Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement.
The good management of any issues requires the balanced input of all stakeholders. With wildlife, this is at least, if not more, critical than in most areas, because it is a very limited resource that is vulnerable, as we know, to overexploitation. Those with Aboriginal and treaty rights are squarely at the management table, with representatives comprising half of management board members while those without these rights have only representatives that represent both rights holders and non-rights holders. What can the Minister do to provide mechanisms to resolve this critical gap? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve heard the concern. There are some options that are out there in terms of ex-officio members, observers; as well, the GNWT will have two to three seats available, of which in any given time we can bring stakeholders to the table, depending on the issue being discussed. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m assuming that the Minister means by any of those issues and what’s appropriate here that when we’re talking about the use and enjoyment of wildlife, there would be everybody at the table. Their recent wildlife management controversies and failures demonstrate a lack of early and critical input to the process.
Debate, even when perhaps overly enthusiastic and a bit rancorous and extreme, provides an important role in society’s ability to arrive at good decisions that recognize and respond to the rights of all. This is particularly true when the legislation is abundant and complex. How will the Minister ensure that mechanisms are both identified in the legislation and funded to ensure this key debate helps form the backbone of the management process?
Thank you. As Minister of Finance I caught the keyword of “funded.” The issue is going to be to address, through the management, the conference process to see and make sure that everybody is represented. As a public government, the Government of the Northwest Territories, we are charged with representing the interests of Northerners at that table as well. There are options to make sure we have representation from non-Aboriginal harvesters and, we believe, mechanisms to do that. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the openness and commitments of the Minister here and I guess I would ask him that he commit to even further discussions on this outside the House. But what will the Minister do to ensure that the interpretation of the legislation goes the distance to consider and meet government responsibility to provide for all citizens the opportunity to use and enjoy wildlife? I’m thinking here of, for example, the interpretation of priority access to mean exclusive access. Case law clearly has indicated that’s not the case and we’re talking interpretation of the legislation. Thank you.
Thank you. The bill, when it comes forward for first and second reading, will be as complete as possible. It will have been amended numerous times. We’ve fully briefed committee on this. We laid out all the very many changes that have been made based on a lot of the feedback that we have received from groups and individuals from across the North, outside of the North, from business, from industry, from the airlines. So we’re going to bring forward a bill that will be there to be further viewed by committee through a consultation process. We’ll look to advice that comes back from that process to see if there are any final amendments that need to be made before it comes into the House, hopefully by no later than August, for third reading.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for those remarks. Certainly the caribou population, and with what we’ve been through recently and are going through, are a big and tough challenge. Will the Minister be providing an analysis of how our systems broke down and led to such failure, including the failure to a reliable measure harvest, a basic management parameter for wildlife management, and how this will be addressed in the Wildlife Act? Mahsi.
Thank you. I don’t know if I would agree with the assessment that there was a breakdown of our systems. We definitely know that there was a decline in the various caribou herds.
We will address some of that through the Wildlife Act. The vehicle that will probably provide a better form for that is going to be the Barren Ground Management Strategy that’s coming forward and the need in this part of the country to look at a multiparty board or arrangement to look after the number of herds that are in this part of the country. Go from east to west with the Beverly Qamanirjuaq, the Ahiak, the Bathurst and the Bluenose East, which as well extends north all the way up to Inuvialuit area. So it is a very complex undertaking, be it one of the big issues, of course, is to make sure we have sufficient funds to do the constant survey work that is required and that we can’t afford to wait for decades to do this. We need to, as we have been doing for the last many years now, come up with a plan and funding to do all the herds so that we have a very good baseline information that will allow us to better track what’s happening in terms of the health of the herds. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
