Michael Miltenberger

I would say that that’s a goal that has not yet been achieved.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have 29 fire crews, combination of contract and our own crews across the North, understandably all in the boreal forest area. So we do have a significant commitment in employing local folks in the regions and communities to fight fires. Oftentimes, if there’s a big fire season like there was last year in the Deh Cho, we import all the folks we can find from other regions. In some cases we even have to import them from outside the territory if we are really pressed, as we were last summer where there was a flare-up, as well, in the South Slave. We were hard at it...

We’ll provide what is currently there and what we see as required next steps. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In dealings with the federal government over the years on issues of statistics, the one thing that has always stuck in my mind when we’re trying to get accurate numbers is that we are such a small jurisdiction that they consider us, in many cases, statistically insignificant when it comes to determining national trends and numbers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s a gentleman named Mr. Applejohn.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, working with the boards, we will have authority to regulate the water.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the specific question of community water monitoring, there are sites that have been established. There is one near Good Hope. We also installed sites above and below Norman Wells, as well, with all the equipment that we use to do the monitoring to detect and be able to check water quality and what specific substances may be in there and at what level. That is there and we’re committed to building that network all the way down to the Arctic Ocean, to the Beaufort, to make sure that all the communities have that same level of comfort about the quality of...

Mr. Chairman, there’s an interest by the government to be able to come to committee and do a detailed briefing about the regulatory authorities, the processes that are currently in place that are going to continue to be in place and how we’re going to refine those now that our role is response as a government where we’re going to be our own regulator. We take over the authorities that were previously with the federal government and that would include being able to have that discussion on securities. Thank you.

Yes.

The northern tools are going to be the mechanisms that we’re all going to agree to that make sense for the Northwest Territories to have at their disposal. When we look at things like protected areas and we look at things like the establishment of parks, like the proposed Thaidene Nene Park, is there an opportunity to use federal tools as well as territorial ones, the work is being done. There is a draft that we are hopefully going to get to look at fairly soon, but Deputy Minister Campbell is involved in that process and I will ask him to provide a bit further detail. Thank you.