Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to be able to introduce a constituent and friend from Fort Smith, Mr. Keith Hartery, visiting and contemplating becoming a nursing student to add further to his service in the North. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have, in the Northwest Territories, an agreed-to process for the management of wildlife in settled claims. That process is going to be involved with the Bluenose-East and involves the Tlicho, Sahtu and Inuvialuit, which are all public boards. They are going to be working with the department and we’re going to be reviewing those numbers. We’re going to be looking at pressures and going through that process. They will come back to myself as Minister and to the department with their recommendations.

The Member raises a good point. If I could point to the work done by the Porcupine Caribou Management Board where they, over a number of years, came to an agreement on the very issue and process that the Member has so astutely suggested as a way forward, which is to agree on numbers that are triggers to certain kinds of action. If they get low enough it triggers a ban. Once there’s an improvement to a certain number, it triggers certain specific conditions. If it gets healthy enough, then there are no specific harvest restrictions. What has precluded us from doing that is being able to work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That process is now going to be underway. We’ve stabilized the fall. The numbers went from almost 500,000 in the 1980s down to 32. There has been a modest recovery from that point within our margin for error. The co-management boards, and all the biologists, and all the people on the boards will be looking at that management plan. The Wek’eezhii board plan is good for another year, which we have signed off on and agreed with. Their job, in terms of the Bathurst, is to review that and they will determine based on the science, the numbers, the feedback from the...

One of the most obvious areas that we want to monitor, of course, is the water, the Mackenzie, which comes through Great Slave Lake which in turn goes through the Slave into the Peace-Athabasca. There are monitoring efforts being looked at all the way from northern Alberta down right to the Arctic Ocean.

We are committed to this community-based water monitoring initiative that will give us that baseline information that will allow us to check the water, fish and sediments. It will also allow us for some of the airborne pollutants, as well, that we can hopefully measure.

If we are going to track...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What is in the works is a territory-wide, community-based water monitoring system that we are in the process of setting up with the ENR and the communities and the Aboriginal government so that, in fact, we can start addressing some of those very concerns that his constituent Mr. Manuel raised.

I understand that in some cases the Aboriginal governments, the Dene Nation or other Aboriginal governments would negotiate their own rate, be it with airlines or with hotels where they are patrons on a steady basis, or in some cases, up north where they actually buy and own the hotels, they have that advantage. If the Member is suggesting that we somehow partner up, I’d be glad to get the information and review the issue with Finance and the Member to see what’s possible in terms of that kind of arrangement. I don’t know if there’s any kind of group rate that the First Nations or Aboriginal...

Gobbledy-gook implies that it’s unintelligible and no one can understand what I’m saying. I think the Member can understand what I’m saying, he just doesn’t like it. So let me repeat the issue. We have a process in the Northwest Territories and across the land. There has been pressures on the herds. There have been decisions made by the management boards that we have agreed with, that have put restrictions on almost every herd. Some of them there are total bans, way up north. On some they’ve, like the Bathurst, there was a requirement from myself as Minister three years ago to make a decision...

I apologize to the Member. I didn’t clearly understand the question. In terms of the unlimited resident harvest, the most that we’ve ever had, that I’m aware of, is five tags per resident hunter. The voluntary harvest that was in place for the Bluenose-East was in the neighbourhood of about 2,800 animals a year.

I’m more than willing to lavish praise where it’s due, with exception, possibly, of his work in progress of his Movember efforts. I know he will keep at it. He’s got a few days yet to fill in all the blanks.

In my statement I laid out a process, and we’re going to follow that through with the Wek’eezhii board and the unsettled claims areas and work through to lay out the management plan. We know it’s good for the current year. The broader issue of coming up with the same type of management plan that the Porcupine Caribou Management Board has developed, I think that is something that all the...