Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Mr. Speaker, Paulatuk and Sachs Harbour are ideal locations to monitor winter storms in the High Arctic. Another roof blew apart during this last storm in Paulatuk as the winds reached 140 kilometres.
Mr. Speaker, my first question to the Minister is: how often are community emergency plans exercised and updated across the territory, mainly those in the Barren Lands? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I just want to thank the leadership and the people of the community of Paulatuk who stepped up to the plate during this past weekend, when we had winds that reached up to about 140 kilometres per hour, to take care of our elders, our youth, and those most vulnerable in the community.
Mr. Speaker, the new territorial Emergency Management Act does require communities to update their emergency plans annually. Our staff also do a great job in coordinating and working with our leadership to make sure that these plans are updated on a regular basis and that they actually go through tabletop exercises at the community level.
We will continue to do this, not only with the coastal communities in the Beaufort Delta region, but all of our communities across the Northwest Territories as well as those on the Mackenzie River. We want to make sure that we can prevent anything from happening in terms of emergencies, such as what happened this past weekend in Paulatuk, as well as the other communities in the Member's riding.
I appreciate the response from the Minister. Mr. Speaker, I strongly believe that we, as an Assembly, should be seeking disaster mitigation funding to help homeowners and the hamlets across the territory to prepare, as weather storms are becoming more extreme across the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker, which impacts day-to-day operations and our infrastructure. Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister is: how do you plan on building resiliency in communities that face such climate change effects as the number of winter storms increase in the High Arctic?
The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs will continue to work closely with community governments to update the NWT Hazard Identification Risk Assessment. We will also continue to lobby our federal counterparts to look at increasing funding or continuing some of the funding that we have used in the past years to mitigate any type of emergency situations. We will obviously continue working with our leadership and working with our community members. That will address some of these emergency issues moving forward.
I appreciate the response from the Minister. It seems like MACA is doing a good job in including the communities. Mr. Speaker, leading after that question, my question to the Minister is: how will MACA incorporate Indigenous knowledge into their local, regional, and territorial emergency planning?
As I mentioned in a previous response, we will look at working with our leadership and our local membership in the communities to address any kind of emergency-management situations and how we deal with those.
Also, with planning community plans, we are going to be working with our community leadership to develop them so that it does mitigate any kind of emergency risks right across the Northwest Territories. Obviously, we have seen over the last few years situations up in our coastal communities that do have an impact. I have brought it up to our federal Minister. I have also brought it up to our national and Indigenous leaders, about such things as permafrost degradation. I talked about coastal erosion, as well as the opening of the Northwest Passage and seeing more vessels coming through, that we need to be prepared for any kind of situation that happens, especially in the Member's riding. I have invited, like I said, our federal Minister to come up and see what we are doing to try to mitigate that risk. I have also invited some of our national Indigenous organization leaders to come see the unique situation of the Northwest Territories, the North, and how we need support on a bigger front. We will, as I mentioned, continue with the membership of the communities, as well as the leadership, who are the experts in this region, in bringing that traditional knowledge into consideration.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That almost answered my last question here. Mr. Speaker, we sometimes see climate change only in the spring and the summer months, during the melt and the thaw, and sometimes when the water levels rise along the Mackenzie River or the Arctic Ocean or other lakes across the territory, but we need to think about the winter, as well, and the large storms that are coming.
I will ask this question anyways, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister consider Nunakput communities that face extreme winds during the winter months to access disaster mitigation funding to protect housing infrastructure and also the municipal infrastructure that is in effect during the winter months?
Currently, the Government of the Northwest Territories does have some applications in place here for the disaster mitigation funding, which are being looked at. We are hoping to get a positive answer on that. I have also, most previously at our federal-provincial-territorial meetings, brought up the concern that we need to continue looking at other sources of funding that will impact our northern communities. I will continue to work with the leadership, our federal leadership, to make sure that they know what kind of funds they can access and work on developing those applications and ensuring that we do have support from our other jurisdictions to support this type of funding moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
