Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We will take a quick recess, and then we'll start with the first item. About five minutes.
SHORT RECESS
I'll now call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we've agreed to consider Committee Report 6219(2), Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment Report on the Review of Bill 74: Forest Act. I will go to the chair of standing committee or the deputy chair of Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment for any opening comments. Member for Deh Cho.
Madam Chair, the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment took the job of reviewing Bill 74, Forest Act, very seriously. The bill itself will impact residents across the Northwest Territories in a tangible way if it receives assent, and the bill is the first to be codrafted in the Northwest Territories.
A significant amount of the committee's time and energy went in to reviewing this bill line by line, listening to what the people thought about the bill, and brainstorming solutions to problems identified by committee members. This work is outlined in the committee's report which was read into the record on September 27th, 2023.
The committee received six written submissions and met with residents in person in three regions of the Northwest Territories to hear their perspectives on this matter. The committee consistently heard the need for information to be public and for climate change to be accounted for when decisions are being made about Northwest Territories forests.
Madam Chair, I also want to take this time to acknowledge that the standing committee travelled to Enterprise in June of 2023 to discuss Bill 74. The leadership of Enterprise showed the standing committee the firebreaks they had been building around their community. Madam chair, at that time the community of Enterprise was asking for more support from the government to help them build bigger firebreaks. The community was doing all they could with the resources they had, but they knew it wasn't enough. Unfortunately, a wildfire overtook the community of Enterprise just weeks later.
The recommendations formulated by the committee address the main concerns heard by both stakeholders and members of the public:
Public information;
Climate change;
Public engagements; and,
Consistency of forest management decisions.
It cannot go unmentioned the immense amount of respectful collaboration and negotiations that took place between this committee and the technical working group for Bill 74. Seeing as this bill was codrafted, the committee was pleased to work with not just the Government of the Northwest Territories but representatives from Indigenous governments on workshopping this bill to make it as thorough and inclusive as possible.
The committee would like to thank all members of the technical working group for working so collaboratively with the committee. The committee expresses gratitude to everyone who made the effort to provide us with their thoughts in writing and in person during committee's review.
Individual Members may have additional comments. Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. I will now open the floor to general comments on Committee Report 6219(2). Do Members have any general comments? Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Madam la Presidente. Yeah, I want to thank the deputy chair for the comments to introduce the report. I serve on the committee and want to thank my colleagues for the work that we collectively put into the bill. And I also want to especially thank those that made written submissions and appeared before us in Whati, Fort Simpson, and Enterprise. We had a lot to think about as a result of the submissions that we received, the input that we got at the public hearings as well.
I also want to recognize that the work of the committee was actually hampered by the fires. We had to cancel and rejig our public engagement as a result of the fires, and we'd hoped to get to some other communities, but we just couldn't given the amount of time and the situation as it unfolded. There was quite a bit of public interest in this, I think as evidenced by the committee report, the submissions we received.
I also want to go on record as recognizing and supporting the legislative development protocol and the process convention that we now have in place for not just co-drafting of bills but collaborative review of bills as well. And this is really quite a historic occasion.
In a few minutes, we're going to have at least one representative, as I understand, from an Indigenous government's technical working group in the Chamber. That just hasn't happened before. So this is a historic occasion. And I do support the work that we undertook together.
I also want to recognize that this Bill 74 is much better than the bill that was introduced in the last Assembly known as Bill 44, The Forest Act. The big changes between 44 and 74 are that we see a much stronger integration of comanagement into the bill that's now before us, stronger provisions for Indigenous rights, and certainly better flow and organization of the bill itself and the processes laid out for forest management and fire prevention and protection. And a lot of this, of course, was the work of the technical working group before the bill even came to us. So I also want to thank the Indigenous governments that participated in that process and had their staff attend numerous technical working group meetings.
At the end of the day, 22 amendments proposed by committee were actually accepted by the Minister and the technical working group. And I'm very proud of that work, and I think it's a clear demonstration of the collaboration that took place.
