House of Commons formed a panel Thursday evening to answer questions from the voting public.

The questions ranged from seniors  care to animal and spousal abuse and each candidate had distinct answers relating back to their parties platform.
Bevington kicked off the evening giving the reasons he believes Canada is seeing another election.
“We’ve seen a deterioration or the conduct of parliament by the government,” he said.
He also mentioned that he believes this election will be about finding a responsible government that will watch how it collects money, and what it spends it on.
Purchase stuck to his three priorities and three platforms throughout the question period, vowing to put Northern residents before his party platform.
He also assured Hay River that he would donate half of his pay cheques and his tax returns to charities, to live around the $45,000 annual salary of most Northerners.
“That’s how I keep in touch with the average Northerner,” said Purchase.
After each representative answered the questions submitted by their fellow candidates, members of the public were able to come up and ask questions they felt were important for this election.
Included were questions regarding catastrophic drugs and prisons, land claims and how the chosen Member of Parliament will interact with Aboriginal leadership in the NWT.
The one of the last questions asked was directed at Lee, inquiring as to what she would do to change the “attacking” and “bullying” attitude the Conservatives have been known to show.
“I’m known as a scrapper,” she said.
“You can be aggressive without being a bully.”
Canadians will be heading to the polls to elect a new government on May 2.

The campaigns are underway for the upcoming federal election, and candidates have only a short time to make their platforms known.

“I think that Canadians generally don’t feel like it,” he said. “But at the same time when the prime minister is found with contempt of parliament we don’t really have a choice.”
“You just can’t allow that to happen,” he said.
“We aren’t some third world country.”
Handley is running again this year to prevent untrustworthy people from having power over the country .
“I’ll do my little part to make sure that he doesn’t get back in power, and if he does at least not with a majority,” he said of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
“He’s dangerous for Canada, and dangerous for the North.”
Handley believes there will be several big ticket issues for Northerners with this election, apart from electing a trustworthy government.
He feels that the Northern economy will be a big issue, as the Conservatives were handing money over to larger corporations.
“The backboard of our Northern economy is small businesses,” he said. “Not large corporations.”
He also believes the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline and the Mackenzie Valley Highway will also be big items of discussion for Northerners.
Green Party candidate Eli Purchase said that the call for a federal election was a surprise to him.
“I personally wasn’t expecting an election,” he said.
He said that he believed that the parties would come together and find a solution to the key issues.
“I am disappointed that didn’t happen,” he said.
But because there is an election, Purchase is being given the opportunity to run for the first time, which he is excited about.
NDP incumbent Dennis Bevington is running for the seat again, hoping that Northerners will vote him back in to the House of Commons.
He said he was fine with the call for an election because the current minority government was falling apart.
“For the sake of our democratic institution, we needed an election,” he said.
This will be Bevington’s fifth election, and he said he would be more than happy to continue serving in the sole NWT seat.
“I’m very happy to continue doing this if I am voted in on May 2,” he said.
Bevington said that he feels that the existing land claims will become an item of discussion for Northerners during this election, as well as the environment.
He also listed the need to build a stronger, more responsible territorial government, which would only happen through parliament.
As of Monday evening, Bevington had already visited six communities, including Hay River and plans to continue to visit communities across the NWT.
“(The campaign is) only five weeks long, and it goes by very quickly,” said Bevington.
Attempts to reach Conservative candidate Sandy Lee were unsuccessful as of The Hub’s print deadline.

In a historic decision, the National Energy Board (NEB) has approved the Mackenzie Gas Project, stating that it believes the $16.2 billion project to be in the public good.
“We find that the North and Canada would be better off with the project,” the NEB wrote in its report. “These economic, environmental and social objectives must be brought together to create the North that many people want. It takes a good economy to take care of the land and the people. We are convinced the Mackenzie Gas Project would bring the Northwest Territories closer to the vision of the North that many people shared with us.”

