Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, getting back to my Member’s statement and also in regard to the whole area of change that has taken place since the famous Order-in-Council passed in 1960 by the federal Cabinet. Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories has had a grave history in regard to how aboriginal people have moved forward and trying to find ways of getting entrenched into the democratic system of the Northwest Territories regardless if it’s by way of ensuring that we were involved in the decision-making process, regardless if it’s regulatory management boards, economic measures. But again, Mr. Speaker, where a lot of these powers really took hold was in the Constitution Act amendments in 1982 in regard to the Canadian Constitution amendments which recognized and affirmed aboriginal rights under Section 35.
Since then, Mr. Speaker, we’re talking about something that took place in 1960. Yet, all these activities have changed the legal precedents that have been set. We have the Marshall case. We have court cases that have set precedents in Canada. But for a government to go back to 1960 and pull something out of the archives and say this is where I got my authority from is not the way that the government should be operating. We have the NWT Act. There’s a process to make amendments to the NWT Act. Why is this government not using that process to find ways to resolve this issue and do it by amendments to legislation that this government is responsible for in the NWT in regard to the Wildlife Act?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the area the Member goes into, he’s well aware, he’s negotiated for claims processes through the Sahtu and the Gwich’in as well, and he’s familiar with the legislation that we operate under. He’s been a Member of this Legislative Assembly for as long as I have, since 1995, and we know we both sit in this forum because of the NWT Act. I recall when my father was given the right to vote as well.
The issue that we have here is that we haven’t gone and dug out some piece of legislation that sat there. It is a part of the NWT Act. It is a part of an amendment the federal government made as it transferred the authority to the North and considered the possibilities of this situation. So we have the NWT Act that puts it in place, whether it is the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, it puts it in place. We have within that the acts that have been transferred down to us and the authorities, so the Wildlife Act is one of those.
As Minister Miltenberger pointed out, we have been working through quite a number of years with our aboriginal partners in the North to up that piece of legislation, because we recognize, for example, the Tlicho Government is in place now, we recognize the land claim agreements that are in place now, and we need to update that. It is the area we have the most complex situation, is in the unsettled areas. For example, we have a clear process in the Gwich’in, the Inuvialuit, the Sahtu and the Tlicho. It is the unsettled areas where we have more of a complex procedure and arrangements and we’re continuing to try to work through those. Thank you.
I think, as a government, we already have an avenue to try to resolve this issue. It’s trying to amend the NWT Wildlife Act to ensure that these situations we’re in now can be avoided in the future and, more importantly, entrench those legal obligations we have to First Nations people in regard to hunting rights, and spell it out in the NWT Act so that we know it’s clear that there is a process that when we have this situation we will have dialogue, we will have discussions and we will have a process to resolve our outstanding issues through a legislative process. Right now we don’t have that and that’s why we have the problem that we’re in. I’d like to know, by using that process, if that’s a better avenue than trying to go to court.
Mr. Speaker, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with the Wildlife Act. In fact, this government is committed to bring it back to this Assembly before the end of the life of the 16th Assembly so we can bring more clarity to the way we work together for the benefit of the people across the Northwest Territories. The Member is very familiar, as I am and other Members who have been around a long time, that we’ve tried to work through that process of the Wildlife Act through a number of Legislatures and where our goal is to have a new Wildlife Act put on the table for this Legislative Assembly to act. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I believe we do have to have enabling legislation to pass what’s basically been negotiated in the land claim agreements, enable what’s already agreed to in Treaty 8, Treaty 11, for those unsettled areas, and ensure that we clearly spell out those arrangements through the amendments to the Wildlife Act and bring it to this House and allow that to be the process to resolve this issue. I’d like to suggest to the Minister that we put everything aside, resolve this through those discussions, bring it to conclusion and bring it back to this House.
Mr. Speaker, the process, as the Member is well aware, the Wildlife Act, as I stated earlier, has outlived a number of Assemblies. I believe it was the 14th Assembly that we started the initial work, as some of us have been around that long, to try to update the Wildlife Act; the 15th.Assembly. We are now in the 16th Assembly and if we waited for that process, there’s no guarantee that there will be a satisfactory response. Maybe this Assembly might send it back for some other work. Meanwhile, as the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, on the counts and the estimated harvest that happens on an annual basis, we could be faced with a situation that was faced with back in the ‘50s in the Beaufort-Delta when there was no caribou and the federal government had to bring reindeer herds in and that’s what people had to survive on. While we have the authorities, we see the numbers, we need to work with our partners. The Minister has been working to try to bring this to a satisfactory conclusion. We know we need to do that, and we continue to work on that basis. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, I strongly recommend to the government and this Cabinet to do away with the bickering and get on with the process. We went through a whole process on Species at Risk. We did a good job there. We allowed consultation. We allowed involvement of the aboriginal groups at that table to be part of the drafting team. I think we have to do the same thing in regard to the Wildlife Act. I’d like to ask the Premier: can we put aside our differences, move forward with a table to start these negotiations, get them concluded, and agree that we basically have to find an avenue of consultation to get out of this mess that we find ourselves in? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the process of the Wildlife Act is in gear. We are working with the aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories to update that piece of legislation. In fact, at one of our first regional leaders’ tables, we started to work on a bit of process to move these initiatives forward. The Species at Risk Act is an example of that: working together. We will continue to work on that initiative. In the meantime, we have a very serious problem facing us here in the Northwest Territories. Conservation measures have been taken. We continue to work with the groups that are involved. We have agreement and support on the conservation initiatives and the outstanding group is the Yellowknives. The work is ongoing there. The Minister told us earlier he continues to work to try to find a solution with the Yellowknives. We hope that we can come to a satisfactory conclusion in this area. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