A lot of the work that was done on those 22 amendments really related to public participation in forest management. And, really, that's a public government responsibility. It's not the responsibility of Indigenous governments. That should have been our government doing that work. I would point out for the record, as well, that most of those issues were raised in the last Assembly with Bill 44. They were raised again during the delayed and very short public engagement carried out by the department on Bill 74 during this Assembly. And, in my opinion, they could and should have been better addressed in the bill itself. That being said, we did get 22 amendments and I think that those do reflect the concerns that were largely raised around public participation.
I am going to have some questions for the Minister when the witnesses are here. But there are some lessons that I think we can learn from this, and clearly we just ran out of time at the end where I think we could have achieved some further small changes to the bill in the interest of working together and ensuring good public participation, transparency, and accountability, but we simply ran out of time.
I think the next time around it would be very important to share more information with standing committee throughout the codrafting process. Nothing was really shared with committee during the entire process, nothing. And I don't think that left committee in a good place when we received the bill. And I would point out, you know, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, as much as I may seem to pick on them sometimes, they did actually share the policy considerations documents. I think it was, like, 500 or 600 pages, in a bit of a docudump with standing committee, on the development of the Mineral Resources Act regulations. But we really got nothing from the department in terms of information prior to the bill landing on our docket so to speak.
I think we can future standing committees can and should meet more often with the technical working group representatives. We had two meetings with them, and I think they were very helpful in understanding a number of new approaches and wording and so on in the bill, but I think some earlier collaboration would also be helpful. At the same time, I fully recognize that departments and Ministers have to hold the pen on this, and that's their work. But keeping committee in the loop as that unfolds is, I think people are going to see on recommendations on that.
Lastly, I guess I want to say too that there is certainly a need for departments to have additional resources when it comes to doing public engagement on a bill like this. That's not to criticize the department in any way. They just needed more resources, in my opinion, to actually do a better job on public engagement. And there's no reason why the public engagement cannot happen while the codrafting is going on. In this case, the public engagement happened after the codrafting was almost finished and was very it was delayed and very brief, and the input that was received I don't believe it really it was properly reflected in the bill. So I think that in the future, departments have to get additional resources when they carry out public engagement on resource management bills. And that has been the case in this assembly with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment where they did secure additional resources, and I think other departments have to do the same thing.
I think, Madam Chair, that's all the comments I have but I will have questions when the Minister appears with the witnesses when we get to the clausebyclause review, and I will be bringing forward a series of motions to amend the bill that reflect the work of the committee during our clause by clause back on August the 11th. Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. Are there any further general comments to the committee report? Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with the things that were brought forward by my colleague for Frame Lake. It was quite an interesting process back and forth with the department and the and the working group, the technical working group, the Indigenous governments and representatives. I had the pleasure of being able to chair a few of the meetings which was helped me to stretch my legislative muscles and work through that kind of a process. And as you can see, the number of motions that we brought forward as a result of just how much back and forth there really had been. I agree that we likely ran out of time to do anything further and to really tease out a lot of the nuances that perhaps committee was really excited to do so.
Given that the information we had heard from communities when we travelled was, for me, really thought provoking and along a whole different sort of line of thinking than maybe I would have thought before, and a big piece of that that I want to speak to here even though it does come up in motions, was the piece around the Indigenous science and knowledge and that incorporation into each community or area's ability to fight their own fires and to be in charge or control of their own fire management and forestry management plans.
A lot of the elders spoke to us about in the past how fire would be dealt with, that they would come with shovels and buckets and put out every sort of area that they found and in such manner they cared for the land.
Over the years, in the last decades, fire science has changed. I mentioned in the past that I grew up in British Columbia which was a huge forestry province. I remember when the government decided to stop fighting the forest fires for fear that it was changing the ecosystems of the forests in BC. The example given was the pine beetle that destroyed a lot of BC's timber industry. And at that time, a decision was made from what they said was an ecological perspective but also financial perspective because it was costly to go out into the forests and fight each and every single one of them. But what BC has that we don't have is that BC has fortified and built up municipalities.
