Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources in follow up to my Member’s statement earlier today.
Mr. Speaker, the agreement with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation around the management of the Bathurst caribou herd is a two-year plan of activities. I’m wondering if the Minister can tell me what resources, both the dollars, direct dollar support and personnel support, staffing support, are being provided to the Yellowknives Dene First Nation to carry out their end of the bargain and whether this is going to be assessed partway through to see if it’s adequate. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a joint committee that’s been formed and we are going to assist them with funding to staff a coordinator to work with us as we do the increased monitoring and supervision of implementation of the plan. The Member is correct that there will be ongoing assessment to see how things are going and if resources are an issue.
I’m glad to hear there’s a coordinator being supplied. I wasn’t sure I heard a figure on the dollars that are being supplied. One of the major issues is the overlap with the Tlicho Agreement. I’m wondering how this has been handled and how it’s being handled in a final sense until such time as the Yellowknives Dene complete their land claim agreement, given that the Tlicho have already finished theirs.
The intent is to set up a broad, multi-stakeholder management plan for the caribou in the North Slave region that will include, of course, the aboriginal governments and the territorial government -- the Tlicho, Akaitcho, the Northwest Territories Metis Nation -- and it’s going to be a complex undertaking, given the fact that we have to look at the Ahiak, the Beverly, the Bathurst, the Bluenose-East, and significant overlap areas as well into Nunavut and some with the Beverly down into Saskatchewan. The challenge over the next two years is to get a process in place that will allow us to bring all those players to the table to come up with the steps necessary to manage and enforce the right actions on all those various herds.
I appreciate the response from the Minister. I have no doubt that he’s fully committed to making sure that does progress strongly during the two years of this interim agreement. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation agreement contains measures for a limited harvest to meet subsistence needs. One aspect of this is, of course, the understanding of what sort of adequacy this meets in terms of their nutritional and subsistence requirements and so on. I’m wondering if the Minister could tell me what we must see in terms of herd recovery before the harvest guidelines will be opened up a bit to meet some of those requirements.
That kind of technical, herd-specific decision is going to be based on the work of the assessment that’s going to be based on the recommendations from the boards, both of the Wekeezhii and the joint board we’ve set up with the Yellowknives. We’ll all be looking to their advice.
I don’t have an immediate, final definition in my mind. We do know that some of the indications have been somewhat comforting. From what the information is, there’s been no further decline of the Bathurst herd. It seems to have flattened out. The same with our basic work on the Ahiak. There’s even been a bit of modest growth in the Bluenose-East. Each one of those herds is going to have to be looked at individually.
I would point to what was agreed to with the Yukon and the management of the Porcupine caribou herd there, that they came up with all the appropriate triggers based on herd numbers that would determine what kind of action is going to be available to be considered if those numbers are hit. I would suggest that a similar type of approach, in my mind, makes good sense here as well.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Caribou have been essential to the nutritional, cultural and spiritual well-being of the Yellowknives Dene since time immemorial, as I’ve recognized earlier. I recognize that the Minister is providing for some alternatives in the meantime, such as opening the season on bison and assisting Dene to hunt other herds. However, caribou are also extremely important to many non-Dene in similar ways. What measures are being put in place to provide them with increased access to alternate meat sources such as bison and other caribou herds as their numbers improve?
The one area is going to be the possible access to bison tags. There is no harvest anywhere in the Northwest Territories at present for any harvesting except the aboriginal harvest. So there is no capacity to open up access to caribou tags anywhere at this point, given the pressures the herds are under. We’re looking at other types of animals besides bison. There is moose, of course, and depending where you live up north, there’s other things like muskox, as well, that could be considered.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
