Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Thaidene Nene has been identified as a priority that we want to move on as a government post-devolution with northern tools. There’s been significant contact with the federal government indicating our interest in a small federal footprint complemented and supplemented by an array of northern tools that may be there, things like territorial parks, conservation areas, wilderness areas, special study areas, those types of options. We’ve been actively working with Lutselk’e now for a number of months. We’ve compressed, I believe, about 18 months or two years of normal previous negotiating into about six months. There is another negotiating session here in a couple of weeks. We will be going back to Cabinet next week for a briefing. We have a briefing scheduled, as well, with committee that will inform everybody as to where we are with the first step of getting our thinking clear both as a government and in our initial negotiations with Lutselk’e. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, that sounds good. It sounds like there are good discussions happening there. Will there be a public process to make sure that… As you know, the public regards this area as of extremely high interest and it’s a high use area. Will the Minister be going to the public for discussions as well? Or perhaps he already has.
Again, I will leave it at that. That’s my last question. I look forward to the document that’s coming forward on protected areas. I’ll be looking for an update on ecological representation in that document. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, as we move forward then through the subsequent phases, we will be working in arrangement with the public to make sure that folks have a clear idea of where we’re going. We’ll have a capacity for feedback. The timelines are very tight that we’re aiming for, which is before summer to have, hopefully, a northern position between ourselves as public government of the Northwest Territories and the Aboriginal governments that are involved in parks about the size of the federal footprint location and what type of potential northern tools would be there. As we move forward, the issue that Mr. Bromley raises is one that we’re factoring in to make sure that we pay the appropriate attention to. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on page 93, conservation assessment and monitoring, operations expenditure summary, $8.039 million. Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just real quickly here, possibly under conservation planning. As we all know, the Gwich’in have a forest management plan. I’d just like to ask the Minister, as they developed the plan, did they take into account foreign species that have lived here over the last year or two? I’ve noticed a lot of wood coming in from either the Yukon or even further down to Inuvik and distributed to the communities. I just think of our management plan and are these sorts of things taken into consideration.
Quite a while back there was a lot of concern, whether it was pine beetles or other things like that affecting the ecosystems. I’d like to ask the Minister if there is anything in place to protect us from this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. For that we’ll go to Deputy Minister Campbell.
MR. CAMPBELL:
Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Committee, we’re on page 93, conservation assessment and monitoring, operations expenditure summary, $8.039 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Committee, page 94, conservation assessment and monitoring, grants and contributions. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just under the Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program budget, I believe the federal government bumped this up quite a bit. They committed about $8 million or something to it just before devolution. It just seems like a modest amount to that, but I don’t know that for sure. It just seems like it from my hazy recollection.
Could I get some understanding of where that ended and how that’s being carried forward? I think there are some very pithy issues. The defining thresholds seems to be a big research topic and so on with which to interpret things that we’re monitoring. If I could just get some more information and understanding on that, if possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that we’ll go to Ms. Craig.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Within the Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program in the operating expenditures for that section there is $3.3 million there, then their grants and contributions portion is what is on page 94 for $1.5 million, so a total of over $4 million in this program. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Craig. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That clears it up for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Again, committee, we’re on page 94, conservation assessment and monitoring, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions, $3.335 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Committee, page 95, conservation assessment and monitoring, active positions, information item. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none, page 97, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, $14.113 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just had one question. I’m wondering what the contract services are for, the $625,000. I see that’s up from $343,000 a couple years before, and if I could just get an idea of the sorts of contracts that are being budgeted here for contract services. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. For that we’ll go to Ms. Craig.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have some contract services under the French Languages Initiative as well as operating ongoing contracts that we have within the division of corporate management. Sorry, I don’t have the detail of all of them, but that was the increase to the contract services, was under the French Languages Initiative.
Thank you, Ms. Craig. Mr. Bromley.
That’s fine, Mr. Chair. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
Committee, again, we’re on page 97, corporate management, operations expenditure summary, $14.113 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Committee, page 98, corporate management, grants, contributions and transfers, total grants and contributions, $2.854 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 99, corporate management, active positions, information item. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none, thank you, committee. Page 101, environment, operations expenditure summary, $4.539 million. Does committee agree? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I have a number of questions on this page. I note the intent of this division is to prevent and reduce the impact of human activities with a conservation goal. Yet, when I read about the climate change program section, there’s not a word about prevention in there, there’s not a word about forecasting the impacts of climate change and providing expert advice to our government on the likely costs and impacts of that. I’ll use, for an example, forestry. We heard a forestry expert interviewed this morning on CBC, and he noted that the average area burned… I can’t remember; I didn’t catch what geographic area it was in, whether it was Canada’s or North America’s increase by 100 percent since the ‘70s and that’s expected to double again over the next number of years.
