Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and it’s on caribou. I want to follow up and get some more details on what’s transpired to date. But I’d like to start by asking how could this have happened. Obviously, dropping from 400,000-plus down to 32,000 is a tremendous decline, and I understand that happened over a period of time, that we clearly have responsibility here for that management. How could this have happened and are we capturing that to ensure that we learn and do better from now on? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re going to be briefing committee at the rise of the House and we have a lot of detail to share with the Members. But I think the big key point is I don’t think there is one particular reason you can point to. There is the human impact, there is the climate change, resource development, increased roads, accessibility, permafrost, insects, changing rain in the middle of winter. There’s any number of issues. I think one of the big points is that the human impact is probably going to be more significant than ever before in the past where there’s been the cycles and this time it looks very serious, but we are working to understand this and capture all those variables as best we can. Thank you.
I think it’s clearly important that we do that. I didn’t really hear harvest mentioned as a factor, but many of us that were hunting in the ‘90s clearly remember the big two-ton trucks of caribou, 150 animals in a truck, heading down the highway, and expressed a lot of concern without any action being taken. I hope that’s included in the thinking on what caused this.
But moving on, what support was received during consultations prior to establishing the hunting ban through consultation with aboriginal governments and co-management boards? Thank you.
The Member is correct; the harvesting, the more the numbers dropped, the greater the impact of the harvesting, especially if harvesting levels stay the same as when the herd was healthy. In a state of decline, if we don’t affect those numbers, the impact is significant.
This whole process, Mr. Speaker, keeping in mind your caution about short answers, initially it was going to be worked through the Wekeezhii process, with our report to them with our recommendations, ourselves and the Tlicho Government. The dates that the Wekeezhii Board were able to do things moved, and as we got into December we recognized the need for measures, because there wasn’t going to be a report in time to get a response out in a timely manner, and we started the compressed process to consult with all the aboriginal groups to be ready to have some recommendations in place by the end of December.
I appreciate that response. Given that Yellowknife, Ndilo and Dettah are right in the middle of this quite large geographic area that is now closed to hunting, what opportunities do the Yellowknives and other people have to harvest caribou or other alternatives so that they can replace the caribou meat that they’re missing? Thank you.
There are two key things that are available. We’ve made the offer in the Tlicho and with the Akaitcho and the Yellowknives to work with them to go to access some of the caribou in a controlled way, the Ahiak and the Bluenose-East, that we would work with them and assist them to do that, recognizing that these herds are under stress themselves, but we think we’re able to be able to manage that kind of harvest. We’ve also adjusted the bison tags so that both the Tlicho and the Akaitcho have access to a greater number of bison tags over the interim period. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My final question really is recognizing the important intents and emotional issues that are being raised about aboriginal rights in response to the hunting ban. How will the Minister ensure that the conservation of the caribou is front and centre through all of this, recognizing that those are important issues as well? Thank you.
Our whole initiative is predicated and has been initiated by the recognition that we have a wildlife emergency and it’s a conservation issue that has to be addressed over this hunting period. That recognition and acknowledgement are keeping in mind the respect and can lead to respect the aboriginal rights and treaty rights and rights to hunt. But our fundamental obligation is to look after the wildlife; in this case, the Bathurst herd. Those two are linked and our rationale is that there was a gap here. There is an emergency. The hunting season had to be addressed. We took these very measured and carefully considered steps. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
