Michael Miltenberger

Each of the diamond mines was reviewed and I’ve given approval. The issue of cumulative impact is one that has come more and more into the forefront as we look at resource development. What we’re dealing with, with the band, is a short-term period of three to four months that will get us through the hunting season and allow the longer-term process for a harvest management plan to be put into effect. It’s during that longer-term process that the work done to look at what the effects are, what are the variables that are driving the caribou numbers down have to be taken into consideration so that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to point out one of the factors we are going to have to work around is the fact that three of the Members, Mr. Bromley being one of them, are registered as interveners and there are legal considerations as we go forward briefing MLAs and such. We honour our legal requirements in terms of access to information, treating all interveners the same and it has been pointed out to us that we have to be prepared to work around that consideration as well. You, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Yakeleya, I believe, are registered as interveners, so it just adds another...

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the territorial government, in fact, looks far beyond its own operations as we look at things like the Taltson hydro project to get power up in the North Slave Geological Province. We’re working with communities to help them get their community energy strategies in place. We are a major funder for the Arctic Energy Alliance, which we, I would point out, have taken from death’s door one Assembly ago and we’ve funded them to the point where now they are doing a significant amount of work with us on conservation, on advice on a lot of other energy initiatives. We...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee that plays a very lead role in terms of bringing together all the resources and planning functions that relate to that. Tied into that, in an advisory capacity of course, we have the Climate Change Committee. There are tie-ins with other work that’s being done in terms of electrical rate reviews and those types of things. We’ve also committed to the broad government approach to redo our Greenhouse Gas Strategy, but the central focus for government here in this Assembly has been the Ministerial Energy Coordinating...

We have heard that concern from some elders, but we also know that if you take the long view that it is actually out of respect, that we’re doing this to try to get the best understanding possible about the caribou, which covers vast tracks of land and moving as only caribou know how they’re going to move, so that we can have the information to make the most informed decision both as co-management boards and as the territorial government. We do it very carefully. We do it with as much involvement of the local aboriginal governments and co-management boards as possible, recognizing that there...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The elders, aboriginal governments, aboriginal leaders, all Northerners have told us that caribou are of critical importance. I quoted part of a motion that was made in the Dene Assembly in 2007 that exemplifies and gives voice to that concern through our traditional knowledge process. I can point to some very specific things we have done. For example, on the Water Strategy we have done it with an aboriginal oversight committee. We have worked with all the communities up and down the valley. We have held workshops with our Species at Risk Act. We’ve worked very closely...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First I’d like to point out that the government and the co-management boards and the aboriginal governments across the Northwest Territories have been showing leadership in this issue of declining caribou herds for quite a few years now. We were just in the Yukon, meeting with the various principals to look at the Porcupine herd, for example. They have been hard at work on a quota through co-management process and it’s been working with the Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Sahtu. The Tlicho is not putting themselves into position to do that as well.

The Caribou Summit, as the...

The board, I believe, is working as fast and as fully applying themselves to this issue as they can. They are now looking at being able to be finished their work consultation and such and recommendations that can be considered both by the Tlicho and territorial government by I believe it’s now April or May. In the meantime, the support we’re giving is to do what they asked us to do back in July when they themselves identified the state of the Bathurst herd and the precipitous drop from 2006, 120,000 animals, to around 30,000 in 2009. The need to have these interim emergency measures to protect...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First, I’d like to point out that since 2005, and even earlier, since the signing of the land claims up and down the valley, the co-management boards have been working very successfully with the government to look after and make the right decisions with wildlife, including caribou, and even investing significant monies since 2005. We’re now dealing with the issue of rapid decline with the Bathurst herd in the North Slave. Ideally if the Wekeezhii process could have been able to meet its initial targets in October/November prior to this hunting season, we would not be in...

Let me restate the two separate issues: the broader issue of the long-term management plan for the Bathurst that’s going to flow the Wekeezhii process tied in with working with the Akaitcho, the Yellowknives and the Northwest Territories Metis.

The process was supposed to flow to certain deadlines. Those deadlines slipped. We had a situation where it was clearly identified that this herd is in very dire straits. Because that process had slipped, there was a gap. There was going to be full hunting going to happen this winter when the herd cannot survive further hunting at this point requiring...