Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member’s statement about the forest fire season, I have questions for the Minister of ENR.
Now that all the smoke has cleared, does the department know exactly what the costs of this season’s firefighting was to the government?
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That final calculation is still being compiled and we’ll have that in the coming weeks. Thank you.
Does the Minister know how these extraordinary costs can be covered through the GNWT finances?
Thank you. The extra funds are covered through borrowing the money. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m just wondering if the Minister believes or has evaluated whether we have actually a large enough base in our fire suppression budget so that we don’t have to always come back to this House. I know typically this is an exceptional year, but have we evaluated the base budget for fire suppression?
Yes, we are aware of the committee’s concern and of course, from a business perspective, we know that that number is too small. We have looked at sort of a 10-year rolling average and it would be about $10 million. So we’re going to look, based on our work and committee’s recommendations, we’re going to be looking at how we can have a base budget that’s more reflective of the reality. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question is on maybe an evaluation of the existing or the operations this year.
Have we seen anywhere we can do some cost savings, economies of scale when we have larger fire seasons, and going forward, how do we evaluate that?
Thank you. We are at work in terms of a review, cleaning up after fire season, doing the final accounting and then doing the critical debrief is underway. Then early in the new year, we’ll have that work done and we expect to be able to go forward with those findings to committee to have a thorough discussion in anticipation of the upcoming fire season. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
