Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the unpopular forest fire season is upon us, and my questions today are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I spoke earlier today about how in the riding of Yellowknife North, which includes the Ingraham Trail, there are over 500 "assets" or "values at risk," including many of our own GNWT parks. I am wondering if the Minister could start by maybe informing us what his department is doing in terms of working with other departments, such as Lands and MACA, with regard to identifying values at risk and in communications internally, within those departments, in advance of a fire or emergency situation? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Mr. Speaker, we all recognize the importance of proper communication during the upcoming forest fire season and forest fire seasons of the past. We are working with Lands on a data-sharing process so that all departments are aware of the good values on the land, and we are also working with MACA through their emergency measures officer on emergency preparedness. We communicate daily with the EMO during extreme fire seasons. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply. I am happy to hear that internal communications are a priority for our government during these times of necessity for emergency preparedness. Let’s take it a step further. I would like to ask the Minister: what is the department doing with regard to communicating to the property owners who own these assets of value?
We are working on establishing contact information with all property owners. That is why we stress the importance of all property owners to let us know where they are, let the departments know where they are and, more importantly, give us some contact information so we are able to contact them in the event of an emergency. We talk of properties and values, but our most important value is the people who are out there. We need to know who is out there so, in the event of a forest fire that is moving very quickly, we can react to that.
We are looking at different communication methods. I think the Member said in his Member’s statement about the use of Twitter during the last fire, so we are looking at different communication methods that would communicate or improve our communication with folks who are out there. I stress again the importance of folks out there letting us know where they are, so we can have that information at our disposal.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply. I have to commend some residents on the Ingraham Trail recently for working hard to actually collect a lot of property owner information, so that they can share it with their respective departments within government. That will be forthcoming, if it hasn’t already.
One of the things that we have done, and it is very commendable work in recent years, is the fire smarting program. As I mentioned in my Member’s statement, the department has just engaged with the public on Ingraham Trail with regard to fire smarting during a public barbecue. I am just wondering if the Minister can elaborate a little bit more on how many more workshops there are that they want to put on for fire smarting, and more importantly, what are we actually doing to measure the effectiveness of these fire smarting workshops?
We are planning a workshop in every region during this fire season. We have had one that was conducted in North Slave already, and that may be the one Member we spoke of. We have had two conducted in South Slave already so far this year. We are planning a FireSmart representative workshop this fall, so that all the regions will be able to conduct their own workshops in the future. We continue to work with individual value-at-risk owners in communities to protect their values at risk from lowland fire. We also have identified four communities that could be at extreme risk this coming fire season, so we are working with those communities to see if there are opportunities for us to assist them or do some fire smarting breaks with them, which will have another impact on providing some work to some local people. We are working with those four communities and we will work with them to see what we can do to help them with the fire breaks and the fire smarting around their communities.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Minister might have partially answered some of this. It is one thing to educate folks on the fire smarting aspects, in terms of what they can do to put a degree of barrier around their property in the instance of a fire. We know that, even when resources are active and on the ground, help may not arrive, so I guess my question to the Minister is: what are we doing to educate the public about how fast a wildfire can spread, and how the onus is on the owners to protect their properties? What we can do to support them in protecting those properties? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I think the Member said it well when he said that part of the onus is on the property owners to take steps to ensure that their properties are protected. As far as educating the public about how fast a wildfire is, well, it is hard for us to predict. We can help them to try and be prepared in the event that there is a very fast wildfire that is moving. I think the wildfire will educate us more than we can educate the public. We have to be prepared for it, and we will communicate through our websites and other social media.
Again, as I said before, Mr. Speaker, I stress the importance of folks who are out there to let us know where they are so we can be prepared to protect the values at risk, all people, and that is what, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal should be. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