They have municipalities with fire departments. They have resources within their own municipal governments to deal with fires when they do arrive on their doorstep. We don't have any of that in the Northwest Territories save maybe the capital city and a couple of the regional centres. And even then, it's clear that they were woefully underprepared and understaffed, under capacity for any of what's happened in the past while.
In 2014, ENR did lessons learned on the fire season that year in which we saw unprecedented amounts of our forests burn. At the time, ENR presented to the government or sorry, to the engineers and geoscientists on the fires and, quote, and said, that the regeneration of the fire of the forest was not the same any longer because the intensity of the fires in 2014 was so great that the regenerative seeds that were needed to come and bring back the forest and the plant life were all scalded or scorched and were not able to come back in the same manner.
So the fires in 2014, the department was aware that they had altered the landscape and the climate and the vegetation of the territory irrevocably at that time. So now fast forward, we're sitting here in 2023, nine years later, and we didn't seem to learn any lessons from that and instead we've allowed fires to burn. My colleague has spoken often to the resources that her people rely on that are in the sorry, in the forest and how decisions made by this government has basically wiped out huge areas of their resources because they're not considered to have the same value as a building or a structure.
So I understand there's a large complexity around fire science and things are evolving. However, it appeared to me, and going out on this act and being part of this committee, that this department did not bring in the general public of the Indigenous people in the communities. I do appreciate that the working group had a lot of input here, and that for me was the only saving grace of this act that gives me any faith, that it was done at least with some degree of ability to be successful. And I know a lot of the back and forth we had was around varying nuanced conversation raising the issue of the fact that people are not going to be carrying ID into the bush necessarily. So if they're stopped by an officer and need to prove indigeneity, you know, they may not have that card with them. And then I found out even that some of the communities don't even or Indigenous organizations don't even use a card. They know who their people are. They have a list, and it's just a matter of a confirmation. So that was really something new to me.
So that being said, I think what gives me assurance, though, is that many of these details will be fleshed out in the regulations and that the assurances from the department that the same collaborative approach with the technical working group will be held when the regulations are developed. It is what gives me the faith, at the very least, that this act will go forward with Indigenous people and their use of the land in mind. And I really want to urge and hope that the people that are on that group and the people in the department really look at what has happened here this year and really start to analyze whether or not this idea of letting everything burn until it’s on our doorstep is really a smart one. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I know I'm grateful, thankful that, you know, Indigenous government were involved in drafting this Bill 74 to its current form. And it's good to see two sides of government working together, the GNWT and the Indigenous government technical working group developing this draft.
I know this is very this is important for the Indigenous people, especially people living in the area that deals with the lands and resources. So I know that it's respecting the rights of the people living in the area, especially Tlicho and other Indigenous people in the NWT therefore I will support this Act because a lot of work went into it. But when we were travelling, though when we were travelling and one of the communities that we went to it's all the same. We went to Whati. And this is what the people said in the outlying communities, Whati, Fort Simpson, that, you know, that the forest fire management was better in the past than it is now. That's what we heard on our tour. And they said that they haven't seen these kind of problems before that they are seeing today, the mass evacuation, so which is a problem for them. And they're saying that GNWT used to do a better job fighting the fires in the past, and they got to it before it got out of control and threatened the communities, so what they used to see. And they said that they would like to see brought back is that maybe, like where the GNWT at the beginning, as soon as the forest fire start, they used to drive around in the communities and recruit anybody that was able to fight fires and ablebodied people. You know, they used to collect them. And our elders, they have a lot of knowledge and experience fighting fires without today's fancy technology. That's what we heard in our tour. And they would like to see some of those brought back. So that way we don't have to go through the chaos that we went through with the mass evacuation of Yellowknife, Fort Smith, Hay River, Behchoko. A lot of these were avoidable.
