Michael Miltenberger

As I indicated, we provide a support role in this particular area and we work with our community staff, our regional staff, the biologists. We provide a great many services in kind, boats and vehicles to assist. We guide them and assist them where necessary, but there’s no, once again, sort of budget item in our budget that speaks to veterinary services. Although I do take note of the Member’s concern that we at least maintain that type of collaborative approach, which we intend to do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we initiated and charted off with the Water Strategy, we had extensive contract assistance. It was a very highly specialized area. We had all very, very limited water expertise in the department. Over the last year there’s been a diminishment in the contract levels, especially as it pertains to water. We’ve now had the benefit of getting some resources to set up our own land and water unit. We’ve been able to hire people of the calibre of Dr. Kelly. We still rely on specialized services periodically.

On the forestry side, of course, we make extensive use of contracts...

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Member’s comments and his request and his intent to make us aware of this. As the deputy indicated, there are going to be meetings in the Sahtu communities before the end of this fiscal year. Within the next five weeks, there is going to be work done and the intent is, like we are doing across the North, to come up with the regional plans and community plans and then we can start the planning process and identify the resources that we are going to need to try to move forward on as many of these initiatives as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be as concise as possible

With regard to the water issue raised by all three Members that offer general comments, we are hard at work on the transboundary negotiations. We are engaged with Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and ourselves, as well as the federal government as we map out the rules of engagement and set up the negotiating processes that are going to be required. For the information of Member Hawkins, in fact the Alberta government is very willing and interested to come to the table. In fact, both the Alberta government and the Northwest...

Mr. Chairman, that is one of our goals coming out of our water strategies, to have the best information possible. Our challenge is to continue to work with this since this is still an area of shared jurisdiction and we will continue to be even after we take over authority, is to work with Environment Canada and DFO to make sure that we do coordinate that the system as efficiently and tightly as possible. The federal government, Environment Canada, is looking at, most immediately, in terms of putting in the proper monitoring that does not now exist for the oil sands development. At the same...

When there are requests we always make every effort to accommodate within the fiscal realities that are before us. Should there be a specific request from the City of Yellowknife, then we would give it fair and due consideration.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, we as a jurisdiction have been getting our thinking clear and our pieces and strategy in place to deal with water issues. There are a number of things that are happening. As I indicated earlier, we are now fully engaged in our transboundary processes with Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, laying out the negotiation process, the fact that we would like to have and we intend... we all want legally binding agreements that are going to speak to the broad areas of quality and quantity which, when you look at them in their individual detail, they are very complex issues tying in...

As the Member pointed out, the ENR staff was presenting the results of some of the studies that were being done in the mountains in his constituency. We have, through our research agenda, we’ve laid out this whole area as an area that requires study, and there are world-class experts like Dr. Pomeroy from the University of Saskatoon that have spent 30 years up here working and there’s enormous interest from the scientific community to find out what’s happening for all the reasons the Member has mentioned, as well as just some of the incredible releases of carbon and methane that may result...

The Member has offered two fairly significant extremes: one to invite him up to live in the North and camp on a river, or take him to court. I appreciate the intensity of the Member’s concern and we’re going to look for a more happy medium where we’ll talk to the Minister, we’ll have meetings with him and we’ll raise the concerns about what’s happening south of our borders and the need for strong transboundary agreements and proper monitoring on those major developments such as the oil sands. Thank you.