Shane Thompson

In favour.

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following three documents: Environment and Natural Resources Strategic Plan 20222026; Waste Reduction and Recovery Program 20202021 Annual Report; and the Followup Letter for Oral Question 102819(2): Access to Clean Water. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the GNWT and the federal government have provided NWT communities over $9 million in funding to help community governments with their pandemicrelated costs.

As I said previously in this House, Municipal and Community Affairs will be reviewing the financial impact on community governments of COVID19 response as part of the 20212022 year end fiscal process. So in other words, when they get their audited statements and that, we will be looking at that to see if there hasn't been an impact on communities, and then we will move forward on that. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't make that commitment. There's a process. There's a legal process. Once that process is done, then we can look at each matter moving forward. But right now, we have a process. We need to follow it. We're going through the justice system. And we ensure the meat's not wasted. It's given to other Indigenous governments so that the meat is not being wasted there.

I need to really stress, though, folks, is the herd size is 6,240. That's 1 percent of 1986. So in 1986, we had a huge population. Now we're at 1 percent, 6,240 caribou as from our survey. Thank you, Mr...

Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we didn't reduce the scientific research funding. It was in 2020, we were doing the research; COVID hit; we weren't able to do the research. So we did it in 2021. So we moved that money from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, the money will be moved to 2023 because every second year, we will do the research on that.

As for the enforcement, all it is is that we've been asked by the Indigenous governments to add an additional camp, which we've done. We now have three camps there, so. And 24/7 to have staff there. So the Indigenous governments have asked us to make...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the flood of 2021 was extraordinary, and they caused lifealtering hardships for so many residents, families, and communities. I am very pleased to advise that the majority of these who were impacted are now in their homes.

I would like to acknowledge the commitment and effort of the local leadership in the floodedaffected communities. It has been nearly a year since the flooding took place, and during that time leaders have been carrying out the daytoday business of running the community government while also being shouldered with the aftermath of the flood...

In favour.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for that detail, I would have asked the Member to give the question to me earlier, but I can try to explain it the best we can. So we do have and I believe there was a technical briefing provided by the Wek’eezhii Water and Resources Board with our staff. It committee, which was made public.

So we do have airlines or we charter aircrafts that we survey it. There's a longitudes and latitude checked. They check on the the the herd, the calves, and the cows and that in the Bathurst area. And that's how it's corrected or calculated.

So there is a map, and...

Hopefully I get the I got the message here. So to be clear, there has been no reduction in the survey. What happened in 2020, we had money in the budget to do the survey for the caribou, and then COVID hit. So then we've been playing catch up. The money that was here that we had in the budget for this year is going into the next years' budgets. We do the survey every two years. So we do the research. We work we bring in some of our Indigenous partners to go travelling with us as part of our survey group. So we do the survey.

The money was spent last year. The results are in this year. And so...