Our government will continue to take action to correct a historic wrong, and we’ll continue to work with the Indigenous community toward remediation of this historic site when it comes to remediating the mercury contamination.

As the member knows—and I spoke about it last week—ministry technical experts met with Dr. Branfireun and the Indigenous communities to review the reports as part of their work on the panel’s technical subcommittee. This was along with ministry representatives from Grassy Narrows as well as First Nations. Wabaseemoong Independent Nations, Eagle Lake First Nation, Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation are participants in these discussions.

Dr. Branfireun also confirmed additional work is still needed to finalize a report, including field sampling.

Speaker, let me be clear: Remediation efforts for the English and Wabigoon Rivers will be guided by science and by the best technical expertise. Contamination of the English and Wabigoon Rivers is a complex issue, but let me be clear: We remain to be committed to solve this, and our government takes this very seriously. Our first order of business has always been to correct a historic wrong, and we will continue to do that.

As I already spoke about, the scientific and expertise work that is being done at the table is not the only thing we’ve just done. There is always additional work that is under way to really understand the extent and location of contamination in this river and system. This is something that was asked for. That is why the study is in place, to know the extent of the 250 kilometres downstream and what the impacts are on the historic contamination in Dryden.

This panel, as I mentioned, is funded in part with our government. It’s a project—there’s a project team that is doing the proper science. We’re taking the politics out of this and referring to the science because this government remains committed to correcting this historic wrong.