Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few questions for the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources. I would like to ask the Minister: what is the department doing to make sure that communities can implement and fund their Wildland Fire Protection Plans? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we know, we have issues with fire around some of our communities, and ENR tries to work with the communities to deal with it. Through, I think, the community access program through MACA, there is some funding there that the communities can use if they want to fire smart their communities.
During this past fire season, it was a fairly quiet fire season for us, so we actually had some members of our fire crews, just to keep working, do some fire smarting around the communities, cut some brush. As we are able to do, we will assist them, but there are some monies out there, I think, through the small community fund that comes through the rural and remote committee. There is funding available there, too, so if a community wants to do some more fire smarting, they have access to some funds. I think we greatly enhanced those funds during this session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I mentioned earlier today that ENR used to fund fire smarting in the NWT communities, but has since offloaded the burden onto the communities themselves. Why was this decision made?
Actually, I don't think that we have offloaded that onto the communities. I think that the communities have taken the responsibility for that on, because who knows the communities more than the community, Mr. Speaker? It is not another pot of money that we have. The small community employment fund had, I believe, about $4.2 million, of which $3 million went to a lot of the smaller communities. Through the process that we are going through right now, we have added more money onto that because it has been such an important tool for a lot of the small communities. They have that opportunity to access that funding, and the communities make the decisions as to what is best for their communities, and they have the funds available to bring some of these projects to life.
It is good that the communities took on this responsibility, but we are talking in the neighbourhood of $200,000, for example, to do a community the size of Fort McPherson. That is competing with capital projects. What is ENR's estimate of the cost to cut firebreaks around the three communities in the Mackenzie Delta?
The exact cost, I am not sure, but a $200,000 investment, you would think, would save significant dollars if there is damage to the community as a result of the fire. I know that we are in negotiations with Canada on the disaster mitigation funding. That would be another pot of money that communities would be able to access to help with disaster mitigation. We feel that there is significant investment in this particular area, again, so we leave the authority to make these types of decisions up to the communities. You will find that communities do make good decisions. Where there are opportunities, as I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, with some of our crews that, thankfully, have had a quiet fire season, they are able to assist on this, as well.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Mackenzie Delta.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Seeing as how the Minister is also the money man in the House, fire smarting can save lives and very valuable property, and the cost of doing it is a lot less than many projects that our government routinely delivers. Will the Minister identify funds that communities can use to implement their Wildland Fire Protection Plans by cost-sharing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am the Environment Minister, so I will speak with the Finance Minister and see if there are opportunities to access more money, but again, through a number of the programs that we have, such as disaster mitigation, there are funds that we will be able to access to assist with the communities. The communities, again, have those funds at their disposal if they choose to use them to do some fire smarting, with the folks that we have, because of the quiet fire season, assisting them. There are a number of opportunities there with the small community employment fund. I believe, in one community, they did a lot of fire smarting, and they did a lot of cutting of dead brush around their community. That's a good thing. More than anything, we recognize the importance of saving lives, and I think that the communities do as well. If we can, we will work in cooperation with the communities to try to assist them wherever we can to fire smart their communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
