Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The agreement reached between the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and the GNWT for the management and preservation of the Bathurst caribou herd is momentous. We’ve come a long way since last year when confrontation, emergency, shock, and perhaps even fear were the words most associated with the Bathurst caribou management. Today the words are partnership, commitment and respect between government and aboriginal partners like the YKDFN.
The agreement provides a two-year interim management regime featuring joint harvesting monitoring, shared population monitoring that blends scientific and traditional knowledge and steps to reduce harvest of females. These measures reflect the hard work and commitment of both parties towards the recovery of the herd and its contribution to the health of the people.
There’s still a long way to go. The costs of the crash to all people who rely on caribou are huge. For people with low incomes, access to caribou is the difference between meat and macaroni.
Restrictions affect the cultural fabric woven by the hunt, the passing of traditions between generations, the community bonds and strong connections of harvesting from the land. Outfitters have suffered great losses to businesses established from years of hard work and investment.
I’m on record saying that I don’t support bans and I don’t support hunts. I support caribou. I and others who stopped hunting five years ago realized caribou were in trouble. Self-regulation, however, wasn’t matched by the casual and permissive approach of ENR. ENR seemed to sleepwalk into this catastrophe, not even knowing how many animals were being harvested by all users. Belatedly, bag limits were reduced, cows-only education programs were conceived, harvest was broadly estimated, and finally an emergency closure demonstrated the extreme long-term breakdown in responsible management.
Important lessons are captured in this new agreement. Cooperative management, accompanied by basic and objective knowledge of population size and harvest, is the only approach that will work. Greater attention and the courage to act early, all within the context of accelerating climate change, must be the basis of our management of all animal and plant species.
I salute the government and the Yellowknives Dene for finding the way to go forward. I will look for the application of these lessons in our future approach to resource management.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