The NEB’s decision, which was released at 2:30 p.m. mountain time on Dec. 15, comes six years after the regulatory process began.
Northwest Territories Industry, Tourism and Investment Minister Bob McLeod called the NEB’s decision “an early Christmas present” for the Northwest Territories.
“This is an important milestone for a project that could provide significant economic and environmental benefits for the Northwest Territories,” he told reporters at a Yellowknife news conference.
But an official with one of the pipeline’s main proponents said the regulatory body’s approval of the project was simply the first of many decisions that need to be made before the 1,200 km pipeline from the Beaufort Delta to northern Alberta is constructed.
“Approval from the NEB is a significant, very positive step for the project, but it’s only one in a number of steps that yet remain in front of us before this project can become a reality,” Imperial Oil’s Pius Rolheiser said.
Rolheiser said the proponents will need to take some time to examine the decision, as well as the 264 conditions laid out by the NEB, before making a decision on whether to construct the pipeline. The NEB’s decision also needs to be approved by the federal cabinet, which should happen in the first quarter of the new year, Rolheiser said.
Bob Reid, the president of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group – which owns a one-third stake in the project – said the NEB’s approval was an important first step.
“It’s a great day for Canada, and a great day for the North in particular,” he said. “This has been a long time coming … the North, and the Mackenzie Valley in particular, is in a bit of an economic slump at the moment – lots of unemployment, and contractors without work. This gives the Mackenzie Valley a new future.”
Kevin O’Reilly, a member of the Yellowknife social justice group Alternatives North, stated they were disappointed with the NEB’s decision, saying the report did little to deal with the issue of sustainability, and failed to go into much detail on how the NEB reached its conclusions. It simply explained the positions of a few “key” organizations that appeared in hearings before the NEB.
“Then they all of a sudden jump to a conclusion or a finding without really providing much in the way of reasons,” O’Reilly said. “I find that really quite surprising because the title of this is actually ‘Reasons for Decision’ and I would have expected there’d be some rationale for the conclusions that they reached.”
The NEB’s decision not to grant the proponents a three-year extension to decide whether to build the pipeline could make the process “challenging,” Rolheiser said. The NEB has given the proponents a deadline of Dec. 31, 2013 to decided whether to go ahead with the project. The proponents had argued they needed until 2016 to decide whether the pipeline made economic sense and to secure a fiscal arrangement with the federal government.
“We said back in our final arguments … that the stars would really need to align in order for us to be able to make an investment decision in 2013,” Rolheiser explained.
But McLeod said the GNWT was pleased with the short sunset clause, as well as the possibility of communities creating natural gas distribution systems to replace systems that currently use heating oil and diesel generation.
“I was born and raised in the Northwest Territories and there was talk about the pipeline 40 years ago,” he said. “I think it’s taking too long. But I think this is the closest we’ve been to a pipeline, so we’re very optimistic and pleased with the NEB and its reasons for decision.”
The NEB have set the project’s sunset clause, the date by which the proponents must begin construction or lose the permit, as Dec. 31, 2015.
“For construction to commence by 2015, the project would need to quickly reach agreement with the government on the fiscal terms for the project,” Rolheiser said, noting that the proponents would also have to reassemble a project team to resume the required engineering, fieldwork and permitting. “All of which needs to be done in order for us to do, and ultimately receive, the thousands of additional permits that the project would require. We would need to have those thousands of permits in hand before we can make a decision to construct.”
Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington said he was surprised the NEB did not extend the sunset clause.
“With the price of natural gas being what it is, I thought the NEB would be a little more forgiving with the company,” he said.
If the project requires federal support, Bevington said he would rather see that support in the form of infrastructure development, in order to bring the costs down.
O’Reilly said the sunset clause was “hollow” and would allow the NEB to extend the deadline if the proponents provided valid excuses.
“I think it’s just spinning this out again,” he said. “I think they’ve caved in quite a bit to what the proponents had wanted.”
Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen said she was “very pleased” with the news.
This could be very good news for Hay River,” she told The Hub. “Much will still depend on the price of gas and the confidence of the producers and pipeline proponents to proceed.”
If the project were to go ahead, the approximately 442,000 tonnes of steel pipe, as well as the fuel required to build the pipeline would be shipped to Hay River via rail. It would then be barged to locations north of Fort Simpson. Any material destined for locations south of Fort Simpson would be offloaded onto trucks.
NTCL president Bill Duffy said the pipeline’s construction would be a boon for both Hay River and the company.
“There’s no question it’s going to mean a tremendous amount to NTCL,” Duffy said. “It’s exciting to see the permit has been issued by the NEB, but there are still some very big decisions that the major players need to decide on.”
While Duffy was unable to give an exact number of jobs that would be created locally, he said it would match the company’s historical high for local employment.
“It would be a major, major increase in personnel, without a doubt, including the terminal and the shipyard,” he said.
Talks between the proponents, who include Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and ConocoPhillips in addition to Imperial Oil and the APG, and the federal government on a fiscal agreement have been “on hiatus” since earlier this year, Rolheiser explained. He said it’s too early to say when they would resume.
“Given the timing concerns, we would obviously seek to reengage that dialogue with the federal government in as timely a manner as we can.”
The MGP will contribute $67.5 billion to the NWT economy and create over 5,000 jobs over the course of its construction, according to estimates.

Communities along the route of the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project want to see the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway prior to any construction commencing on the pipeline, Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington said following a nine-day tour of the area.

The main focus of his trip, which ended Jan. 12, was to gauge support for the Mackenzie Valley Project along its proposed route, Bevington said.
Bevington met with community leadership, Aboriginal organizations, and Municipal governments in Deline, Tulita, Norman Wells, Fort Good Hope and Inuvik. Bevington had meetings planned in Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk, but was unable to make it due to the driving conditions on the ice roads. During the meetings, Bevington said he was told two projects need to move ahead prior to the pipeline: a road transportation system from Wrigley to Norman Wells, and another from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk.
“Those two … were considered a real priority by everybody to get going on,” he told The Hub on Thursday. “Everybody identifies these projects should start as soon as possible and would be a real asset to the development of a pipeline if these roads were in place. That’s not what the companies say, but that’s what the people say. I think that’s common sense.”
Many communities have developed plans to help mitigate some of the expected social and economic impacts of the pipeline. Bevington said they want to access some of the $500 million set aside in the Social Economic Impact Fund (SEIF) before construction on the pipeline begins. SEIF is a fund set aside by the federal government in July 2005 to mitigate the social impacts resulting from the MGP. Currently the Deh Cho and Inuvialuit will receive $150 million; the Gwich’in will receive $82 million; Tulita and Deline will receive $61; and Kasho Gotine and Colville will receive $57. The funding has been set aside for such things as social wellness, long-term training efforts, and community development.
“These plans are not going to be successful in most people’s minds unless we get going on them sooner rather than later,” Bevington explained. “The federal government’s position that these funds will not be released until construction of the pipeline is guaranteed is not going to be adequate to deal with the way they want to use the money. There’s a very strong feeling that we need to advance some of those funds in the very near future.”
Most of the communities he visited were also pleased with the JRP report on the pipeline.
“People generally felt the report was well-done,” Bevington said on Thursday. “Some people thought it was well-done in that it was cooked too long, but, by in large, they were comfortable with a lot of the recommendations.”
Getting to work on a road network along the valley is something the federal government can begin right away, Bevington said.
They talked about (infrastructure development) being one way to make the project more viable,” he said. “I think people – mostly in the valley – agree. Build some roads there and you’re going to reduce the cost of the development of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline.”