Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this juncture, as I laid out for Ms. Bisaro, we’re consolidating and trying to make sure we have all these other broad planning pieces in place before we proceed any farther or faster with existing wildlife areas that have been nominated and definitely not adding any others at this point. I will ask the deputy minister if he could give some of the background information of the sites and any sort of catalogue of the work that’s been done over the years.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My understanding – and I’ll ask Mr. Campbell to speak further to this – is that the majority of outfitters that the Member is talking about harvest the Bathurst herd for the most part. We have commenced discussions with the various boards, with the Bluenose-East as well. We’re having discussions with Nunavut as well as the Beverly Qamanirjuaq Board and we’ll be talking to the appropriate Aboriginal governments, as well, about the Ahiak-Beverly herd and the numbers that have come in. At this point the restrictions in the Bathurst ban area are going to continue until the...

The Protected Areas Strategy is one that’s under review with both ourselves and the federal government. There are currently six candidate areas that we’re looking at that have reached, I think it’s about step five or so of an eight step process, consolidating all of the information. As we move towards devolution, the issue of how do we manage this is becoming more critical.

We’re pulling together all of the work and reports and recommendations. There are national wildlife areas that are being proposed. In some cases we have a major area, Edehzhie in the Deh Cho that has been under discussion...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The regulations are, in fact, guidelines that the Member is referring to. There has been a lot of discussion around the FPT table with Environment Ministers. They are looking, especially in the North, at some of the challenges that those guidelines could have. The federal government has told us clearly that they’re working on the guidelines, but don’t expect any more money than you already have through the various funding sources that are already there. There is a huge concern by all jurisdictions that there could be significant costs attached to whatever is agreed to...

With the anthrax outbreak, as the Member said, it came pretty close to decimating the herd. I mean, we cut it down significantly, as much as 40 percent. We didn’t find all the animals that were killed by anthrax, so there’s a total no harvesting ban. We are going to do a survey in March to see what the herd numbers tell us. These are a threatened species. This is a management area, so we have to look at keeping somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 1,000 animals, what’s considered acceptable for mammals like that as a healthy herd. We allowed tags, once we knew they were at that level or...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s very difficult to plan for this type of work within the fiscal year. Often we don’t know, with almost no notice. When you compound that with the fact that the federal government is under significant strain as it meets its deficit reduction targets and such, things become even more uncertain. So I can’t say with any certainty what may be coming or what may drop off the list at the end of this fiscal year. That information hasn’t been shared with us yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The acronym SWAAG stands for Stakeholders Wildlife Act Advisory Group, there’s a double A in there that tends to throw people off.

They did provide a report and we’ve been looking at that work along with all the last-minute work that the working group has been taking care of. I just signed, this very day, the letter, the response to the report with, as well, a copy or a confidential draft copy of all the work that’s been done in terms of rewriting the legislation and I will be meeting next week with the board, sorry, with the advisory group, to talk about and go over...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The next major initiative that we spent some time getting ready to address is the e-waste one. As we sort out the arrangements with Alberta, and the costs and they’re going to accrue both for gathering the e-waste in the North and shipping it and doing the things we need to do, that money will come into play there as our next priority. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll make some general comments and then I’ll ask the deputy, who is much more knowledgeable about this than I am. We had a herd that was in a precipitous decline, that if we had not have stepped in, in my humble opinion as Minister, would now have ceased to exist if we had just let hunting proceed. It’s been under significant trauma. I agree with the Member that there’s only been stabilized with a marginal increase probably within the margin of error that they have for these kind of counts.

Mr. Chairman, with your indulgence, I’ll ask the deputy to speak further to...