Thank you, colleagues. I appreciate the opportunity to give my Member’s statement here today. For the past four years, I pushed for sound recreational land use planning in the Yellowknife block of land transfer area surrounding Walsh and Banting lakes and beyond. We had a premature draft plan released by MACA and a promise for a completed policy framework by this March 31st, but thanks to recent and outrageous action by our federal land management partners, we can forget about that document or any worthwhile plan for now.
Walsh and Banting lease holders are steaming over AANDC’s recent granting of both hunting and fishing leases on the lakes. According to reports, building materials have piled up on the new lease site with a busy construction season in store on leases that are temporary leases for five years of casual occupation.
The MACA Minister has described a close and consultative relationship with the feds over land permitting. At my urging, he wrote to the federal Minister in 2012 to stress the need for information sharing, co-operative action, and enforcement to discourage squatting. Despite glowing descriptions of consultations to keep both sides in the loop, our government was apparently blindsided by constituent report of the new leases, 85 new leases across the NWT with many more applications in this area, a federal track record of zero enforcement on squatting and compliance with lease conditions. What is the point of our new plan when the feds throw in a highly suspect game-changing lease rampage?
Along with the residents of Walsh and Banting, I’m fed up, Mr. Speaker. Coming up to devolution, this government is afraid to breathe on land issues such as Protected Areas Strategy. On the federal side, there is disregard and apparently even contempt for our efforts at responsible land management. The Minister says the feds knew we had a new recreational lease management plan in the wings, yet they toss off new leases in the exact area where we’re trying to manage responsibly.
Just as our plan was to be finalized, the Minister now acknowledges we need yet a new density study. With the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, this continuing alienation of land rights in the absence of a claims settlement is insulting, arrogant, and crippling to the prospects of a just settlement. Enough is enough.
I ask the MACA Minister: How could the feds have so contemptuously disregarded our announced actions and saddled us with these unplanned tenures in the months leading up to land management transfer?
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
With my colleagues’ co-operation again for returning to the next item on the orders, I will be asking the Minister’s assurance that he will make clear that come devolution day, every hunting and fishing leaseholder will be rigorously held to conditions for no creation of permanent structures. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