And they said what we heard too is that a lot of these people they said you do not mess with Mother Nature. And that's not what this government did. They messed with the Mother Nature, and it got out of control and resulted in 4 million hectares of land burned in the Northwest Territories. Our animals destroyed. Our livelihood destroyed, our language, our culture. And that's what we heard from the people. And we saw what happened. And I just hope that we will not go through that again and we will through this act and through both governments, the GNWT and the Indigenous government working together, we can make this better in order for us to move forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Are there any further general comments on the committee report? Member for Thebacha.
Just a short comment. Since this is our first process convention and it's with Bill 74 with both our government and Indigenous groups, I too want to thank all those that participated. I think it's a first step in ensuring that we hear from the people that are keepers of the land.
I also want to know I also want to say that we all know that this was a bad forest fire season, a terrible one. I mean, I was some of us were away five weeks for evacuation. We know that there's going to be a What We Heard report, hopefully. I just want to ensure that when we do that, there is public consultation because, you know, after the Fort McMurray fires, there was there was a report done but without public consultation. So I want to ensure that, for the record, that we have public consultation, that everybody who wants to see change or wants to have a change in policy, that they are able to attend a public meeting in most of the communities. You know, it was an eyeopener for a lot. People have been predicting this for years, and other leaderships have been predicting that this was going to happen. And it happened. And it was a perfect storm. There's still no rain hardly anywhere. It’s very dry. There's drought. And in closing, I want to make sure that we do public consultations, and we listen to what the experts tell us, especially the experts of the land, and that's the Indigenous people.
And I want to also thank all the people who participated in this report, and because it's our first process convention bill I think it's extremely important that we congratulate the people that sat at the table and tried to mediate through these really different and difficult decisions that were put in this bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Thebacha. General comments to the committee report? There are no further general comments. Member for Deh Cho.
Mahsi, Madam Chair. Mahsi to committee and others who made comments regarding the bill.
I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories undertake an independent, third party, comprehensive review of Government of the Northwest Territories' fire prevention and suppression with public engagement.
And further, this review should consider the policy framework, coordination with other governments and agencies, funding for these activities, as well as departmental practices concerning firefighter safety.
And furthermore, findings of the review should be made publicly available on a Government of the Northwest Territories website. Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.
Sorry, I'm not going to let this one mahsi, Madam la Presidente, I'm sorry, I'm not going to let this go without talking about it.
Just I think it's important to understand the context in which this recommendation was made. This was made before the evacuations took place in, you know, August when we were trying to conclude the review of the bill. But I think it's even more important today.
Now, on Friday, I asked a series of questions of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who wears the same hat as the Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs, about some kind of a comprehensive, independent, third party review of not just fire management, also emergency management, those two things. And I'd understood from what the Minister said that that would take place. This Cabinet is not going to be making those decisions. It's going to be made those decisions will be made by the next Assembly. And he assured me that the requests for proposal that was put out and closes, I think on October the 13th, that that is not this broader third party independent review. I'm not even convinced that the RFP meets the intent of this motion because I think the RFP that was put out is really an afteraction review. It's a template. They do these at the end of every fire season.
I think what we were suggesting in this recommendation is something that actually looks at, you know, the fire prevention and fire suppression policy framework and practices because we heard a lot of concerns/complaints about that during the community hearings that we had and in written submissions as well. So I think this recommendation even goes beyond the RFP that's out there. But this is certainly not what I was talking with the Minister about on Friday, which is a much higher third party independent review of both fire management and community or sorry, emergency response, emergency management. So I just wanted to get all that on the record, Madam Chair.
I still believe that this work is necessary, but I think it's even more indepth and probably the RFP is not going to even meet that's out there is going to meet the intention of recommendation 1 that we have on the floor now to consider. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, I have a concern about what happened here, the fire here in the Northwest Territories. During the three and a half weeks in my riding, I listened to a lot of my elders, and the people in the community were talking about in the early days when fires happened they had a fire tower there. People were manned the towers manned by the RWED at the time.
