Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, before I ask my question, I just want to state that I do not I have a lot of empathy for the people that had to execute the orders of the Department of ENR, and it is not them that I am criticizing in this.
So my questions are for the Minister of ENR. When did the department reach out to Chief Marlowe to request a facetoface meeting to discuss the incident? And when the Minister does have that meeting, could we please have a copy of it and minutes from the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there's a few questions in there so I'm just going to answer the first one. As soon as the search warrant issue was addressed, we then sent out the letter because it was in the courts, we sent the letter to Chief Marlowe, and he has received it and we confirmed it with his staff today. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that letter is dated as of yesterday, after getting questions in this House, and it's my understanding it went to the wrong address for the Chief and not the SAO. My question, though, is, however, yesterday the Minister said with respect to the raid that it, quote, "hasn't been proven it was unlawful." However, the search warrant was thrown out by the courts. So is it not logical then that that search was unlawful? Is this really just not a game of semantics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we followed this process. It's not semantics. We follow the process. We got a search warrant, and we did the they executed a search warrant, not a raid. It was an execution of a search warrant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, why didn't the Minister consider reaching out ahead of time in order to mitigate the situation with the LKDFN? This is what we've been talking about since we took office, was doing things properly and respectfully with the First Nations. Given that the warrant was thrown out, I think that there could have been a lot of things done here to not have had this happen, to traumatize women and children and foreign dignitaries. Therefore, can the Minister answer whether or not he thought about mitigating this and contacting the Chief ahead of time? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was an investigation. I don't get involved in the investigation. We have reached out to Chief Marlowe. We've set up a time, and we are working with that. We are trying to resolve this and move forward. But I need to stress that the investigation is still ongoing, so I don't know all the matters into that. And I don't want to have any political interference on this. Same as what we did with illegal hunts in the mobile zone, officers do their work and then it's brought to my attention after they do their work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So what I hear is the Minister doesn't know what's going on in his department and he's not interested in mitigating this with the First Nations in a respectful manner. Will the Minister apologize to the LKDFN for this inappropriate raid on their people and their wellness camp, elders and children? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Member from Tu NedheWiilideh, the Member in that riding, asked the same thing. As I said yesterday, and I'll said it here today, I've reached out to Chief Marlowe to have a meeting in their community to have this conversation in how we move forward. That's what I've promised, and that's what I will continue to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
