Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few questions for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Growing up, my grandparents used to tell me stories of when people were limited to the amount of beaver they could harvest in a year, and it was just a handful. The game wardens, as they called them at the time, would go around and keep an eye out on people’s axes as they used them to chop open beaver houses. But since then we’ve had an explosion in the population of the species of beaver, also foxes and mink, but the fur advance doesn’t match that. It’s a minimum of a $25 advance for these furs and people are paying $45 to $50 for five gallons of gas. It just doesn’t match the cost of living up there with the advance, so my constituents would like to see an increase in this.
Is the Minister willing to work on making changes to the Fur Pricing Program? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The prices are set at a five-year rolling average and they’re reviewed every year. However, I’d be happy to sit down and talk to the Member about specifics if he has any dollar figures that he’s looking at. We have to manage the money that’s available to run this program, and the beaver prices are very low at the market values. Thank you.
As the Minister knows, we have the best fur in the world. There is a huge demand, you see it all the time, for sheared beaver, beavertail wallets. It’s just like snakeskin. I had one a few years back; it was pretty nice.
But as the Minister is just taking this department back on, I think it’s time that we make this review. Even changing it to $45 or $50 for an advance, that would help out the harvesters a great deal. Is the Minister willing to do this?
Thank you. Yes. One of the things we’ll be doing is doing a review, and as the Member has requested and suggested, we’ll be looking at that particular issue as well. Thank you.
Thank you. Was that a yes that he’ll increase it to $45 or $50? Thank you.
Thank you. I’d have to check Hansard. I understood the question to be that since we’re taking it back over, would we look at the prices and see if we would consider moving it from $45 to $50 and I said yes, we would consider looking at that as we get this back into ENR’s authority. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question is to do with the management of wildlife. Does the Minister have funds that they could contribute to encouraging our people to harvest more of these species? Thank you.
We have funds tied up in the Community Harvesters Assistance Program. We have some money still available in the Western Harvesters Assistance Program as well. As well, we have the fur pricing advances that we do have and prime pelt fund as well. So we do have some funds available. Thank you.