Again, just looking ahead to the forestry section, I don’t see that sort of awareness and planning. I wonder if the Minister has any thoughts about the need for a more proactive role. Prevention, first of all, has to be part of our gig on climate change, but also I say there’s a real need throughout government for expert advice, which I believe would come from this division and this section specifically. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree that we’re going to be challenged more and more to try to anticipate the plan for the future. Prevention, as the Member indicates, is one thing; mitigation and adaptation are going to be the other two. So this particular division has a role to play, but if we’re going to link all the pieces not only in this department but other departments that have that prognostication function and as we move through Managing this Land and other committees that we have, that type of work and the budgeting side as well as we project our fire costs, for example, and costs that we’re going to need to just try to stay ahead and deal with some of these extreme weather events are going to be a challenge. I agree that we are going to be put upon more and more to try to anticipate more accurately. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on that. Right now we’re dealing with things sort of in an ad hoc way, and I think it would be great to see a very defined role which recognizes the things that the Minister has mentioned.
I wonder if the Minister would commit to getting that sort of thing into the transition document we’re contemplating or into the policy of his department if that’s more appropriate. I realize he’s not the only one that would be doing that but it needs leadership. I appreciate the leadership he’s provided on water. I’m not seeing the same thing on climate change, and as a result, I think we’re paying greater costs and perhaps not doing the prevention activity we might otherwise do on a more progressive basis. I’m looking for that sort of commitment if the Minister is there.
I appreciate the Member’s comment. I think if you look at all the things we’re doing as a government, we’re doing, I think, a very significant amount of work as it pertains to climate change. However, I take the Member’s point and we would look to the advice, as we move towards transition, to the Member, to committee as to their suggestions as to things that should be flagged. We will look at this to make sure there is a more fulsome reflection of the things we are doing. We are fully committed to doing a whole host of things as a government and ENR in terms of the climate change, the greenhouse gas emissions, the renewal of the strategy, all the things we’re doing with alternate energy, construction standards and those types of things, but post-division there are a lot of things more to do, and I agree with the Member that we should probably be looking at flagging those right from making sure we do the review of fees to what kind of expectations we’re going to have with use of alternate energies not only as a government but in industry and other areas. Those are all things that need to be dealt with, so I’ll make that commitment.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments and the commitment.
My last thing was just on the contaminated sites side of things. I recognize the statement that these liabilities increase and decrease based on the remediation of contaminated sites and the booking of new contaminated sites, and being a guy that’s always looking at prevention whenever I can, I’d say the biggest factor is the success or failure of preventing the development of new sites. I’m sure that’s part of the department’s overall goal, but again, other sections may deal with the prevention side. I just want to make sure that that loop is closed and managed for prevention as opposed to just managing it once it happens.
Once again, it’s a point that I would not disagree with the Member that the idea would be that yes, we have a long backlog of contaminated sites that need to be remediated and on a go forward basis we want to design our processes to avoid the creation of any new ongoing costs that are going to weigh us down, which is why we have invested the money we have in terms of securities and managing all those arrangements and making sure that as we do the project planning and assessment that there are the proper counterbalances in there to accommodate and prevent the type of contaminated sites by being created.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on page 101, environment, operations expenditure summary, $4.539 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Page 102, environment, grants, contributions and transfers, total contributions, $463,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Page 103, environment, active positions, information item. Any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 105, forest management, operations expenditure summary, $32.632 million. Does committee agree? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Obviously, we’ve had some major issues in this activity in the current year and the forecasts are for at least a possibility of similar-scale challenges in the coming year for which this is the budget. I recognize that the budget is not adjusted; in fact, it’s even down considerably from a couple years ago. How is the government handling this? Are we going to again borrow dollars or plan on saving dollars somewhere else if we do have another $60 million forest fire year?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intent would be to use special warrants and short-term borrowing.
Obviously, there’s a lot of planning and whatnot, preparation that takes place as things develop, and the short-term borrowing and warrants. Would that still cover off the cost of those sorts of expenditures?
