Okay, mahsi. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Mr. Speaker [Translation] speak about caribou about caribou. The funding for caribou has been it's not as much as it was. And we also know that caribou has been declined, but then we also know a lot of information about why is it the way it is, and and with funding with funding that is not as much as it used used to be to do a research, doing caribou declining, they say.
I'd like to know the answer, and I'd like to have that answer so the [Translation Unavailable].
Thank you, Member for Monfwi. Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources.
Hopefully I get the I got the message here. So to be clear, there has been no reduction in the survey. What happened in 2020, we had money in the budget to do the survey for the caribou, and then COVID hit. So then we've been playing catch up. The money that was here that we had in the budget for this year is going into the next years' budgets. We do the survey every two years. So we do the research. We work we bring in some of our Indigenous partners to go travelling with us as part of our survey group. So we do the survey.
The money was spent last year. The results are in this year. And so we have the survey done. So we haven't reduced it. It's just that the budget has been moving from year to year because of 2020. So it used to be every second year. Now we're back to '21. So the next one is 2023. So the money will be in the budget for that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Member for Monfwi, just so you know, there's going to be issues if you're going back and forth. As mentioned earlier, we're having issues with the translation. So I know the Minister well, a lot of us didn't hear everything that you just said, but just so you know that. Thank you. Member for Monfwi.
Okay, thank you. Okay, well, that was good. Thank you for the information for the to the Minister just provided.
Okay, so that was from last year, and then this year it's different budget. So budget increases have been made to enforcement. And he just said he mentioned some there already.
So can the Minister explain the reason for reducing the budget for scientific research while increasing the budget for enforcement? This is for the enforcement. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we didn't reduce the scientific research funding. It was in 2020, we were doing the research; COVID hit; we weren't able to do the research. So we did it in 2021. So we moved that money from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, the money will be moved to 2023 because every second year, we will do the research on that.
As for the enforcement, all it is is that we've been asked by the Indigenous governments to add an additional camp, which we've done. We now have three camps there, so. And 24/7 to have staff there. So the Indigenous governments have asked us to make sure we have enforcement out there, and we are working with our Indigenous governments to meet the needs to make sure that we follow through on making sure people don't hunt the caribou in the mobile zone. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, based on what many elders and harvester have seen with their own eyes, they feel there is a lot more than 6,200 caribou. Can the Minister explain how herds are counted? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for that detail, I would have asked the Member to give the question to me earlier, but I can try to explain it the best we can. So we do have and I believe there was a technical briefing provided by the Wek’eezhii Water and Resources Board with our staff. It committee, which was made public.
So we do have airlines or we charter aircrafts that we survey it. There's a longitudes and latitude checked. They check on the the the herd, the calves, and the cows and that in the Bathurst area. And that's how it's corrected or calculated.
So there is a map, and it's showed. If the Member wishes to see the map again or another briefing, I'm more than willing to get the staff to meet with her to provide further detail. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Monfwi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when the Minister's staff confiscate caribou from harvester and later on later those charges are dropped or are unproven in court, can the Minister commit to providing an apology and financial compensations to those harvester? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't make that commitment. There's a process. There's a legal process. Once that process is done, then we can look at each matter moving forward. But right now, we have a process. We need to follow it. We're going through the justice system. And we ensure the meat's not wasted. It's given to other Indigenous governments so that the meat is not being wasted there.
I need to really stress, though, folks, is the herd size is 6,240. That's 1 percent of 1986. So in 1986, we had a huge population. Now we're at 1 percent, 6,240 caribou as from our survey. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Minister of Inuvik Twin Lakes.
(Audio)
Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