And in those days, when they used to spot a fire, the guys would get on it right away. And they put out the fire. And they do it whether it would be three or four or five days, but they're on it; it's done, and it doesn't come back and haunt the community down the road. So, yes, there's overtime and so on that has to be looked at. But to me, this fire that just happened here in the Northwest Territories is significant. I don't know what to say about it because we never experienced this before. So, you know, this absolutely, I agree that we need to have a very comprehensive review of what happened here. And to undertake an independent third party review of what happened is needed. And, you know, we should really look at all those policies. They say that the fire's burning there. Well, then they should have been on it right away. But no, they and they said well, let it burn. No problem. We'll just monitor it. Well, you know, look what happened. So all that needs to happen. You know, I even would say that, you know, the firefighters that are now retired should actually be part of this policy review because they know the land. They're from our area. You know, they have the expertise. But right now, as it is, you know, this is something we got to learn from. But things we don't want to go down this road again.
And so I would say that, you know, this review is welcomed. And then I seen past reviews done, you know, internally, and it's like the RCMP investigating themselves. And we want we don't want that. You know, here we want to have an independent, and we just got to have clearer terms of reference and everything as to what the outcome should be. And so I'm going to support this motion because of that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Deh Cho.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the department review what information it can and should provide regarding its internal interactive fire databases, its communication efforts, and how information is presented and organized on its website to improve access to and knowledge of fire prevention and suppression activities and practices. Mahsi.
The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So while we were reviewing the bill, we had an opportunity to go to Fort Simpson. I want to thank the Environment and Climate Change staff that we met in Fort Simpson. We went to their office and we sat in a boardroom, and there was this great huge screen where they were able to flash up all kinds of information about fires. I'd never seen this stuff before. It was amazing. They had, like, real live time data and information there. They could tell you where planes were located, where they were going to be fire bombing and all kinds of stuff. It was amazing the amount of information that these guys were able to show us. But it's not publicly accessible. Nobody knows about it. It's used internally, which is great, and I think it's a very helpful set of tools. But, and I guess I understand maybe the need to keep some of that confidential in terms of values at risk and maybe some of the, you know, the immediate work that they're doing in the air and on the ground. But to not have any public access to that data is not very helpful. You know, the staff are doing a great job, but they've got to find ways to share more of that information. And I think that's what this that's what this recommendation is really aimed at, is making more of that kind of information available to the public.
I also want to say, too, that just before the evacuation I was totally exhausted because I was trying to do FireSmarting around our own house. When I went on their website, there was a lot of good stuff there about FireSmarting, a lot of good stuff, but you got to kind of dig to find it. Some of it's not their documents. They're found on third party sites and things. There's a lot of really good stuff there about FireSmarting. We tried to do as much as we could before we left. But it's not organized in a way that's very user friendly. So my I think part of I'd like to add in here that that's another reason why this information could be better organized and communicated. It's just not there in a user friendly way. Anyways, you know, the staff do great work. They have some really great tools. We just got to find ways to share that and make it more understandable for everybody so that they can access this stuff. And that's what this recommendation is really aimed at. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. To the motion. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And, again, you know, I always ask myself how did we find ourselves in this situation? How did we get here? You know, communication is a big part of, you know, trying to get this information out to the public. And what went down here it was it was really scary for a lot of people, especially in my riding Tu Nedhe where I was in Fort Resolution. On one hand, we had fires happening in the south of us in Fort Smith and then you got the one in Hay River. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, Fort Resolution, we're caught in there. The roads get shut off, but we're okay. The thing is that the air quality in that community after for oh jeez, I would say about six weeks, it was poor. We had birds dying. And yet, you know, I was a little concerned about how the GNWT could have been more proactive as to dealing with the air quality in that community. However, you know, when I was there for that time, you know, I listened to all the you know, the announcements that were made on the radio and the briefings they got, etcetera, you know.
