Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We have a list of protected area strategies at different stages. In the Deh Cho we have the Edehzhie, we have Sambaa K’e, Ka’a’gee Tu, the Buffalo Lake, river and trails at K’atlodeechee, the Jean Marie River cabin cultural conservation area which is step five. They are all in step five. Then we then move on to the Sahtu and the Tlicho.

I am aware of the restrictions in the House of reading excessive detail. I would point out that we have had discussions with the Minister of Environment for the federal government, who is committed to trying to continue to include the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, we haven’t done a lot more work on returning that particular amount of money. What we have done is put our minds to trying to expand this whole fund and recycling effort to now include electronic or e-waste. That was where we’ve been trying to focus our attention with the resources we have available. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this juncture the majority, over $3 million, is water.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve had some money added to our base to do this on an ongoing basis so that we’re not always in a position of reacting or trying to come back for funding periodically that we recognize there needs to be work done on an ongoing basis. My recollection is that to do all the herds this year, harkening back to my Minister’s statement, is in the neighbourhood of a million dollars plus.

Mr. Chair, I have with me Mr. Ernie Campbell, deputy minister of Environment and Natural Resources; and Nancy Magrum, director of financial administrative services for shared services between ITI and ENR. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, there is work underway. Recent meetings were just held. The GNWT, in order to assist this program, has to get its thinking clear both on the boundary, which they haven’t finally resolved, as well as the issue of surface and subsurface protection. Other than that, this process I think has moved forward. I understand the meetings were very productive. We intend to get back to the rest of the parties through this process in the near future. Thank you.

This process is supposed to be community driven, which is what we focus and try to maintain as well as trying to find other supporting agencies to assist with that process, but initially there has to be some drive at the community level. Thank you.

We’ve been looking at this and it’s always been my opinion, unsubstantiated by necessarily an expensive study, but that in dealing with e-waste that we would be much better off to work out an arrangement with a large jurisdiction like Alberta, in particular, or in our case Edmonton, where they have the facilities set up and we would make arrangements to process our e-waste through their infrastructure as opposed to us trying to set up a similar kind of service. We’re trying to sort out what’s the best way. I don’t necessarily see it at this point, once again not having seen the final report...

The forest management agreements have been triggered specifically by the project that’s under consideration right now, or development right now for a pellet plant. We, ITI, the government is at the table trying to do our part. The arrangements between the business in the communities in terms of negotiating access to the material, the capacity building, are going to be driven through that business arrangement. There will still be ongoing access to existing programs that the territorial government now has that could be possibly brought to bear, as well, but the main relationship will be between...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are two main areas. We are continuing to work on inventories of the forest, and an equally important piece, especially as you look at the possibility of a biomass plant being put up that could do as many as 30,000 metric tons, are these forest management agreements that would have to be entered into with the Aboriginal governments and the GNWT to be able to have access to the material to generate the pellets in a sustainable, go-forward basis so the person or the business making the pellets is able to buy the material to make the pellets.

Forest management...