Merci, Monsieur le President. In June 2021, the Tlicho government wrote to the federal Minister of Northern Affairs requesting a regional study for the area known as the Slave Geological Province pursuant to part 5.2 of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. It took some prodding in May, June, but the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources supported the idea of a proposed regional study including participant funding. The review board held a workshop on a regional study in June 2022, and there is further correspondence on its website on this matter, including an interesting letter from GNWT.
I support such a regional study and wrote to the federal Minister of Northern Affairs on July 15th. That was a table I or the letter I tabled yesterday in the Assembly, and I recommended that a better name for this initiative be developed to avoid the colonial underpinnings of the name associated with this area; at a minimum, the historical range of the Bathurst caribou range within the NWT and Nunavut needs to be used; a regional study should be conducted by an independent group with representation from both the Northwest Territories and Nunavut; engagement with all interested parties to develop goals, principles, alternatives, scenarios, evaluation criteria, consideration of opportunity costs and tradeoffs and modeling; cumulative effects assessment and intergenerational equity should be part of any regional study; results of any regional study need to be implemented through land use planning and subsequent project assessments; and, finally, there needs to be sufficient participant funding for Indigenous governments and civil society to bring added value to the process.
I will have questions for the Minister of Lands later today on what the GNWT position is on a regional study and how this government intends to engage residents and regular MLAs in putting forward any positions. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Nahendeh.