I would say that, you know, we should have had a better handle on the protocol as to who is speaking and that kind of thing because right now we just have one individual constantly on there but then, you know, that person's just an officer of government but yet, you know, the executive, you know, we should have been really there in terms of having somebody there, you know, speaking for this government. You know, this came up in my riding and to see that didn't happen. So we definitely have to improve as to how we communicate to the residents of the Northwest Territories, especially in a fire like this. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Deh Cho.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that there be an annual meeting between relevant Government of the Northwest Territories departmental staff and each community to review values at risk, fire prevention and suppression preparedness, coordination of efforts and related matters. Mahsi.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Tu NedheWiilideh.
Again, speaking to the motion, Madam Chair, I just was talking about communication. You know, when we talk about value at risk, etcetera, I know in our community in Fort Resolution, I was there when we had an intergovernmental agency meeting, and we talked about this. But any other time, you know, communication, again, has to come down to the leadership and shared with them. And I'm a little concerned that, you know, if we have one meeting, we only have one RWED officer there. But it didn't go far enough. There was too many questions. And, again, communication needs to be looked at for sure. But in this area here, I think there's going to have to be a way to the government to start working with the Indigenous governments on communicating what their plans are and especially when at value at risk. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Tu NedheWiilideh. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Madam Chair. Yeah, some of the rationale behind this recommendation, the committee went to a number of communities, including Whati, Enterprise, Fort Simpson, and we constantly heard concerns around the size of firebreaks, whether they were adequate. Also concerns around, you know, the adequacy of their fire prevention suppression capacity within communities. Some people in communities wanted to have, you know, a fire crew based in their community kind of on standby. There was concerns around, I guess, the and I don't know all the details, but I guess the training and certification of the folks that fight fires. Very, very high level, very rigorous, as it probably needs to be.
But as people get older, they're not able to meet those physical requirements but they still have a huge amount of experience in actually firefighting, and there doesn't seem to be a way to continue to engage and keep those people on somehow to help younger people. So those were some of the kind of concerns that we heard. And this set of recommendations arise in the report, they're kind of beyond the scope of the bill, but we felt it was important to document these concerns and try to find a way to address them. That's why they still appear in the report. They're outside of the perhaps the scope of the bill, but we heard these concerns, and we wanted to find a way to address them.
So one way we felt that some of these concerns could start to be issued is to make sure there's at least an annual meeting that takes place between departmental staff and the community leadership, relevant people in the community, about making sure the proper values at risk have been identified, any changes there, fire prevention suppression preparedness and how people work together.
Maybe these things happen already. If they have if they do, they're not being communicated very well to some of the people we were talking to who are actually in leadership positions. So, in any event, this is the reason why committee has made this recommendation, is to try to make sure that we work together to deal with fires better in the future, and I'm sure that's a shared value and objective by everyone in this House. Mahsi, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. To the motion. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I look at this motion here, and I guess I think back to, you know, when the fire started and what happened throughout. You know, I spent most of my time in Hay River during that period. And you know, I saw what was going down. I saw the interaction, I guess, between government, between volunteers, you know, and with the community as well. And you know, at that time, I was thinking, you know, what we need is we need some better coordination with all these groups because in the three disasters we've had, what I found was everybody sort of kind of walks away and then you don't really hear much of it again until next time. And as an example, you know, you had a we had a fire in the spring and then we had this big fire and in between, there wasn't I there didn't appear to be too much discussion.
We also the other thing you got to realize too is that in the community, you know, we have, you know, staff and the community governments but they may lack the qualifications when it comes to firefighting. And that's a big issue. They lack qualifications when it really comes to, you know, emergency measures and looking after that in evacuations as well.
