Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, before lunch I had caribou stew.

Mr. Chairman, my comments would be brief in terms of the budget. I do want to thank the staff members and the Ministers for putting together this budget. I know that the budget process is quite contentious and that the needs are always greater than what we could afford and that priorities have to be considered and sometimes when I have issues that want to be brought forward to see if they can get any attention, sometimes they go in with the mix of other things and sometimes they don’t come out on top or it has to be considered at another time.

Mr. Chairman, the budget here shows an increase of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If that’s the case, the aboriginal people would have agreed. Why is it that when I call my leadership in the Sahtu, they say this is not right, this is wrong. The Wekeezhii board has to make a decision and it has not yet made a decision. The government, in its wisdom, jumped the gun. Mr. Speaker, was there an agreement to say, yes, we’ll come back? Is that part of the consultation? Sometimes I hear consultation in terms of this is what you shall do and that is it. Was there an agreement in terms of putting a ban here and waiting for people? You should really come to the...

Mr. Speaker, the lifting of a small percentage of the caribou, I believe that because the issue here is it’s so large and so huge to the people in the Mackenzie Valley here, it would divert a political volcano, I guess, in terms of the issue of aboriginal rights, conservation, who’s right, who’s going to win. It’s going to impact long-term relationships with the aboriginal people. I want to again ask the Minister if he would consider a small percentage of the total amount of herd, as we’ve done in the Sahtu, at least look at this issue in terms of the bigger picture, in terms of relationship...

Before I ate my caribou stew, my wife mentioned to me, she said, you know, this issue about the caribou, the specific area that there is a ban on hunting, this is what we are fighting about. You know, to have caribou in our life. This specific issue here is about this whole thing about our way of life, our food, and when I talked to several people over the weekend about caribou and asked how does it seem like on the radio in terms of this whole issue from this government, from this Legislative Assembly, most of the replies were that it’s not very good. It seems like the government is telling...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The territorial health expenditures just run over $325 million per year. The staffing is about 1,257. We have our own health board in the Sahtu, which runs about a $10 million operation. When you look at the numbers here in terms of the amount of dollars that are spent in the Sahtu compared to some of the regions, knowing the Sahtu is deemed as an isolated region with the winter roads only going for three months of the year and a lot of fly-in/fly-out of the services there, when you look at other regions that have some of the communities that are along the all-weather...

Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Can the Minister provide to me the GNWT or Environment and Natural Resources definition of “consultation”?

Can the Minister outline the process that supported his decision to implement a ban on hunting caribou in the area in question?

Will the Minister provide an explanation as to why the caribou are calving two weeks later than the normal period for calving?

Can the Minister provide what types of interim agreements were signed with the Tlicho or Yellowknives Dene communities to implement the ban on hunting...

Would the process in terms of this Mackenzie Valley Highway, I know there are discussions now between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik in terms of their ongoing process to see an all-season road made there. Would this process come down into the Mackenzie Valley in terms of connecting from the Dempster down to the community of Wrigley, or Wrigley up the highway in terms of project description funding and environmental assessment? I know the Minister has done an economic analysis of the Mackenzie Valley Highway in terms of the federal government coming forward and stepping up to the plate to support this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We certainly did receive a briefing from the Minister and I hope the Minister would make that briefing public so we could have the public look at it. Does he have a record of all the outfitters in this area that will be impacted or have been impacted in regards to this caribou herd and the impact of the outfitters taking the prize bulls in terms of doing part of their business? Can the Minister share that also with the Members?

Thank you. Does the department have a before and after report as to the impacts of the caribou? There are thousands of vehicles that go up to the diamond mines each year. They are doing a lot of blasting in those areas and there’s certainly lots of disruption in terms of the natural lifestyle of the caribou. Has the Minister shared that with this House? I haven’t seen a report in terms of the possible impacts of this diamond mine on the caribou.