Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, and that is well appreciated. I too can and am taking some steps to work with my constituents in trying to gather as many of their contact sources of information into one source so that I can share it with the respective departments so that, when these emergencies arise, they just have a goto source to get information out.
Mr. Chair, let's talk for a moment just with regard to what was previously mentioned by the department in terms of the annual reviews that take place after a forest fire has happened. I know there are annual reviews that take place, and I will call it "inspections" that take place, and recommendations come out. A report comes out, and recommendations always come out in the report. We say in here, in our business plan, that we are going to develop a community wildland fire protection plans planning framework. Are those recommendations critical as part of these protection plans? I will ask that question first. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the Member is quoting off page 74.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my apologies. I should have told you that I was referencing the department's business plan. It is not the main estimate document. It is the planned activities for 201718 in the actual business plan, where we say that we will develop a community wildland fire protection plans planning framework. I am asking, relevant to that activity: do the recommendations out of these annual reports become a part of those protection plans? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, they would be considered because they are a very important source of information for the department as we do our planning. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the answer. Lastly, the recommendations that come out of the reports, what does the department do aside from, say, injecting them into the protection plans? What will be the steps that they are going to take to roll out those recommendations? How will they engage in getting those recommendations rolled out?
Obviously, we have a rather large obligation to want to protect people and assets. We want to avoid at all costs the incidents that have happened in recent years. I am just wondering: how seriously are we taking the recommendations? What kind of resources are we putting into the recommendations? Will the recommendations be rolled out? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. All of the recommendations are considered at the annual meeting and then operationalized. Each of the recommendations, the department can show how they have incorporated them into how they plan and implement the next fire season. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just lastly to that, that is positive. I like to hear that. That means we are engaging and taking steps after the recommendations.
The question then would be: on a goforward basis, do we have a means or a way in which we are going to reach out to residents, in particular those who are impacted by, I will call it, recent tragedies in fire loss or what have you? Do we have a means by which to get back to them to tell them that here's what we intend to do, that, since those recommendations have come forward to us, these are our next steps? I would be happy to know that we are doing that and that there is a communication effort that goes to letting these folks know what our intentions are after receiving these reports and the recommendations within the reports. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My understanding is that that is being done. There were some questions that were asked about what was happening with the recommendations, and the department has provided a response saying how the recommendations will be looked at and how they will be factored in to planning and implementation for the next fire season. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. Vanthuyne. Any further questions from committee? I see none. Committee, that brings us to forest management, operations expenditure summary, total activity, $39,803,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. That brings us to Environment and Natural Resources, water resources, operations expenditure summary, total activity, $11,802,000. Committee, we have information items from page 78 to 81. Any questions from committee? Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. In the Minister’s opening remarks, he talked about how there was an extra $2 million to continue implementation of the Water Stewardship Strategy including work on the Transboundary Water Agreements. I think that amount is found under the watershed management item listed on page 79. Is that the case, Mr. Chair?
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister McLeod.
Yes, the Member is correct, Mr. Chair. It is. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Is this $2 million in funding, a new initiative or is this a renewal? Is it an increase? Just maybe if I can get a little bit better description of what happened here. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Ms. Craig.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The funding for the Water Stewardship Strategy and Transboundary Agreements has been renewed on an annual basis in the past. What expired or sunsetted at the end of 2016 was $1,016,015. Our budget was changed to $2,056,000 for 2017-18 and ongoing for three years. The net increase to this area was $441,000. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Craig. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response. That’s good to hear. If I just do the math here and add in 441k from 2016-17 to 2017-18, there are obviously some other things that are going on here within the Watershed Management function of the ENR.
Sorry, I’ll just digress here for a second. Part of the problem is there’s just no detail provided in the mains or even in the business plan about what this money is being spent on. I guess I would urge the department to find a better way to present what’s going on with these functions in their business plan so that we can actually see where any money is brought in or things are being sunsetted and reduced and so on. I think it might have been in an earlier version of the business plan that we saw, but it’s certainly not in the public version. That’s just an aside.