So somebody has to take a lead role. And I know that what I find is that, you know, the GNWT will say oh, the community has the lead role and the community says well, the government kind of has the lead role, and there's that confusion. And when you have that confusion, it takes away time and valuable time. And we saw what happens, you know, in Enterprise. We saw what happened in Hay River when we lost valuable time, you know. And so what I'd like to see, I guess, is within the Department of ECC is a section that deals with, you know, emergency measures more so. And not just with fires but also with you know, the flooding and anything else that we may that may come our way. And we need experts in that field. Just like when we you know, you talked about doing a review before. You know, we need experts to do those reviews. We don't want just somebody kind of off the street. But we want to listen to people as well who actually you know, that went through some of the fires that were on the highway and that. The big thing is that better coordination, better communication. We need a special section within ECC to actually deal with emergencies and preparedness. And we need staff that are actually qualified, and we need that staff to help the communities qualify to make sure their staff are qualified as well. Like, we do in Hay River, we've got firefighters and that. A lot of them are volunteers. And, you know, there's only so much you can learn. You know, we're lucky they were there. We had you know, they were looking after structures while the ECC staff were looking after the wildfire. So just and those are just comments and things that I guess I saw while I was on the ground in Hay River. I just don't like to see some of the confusion that does happen. And it could very easily be avoided. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. To the motion. Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I know, indeed, we do need expert, but what just happened in Northwest Territories, how can an expert let 4 million hectares of land burn? In the past, a lot of people have said, even the veteran firefighters have said the same thing, and elders have said, in the past government used to pick up all kinds of people on the street to fight fires, and it was those people, because of them, our community is still here. A lot of them, it happened all over. And that was the only jobs that a lot of our Indigenous people had at that time. It's not like before. We know that. But I wouldn't call these expert all the time because expert let 4 million hectares of land burn. And that's where I think here what I would like to see happen here is that strengthening communications. There was a lot of poor communications. There was a lot of things that we could have done to prepare for our communities, for our community members, especially the community members because we have a lot of elders. We have a lot of vulnerable people. We have a lot of children in the communities. You know, like, the firebreaks. And use the veteran firefighters, the elders, the traditional knowledge. We could have avoided many of these situations that we saw over the summer.
And what I would like to see is that, okay, communication needs to be strengthened but more involvement with the Indigenous government. ECC, or the department, needs to work with the ECC with the Indigenous government and community government and other organizations, especially when they know it is going to be hot, dry summer. Like, we should prepare for the worst. That's what they should have done. But the people in Yellowknife office, some of our people working here did not know what was happening. Only after that disaster strike, then that's when they were informed. And there was a lot of poor communications. So what I would like to see is the communications strengthened and use more of the veteran firefighters and elders. Because when I was talking to some of the firefighters, the veterans, some of them said we did not go home for two months sometimes. We were out there going from one regions to another fighting fires to save our communities. And we don't see that happening now. What we see is that, okay, they messed with Mother Nature. They don't want to go there and put out the fire. And especially now. We know the water level is low. But if it's going to be a dry season, do something about it, get to it right away before it gets out of control. And that's what destroyed the Highway No. 3.
We lost 15 cabins and four infrastructure in my communities. Our big land is destroyed. A lot of our Tlicho land is destroyed where a lot of people do hunting and trapping. It's just that we know we're not going to get it back because it's going to take seven years. And who knows, maybe longer with the climate change. Climate change is here. We might not get our land back or that replenish itself within seven years. It might take longer. So I think communications and meeting with the people, meeting with the Indigenous government, community government, keeping them informed should be strengthened in this and do more. We need an annual report. We need something so that we avoid this next year or within the next, you know, fire seasons. But something needs to be done right away about this. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Deh Cho.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that representatives from technical working groups should meet with standing committee earlier in the process, closer to the beginning of the codrafting process, to discuss opportunities to share information on policy options and policy intentions for resource management legislation. Mahsi.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, in my opening remarks, I mentioned how I think it would have been helpful for committee if we had been able to receive more information about what kind of policy options and decisions had been made around different options before, if that could have been shared with committee before we just got the bill, and that the department didn't really share any of that information with us. So we got the bill, and we had a whole bunch of questions and issues around it that I think probably we could have avoided, or at least had a more productive review of it had more information been shared upfront with us. So I think that's the purpose of this, is to not interfere with the drafting and work that has to be done but find ways to share some of that information during the process so committees can at least start in a better place when they get a bill like this and make more productive use of their time. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
