Michael Miltenberger

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...

One of the biggest generators of greenhouse gases, of course, is the generation of energy. I would suggest to you as we come forward in the coming weeks with our plan for the hydro development transmission line and grid hookups so we could have available for resource development reasonably priced locally generated energy that will probably be one of the single biggest deterrents to the increase of greenhouse gases. We look and we don’t have to tell the resource operators like the mines, for example, which put in millions of dollars into wind energy how to cut their greenhouse gases because it...

Before we leapfrog to the outfitters, we have to first sort out the resident harvest, which right now there is none, and what type of modest reinstatement could there be. Are we back to the stage, not only in addition to the resident harvest, but are we back to the stage of unrestricted Aboriginal harvest? If those two questions get answered in the affirmative, I would suggest to the Member, then, that yes, part of the discussion would be what else is possible in terms of trying to get harvesting back to its full status that it was prior to the various restrictions given the plummeting numbers...

We have $4.699 million for land and water and $1.053 million for environmental assessment and monitoring.