Maybe I could ask if that’s something that the department could look into so we don’t have these big globs of money and not really knowing what’s going on within the function. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I think there was some information of the activity description in the front there as to where it might go. I take the Member’s point though about – I think he wants to know exactly where all the money is going and, I would have to go back and see because I thought during our business planning process, we gave a better indication of where it was broken down as to where the money was going to go and then we bring it forward to a business plan and we have the one figure here for $3,600,030. I’ll go back and look at the business plans and if there’s an opportunity to provide a bit more information to committee, then that’s what we will consider doing. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I’m happy to have an offline discussion with the Minister about this. There was a difference between the business plans that we reviewed in September and was publicly available. It’s always a bit of a balancing act for a number of different reasons. I’m happy to chat offline about that. Let’s go back to the numbers that are presented here in the mains.
There is something else going on within the watershed management. I think my colleague from Yellowknife North talked about source water protection being reduced. Can someone from the department talk a little bit more about that? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There’s been a reduction of $115,000 for source water protection funding. That money has, over the years, contributed to the development of guidance documents on source water protection for communities to use as well as workbooks. We’ve held community workshops and completed the workbooks with communities. We’ve produced source water protection maps. We’ve completed train-the-trainer events with some of our local environmental non-government organizations. We believe that we have the resources in-house within the water resources division to support continued source water protection in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the level of detail provided by the ADM. That’s helpful. We have the materials now. Presumably, they’re being distributed and there’s some assistance from local and regional ENR staff. I’m not sure that’s quite good enough to make sure that source water is actually protected. We need the plans.
I don’t think it’s just ENR’s responsibility, clearly. There’s a role for MACA here as well. MACA does spend a lot of money and tries to build capacity within the communities to have sound water systems for communities. Part of that is to make sure that the source water is protected. Just as MACA is doing some work to try to make sure we’re going to have safe water for all of our residents and all, whatever sized-community you live in, we’ve got another department cutting some of the funding that could be used to help support that.
We finished the guidance documents. I guess I don’t understand why this funding can’t be used to support, say, workshops or getting people maybe even together on a regional basis to look at actual source water protection plans and how you actually develop and implement them at a municipal level. I’m not very happy with the cut. Maybe the department can convince me otherwise. What we have here is departments working at cross purposes and I think we need to find ways for them to work together better. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O’Reilly. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. ENR, MACA, Health and Social Services and Public Works work together on an interdepartmental drinking water committee. The source water protection money was for source protection planning. We have produced guidance documents and workbooks, as I mentioned, that will help communities. With respect to the other money that’s part of Watershed Management and water research and studies, that also contributes to source water protection in the Northwest Territories because we do biological monitor as well as water quality monitoring. The Transboundary Water Management Agreements are a significant part of source water protection for the Northwest Territories. We feel that we have the expertise and the ability within other areas of the Water Resources Division to support source water protection and communities. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. O’Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the explanation. I guess I’d be much more favourably inclined if we could find then a way to re-profile this money to actually support communities preparing source water plans, but we could probably be debating this for a lot longer. That’s enough for me. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Seeing nothing further from committee. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I would like to talk a bit about watershed management. It is the fifth program under program detail. I'm wondering if there is some work being done on the Slave River which runs from another jurisdiction. What type of work is going on in the Slave River in as far as monitoring, developing baselines, and seeing if the water that's flowing out close to Fort Resolution is still water that is not affected by whatever is happening upstream. I'm wondering if that information is collected from a yeartoyear basis for the Slave River. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is ongoing federal government monitoring for both quality and quantity on the Slave River. There is also ENR monitoring and communitybased monitoring on the Slave River at Fort Smith near Big Eddy and in Resolute Bay as well with community members doing that work. All of the communities along the Slave River are part of a group called the Slave River and Delta Partnership that's been working for the last many years on beaver, mink, and muskrat studies, contaminants and sediment studies, all types of work that's been going on on the Slave River to address the types of issues that you've mentioned. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to ask the Minister if that information gathered from that work by the federal government is available to us. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is a report that's been compiled on Slave River water quality at the federal station that we could provide, and there are also numerous documents that have been compiled on the work of the Slave River and Delta Partnership and a partnership we have with the University of Saskatchewan on the Slave River as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you. Could that be made available to committee? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
