RE:RE:RE:Insider SellingFrankie,
I'm not sure why you don't consider an insider selling his shares as a negative.
If he continues to sell even more shares today or next week, would you still say the same thing?
There is no tax reason or deadline today and it is not like a "Christmas bonus."
Perhaps, he simply thinks that now is a good time to sell shares.
Also, re: Devolution
Your belief that perceived benefits are positive for CZN are very questionable.
I would also caution you regarding the characterizations of board members.
Read the
WHOLE article below:
NWT devolution bill leaves Ottawa with power to hold development hostage: critics
By
Justin Ling | Jan 21, 2014 5:00 am | | Comments
Despite the celebratory greeting the Northwest Territories devolution bill received last month, critics from either end of the development debate say the Harper government is holding true devolution hostage.
Bill C-15, The Northwest Territories Devolution Act, is the blueprint for streamlining the North’s regulatory regime. It’s been touted as a major step in the long-anticipated devolution process. However, provisions aimed at lopping off oversight for development projects, which are tucked into the heart of the bill, have garnered little attention. Moreover, critics say, powers left in federal hands leave Ottawa too much sway over a primary territorial regulatory board.
“They seem to be holding devolution hostage to get the changes they want to see to the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act,” says Shauna Morgan, Yellowknife-based analyst with the Pembina Institute. “Through the changes to the MVRMA, they’re consolidating power.”
The MVRMA is the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. That legislation regulates the soon-to-be 11-member Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, which is at the heart of contention over the devolution bill.
The central tenet of the devolution plan is to
take the territory’s five local land and water boards and jam them into a single, Yellowknife-based body —
the already-existing Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board. The superboard’s mandate will continue to issue licences for virtually all the territory’s development projects, ensuring that industry is providing adequate information about their plans, and that communities are sufficiently considered in the process.
But, whereas currently each local land and water board is tasked with running local consultations and assessments in their nearby communities, soon the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board will take on the job for the whole territory. It’s unclear if they will be provided more staff or budget to do so. The boards also play a key part in ordering environmental assessments — a process in which Ottawa has limited in recent years.
Regulating development will now fall more squarely on the Alberta-based National Energy Board, which is tasked with considering the technical and environmental side of development.
And while Ottawa has lauded the increased political autonomy of the territory, it will be retaining the power to appoint members to the land and water board, as well as its sister body, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, which is also legislated under the MVRMA.
Under the act, regional and Aboriginal governments will have the power to nominate eight of the 11 board members, with three being chosen directly by the minister for aboriginal affairs. Yet the minister still gets final say on approving members, and those in the North that spoke with
iPolitics say the Conservative government has a habit for letting nomination papers lay idle for prolonged periods of time, having let at least one regional board fall below quorum, despite having candidates nominated. The current iteration of the Mackenzie Valley board is missing six of its 20 members.
Concern over the powers that were withheld also punctuated debate in the territorial Legislature when a motion on the agreement-in-principle came up for a vote in June. Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley called Ottawa’s continued control of the MVRMA an “orchestrated resource grab” and slammed the changes.
“All we get out of this deal is the ability to permit development that the feds have brought forward through their inadequate review processes, when reviews happen at all,” he told the legislature, though he would eventually vote in favour of the bill in a non-binding resolution. MLAs with concerns over the process say, on the whole, the devolution agreement was nevertheless a positive change.
The federal government’s long-held final say over board membership, though, has also long faced accusations of nepotism.
Gabrielle Mackenzie Scott was the chair of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board until she was unceremoniously removed by Strahl in 2007 and replaced by the failed Conservative candidate from the year prior, Richard Edjericon, who now serves as chair. John Curran, a Conservative campaign manager, would later be appointed the board to join
Edjericon. Mackenzie Scott, who was appointed by the Chrétien Government, would go on to run for the Liberals a year later. They are among a small pool of board appointees with partisan ties.
Quoted in a report released after her dismissal, Mackenzie Scott was very critical of the amalgamation of the land and water boards. “If my elders were here, they would ask you, ‘who do you think you are?’ My ancestors are rolling in their graves,” she said.
The minister, too, has the ultimate say on the board’s decision and policies, including a veto on any decision that the board makes. Those familiar with development in the North say the most unnecessary delay for industry isn’t the land and water boards, it’s Ottawa’s foot-dragging.
That’s part of why some on the pro-development side of the debate have also
taken issue with the devolution bill, saying it could frustrate, not facilitate, development.
Wendy Biasro, MLA for Frame Lake, dug into Ottawa’s refusal to devolve power over the regulatory board to the territory, calling it “an insult,” and arguing that it may backfire.
“We will have control over the lands but not the regulatory process. It hardly seems like the simplification of the process that the mining and other development companies are looking for,” she said.
iPolitics reached Bisaro in Edmonton, as she was making her way back North. Alberta’s role in overseeing development in the Northwest Territories will also be cemented by C-15, which bars the territory from changing the jurisdiction of the Calgary-headquartered National Energy Board for the next twenty years. Bisaro calls that particularly objectionable.
“There’s a feeling, through a couple of meetings that have been held over the past year to two years, that the (federal) government has acted in a very high-handed manner. When they came to consult on the [MVMRA] they kind of expected that everybody was going to welcome them with open arms, and the Aaboriginal governments basically said: no, we’re not happy with what you’re doing,” she says.
If the territory had control, she figures, it would be easier to work with the local and aboriginal governments. But that’s not going to happen, at least until the terms are up for re-negotiation in five years time.
Until then, she says, the board may physically be in the Northwest Territories, but that doesn’t mean much.
“I don’t think control is necessarily going to be centred in Yellowknife, I think it’s going to be in Ottawa.”
Bill C-15 was tabled in December and will ultimately pass after the House returns at the end of January.
© 2014 iPolitics Inc.
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