Robert C. McLeod

My apologies; I did say "habitat," and I would assume that "habitat protection" would also be part of that discussion, as well.

We are committed to implementing the new Bathurst Caribou Range Plan, now that it has been approved by Cabinet. The range plan was developed collaboratively with 21 organizations, including Indigenous governments, industry, environmental groups, renewable resource boards, and the federal government.

Again, I have to give a shout-out to Ottawa Aboriginal partners who understand that the preservation of the caribou herd is very important to people across the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a motion that Bill 42 be amended by deleting the schedule set out in the appendix to the bill and substituting the schedule attached to the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I always appreciate the Member's questions on the caribou, because it gives us an opportunity to speak of our dedication to the preservation of the caribou across the Northwest Territories, because they are very important to our existence. We have to do what we can to protect them.

Having said that, I did say that we met with the Nunavut Minister. I appreciate their dedication to the preservation of the caribou herds across the north, because they are very important to their people as well. We did ask our officials to initiate some technical discussions on the proposed...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I totally agree with you. Alberta is a different jurisdiction than ours. We have been doing the work on our particular one. To say that, giving the heads-up on the motion, I have been discussing it with committee, and I think that we did ask committee if they would be willing to move the motion to change the implementation date as we went through clause-by-clause. I take issue with the fact the Member keeps saying that these things are being sprung on us in surprise. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We will have to have those discussions with our co-management partners, because, as we know, a number of years ago, they implemented the grizzly bear tags because there was a lot of hunting of grizzly bears, but it seems like it has done what it is supposed to do and brought the population back up. We will have to have those discussions with our co-management partners to see if they would be receptive to maybe increasing the amount of tags. We will have those discussions and see where that takes us.

September 1st, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I share the Member's concern with the number of grizzly bears that are in the community of Aklavik. We continue, obviously, to respond to bear reports. My understanding is that we have destroyed three grizzly bears in Aklavik due to public safety concerns. Our local renewable resource officer is on-call, and an additional renewable resource officer will be travelling to Aklavik to assist with monitoring the bear situation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let's just be very clear on something. I did direct my staff to reach out to Canada and work with them on further clarification at the wish of committee. I have done that.

To the Member's comment about the people of the Northwest Territories not having an opportunity to comment on this, well, first of all, this piece of legislation was given second reading in March and given to committee. They have had six months. They determined that they weren't going to take it on the road, and that would not allow the people of the Northwest Territories to comment on this critical...

Yes, apologies, Mr. Chair. I should have spoken to this right away to give a bit of an explanation. The amendment allows the Canada Revenue Agency to administer a separate interim program that will allow a cost of living offset payment to NWT residents and families in October 2019 and April 2020. The differences between the interim and regular payments are that there are only two interim payments and four regular payments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We did get a letter from them, and we thought that could be sufficient information for committee. Apparently it wasn't, so I asked staff to talk to Canada and see if they could further clarify that with a firm date, and they came back and did it, because committee didn't think our first piece of correspondence was sufficient, nor did they believe it.