Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’re in year four of drought, and cycles could go four to five years. So I agree with the Member, I’ve been making the same observations based on just what we’ve seen from lack of major fall rains to the snow pack this year and the fact that we’re in such deep drought, it will take a significant amount of snow to affect that and we anticipate it could be a long, hot summer.

We learned last fire season, which was by far and away the biggest we’ve ever had, on the need to recruit internally in the Northwest Territories. We can’t rely on southern resources because they...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Thaidene Nene has been identified as a priority that we want to move on as a government post-devolution with northern tools. There’s been significant contact with the federal government indicating our interest in a small federal footprint complemented and supplemented by an array of northern tools that may be there, things like territorial parks, conservation areas, wilderness areas, special study areas, those types of options. We’ve been actively working with Lutselk’e now for a number of months. We’ve compressed, I believe, about 18 months or two years of normal...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the Member for his offer of working with us in the community. We will be following up. Thank you.

A lot of work has been done in this area and we’re in the process of getting a document ready to bring to Cabinet and then on to committee that will show all the work that’s been done across the Northwest Territories. In terms of the ecological representative areas and the mapping and inventory that’s done, I would ask the deputy, Mr. Chairman, with your approval, to add a little bit further to that, if he would. Thank you.

As far as I’m aware, all the communities have their fire protection plans, and it’s just an issue now between the communities and ENR and individuals in looking at implementing them. Once again, we are fiscally challenged, as well, so we don’t have a big, significant amount of money put aside that’s going to allow us to go and take on that full cost of going to every community in the boreal forest on our own as an ENR initiative. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, that work has yet to be done and the Lands department is going to be picking up that coordination and lead in terms of pulling together the various pieces, working with all the other, once again, appropriate departments and will work at that context. The Member’s correct; there’s work done and the Dehcho Land Use Plan is quite a ways along. The two areas are the North Slave and South Slave with the NWT Metis as well as Akaitcho, or what’s there of the Akaitcho. Salt River is no longer part of that. But the Member’s correct; that work has yet to be done. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, we’ll see what numbers we can get, how specific a listing we can get from recreational cabins, I suppose, to a full… I’ll see if we have the information on full-time inhabitants that live outside of community boundaries full time in abodes in the hinterland and those that do it full time and commute into work or those at full time living off the land. I’m not quite sure the designation that the Member is asking for. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The work is going to get done, and the Member is correct that this does need looking at. We spent the first many months now, over nine months since devolution, getting things up and running. We are looking at a whole host of things that need to get looked at, fees, mirror legislation hasn’t been raised in this House and all that work is underway and starting to manifest itself here in the coming year. Thank you.

We have one specifically designated pot of money. The maximum is, I believe, about $30,000 for trappers’ cabins. We have no compensation fund or policy for any folks that choose to live in the hinterland. It could be a policy decision. If that’s going to be the role of government to compensate everybody that lives out on the land, then we need to have a very careful look at that because I’m assuming it would be very expensive. Is that our role? It’s been identified because of some of the occurrences last fire season, but clearly, as a government, we’re not in a position nor do we have a fund...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With regard to the firefighting issue, we started training Northerners very seriously last year, so we have at least two levels. We have an elite level trained to the national standard that can be exported if they have capacity as part of our agreement with all the provinces and territories. So if they need to go to Alberta or any other province, they can go just as they ship firefighters up here. They are trained to the national standard, the elite firefighting contingent. Then we have emergency firefighters and firefighters trained not quite to the same stringent...