Debates of August 28, 2023 (day 161)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Rule 8.2(2), I seek consent to proceed with second reading of Bill 98, An Act to Amend the Emergency Management Act, at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. The Member is seeking unanimous consent to proceed with second reading of Bill 98 at this time. Are there any objections? Hearing none, Member, you have consent. Please proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues and Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the Member for Great Slave, that Bill 98, An Act to Amend the Emergency Management Act be read for the second time. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. If you'd like

Okay. No, no, I think I still have to proceed; sorry about that.

Mr. Speaker, the word "Indigenous" and "Aboriginal" cannot be found in the existing Emergency Management Act, and there is nothing in the act requiring coordination with Indigenous government or organizations in carrying out of emergency management duties. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Yellowknife North.

Mr. Speaker, will you just let the seconder speak first perhaps. Thank you.

Sorry, I didn't see your hand there. Member for Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to my colleague. I had written in the chat that I did want to speak to this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have spent the time since I left Yellowknife late Thursday evening dealing with numerous uncountable emails and messages and phone calls from people who have been evacuating and leaving the North. Many of these people are Indigenous. They have been reaching out to me. And in my time spent since this has started, I have become aware that there were no conversations with Indigenous governments ahead of all of this evacuation. No opportunity for Indigenous governments to bring their people home, no supports to bring them home. The people in Behchoko do not have food right now, which is part of the reason I chose to leave the community. Everybody is relying on a Northern store that has no supplies, that's getting a truck every now and then, and people are not being allowed into Yellowknife to do their shopping, including the elders home.

When I see all of this happening and I listen and see within the community the ability to have taken care of their own people, I wonder why they were not consulted by this Cabinet who talks a lot about their Indigenous relationships but when push came to shove, there was no conversation as all of the public service left Yellowknife and put a bunch of people on planes. And when I stood in that line around that lineup at Sir John, I did not see the higher level senior management public servants standing there. In fact, I know most of them left before the order even was made public or told to us as MLAs.

As this all has progressed, I have become aware of 50 to 70 homeless people that were dropped off at evacuation centres in the south, mostly Indigenous. One has OD'd and perhaps will probably die here in the next while. There has been a death of a person from Fort Smith that's been evacuated. And there has been a person badly burnt in the evacuation of Hay River that was then hit by a car due to the mass panic of people leaving the territory. So when I look at all of this and I look at the capabilities of our communities and I hear our Premier say that other communities and other MLAs

to the principle of the bill.

Thank you. I believe that Indigenous governments should have been consulted and given the opportunity to deal with their own people before they were shipped south to be treated terribly down there. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Great Slave. To the principle of the bill. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess in I guess as a point of procedure, I received this bill a couple hours ago and when I looked it, it requires the emergency management organization to coordinate with Indigenous governments. It's not necessarily clear what "coordinate" means. My understanding of how the emergency management organization works. The team was kind of a fluid organization. You know, sometimes Joint Task Force North is there, sometimes a specific community government is there. It depends where and what emergency we are dealing with at any given time.

You know, I'm not necessarily opposed to the principle of this bill but it is my understanding that the sponsor of the bill is wishing to move it through unanimous consent to third reading today. That is not something I'm willing to support. I will vote in favour of it in second reading, and I will vote in favour of it to send to the committee to properly do their work. I just want to note in committee, I have spent hours and hours debating single words in legislation and something that is going to alter how our emergency management organization works in the middle of an emergency warrants that thorough review by the Standing Committee on Government Operations.

You know, hopefully, with that committee and the Member and the Members of the EMO can get before committee, before the end of this Assembly, and we can do a proper review. I'm not sure that this solves the problem that the sponsor wants about further coordination or better coordination with Indigenous governments. I don't want to get too off the principle of the bill.

I do have concerns about the way the emergency management organization operates and the way it coordinates with different levels of government. I believe there are fundamental disagreements of who is responsible for things in this current emergency, whether that is a municipality or the GNWT. I think some of the communication has been lacking out of the emergency management organization, and I know we are all very anxious to see return plans and to see a lot of information come out of that decisionmaking body. I'm not even clear who's exactly on that decisionmaking body and who's making the decisions when it's a federal decision, when it's a territorial, and when it's a municipal decision. These are not new concerns. We've expressed them a couple of times. The EMOs been stood up for different things.

I get emergency management, it's not always perfect, it can't always be perfect. That's the nature of it. But I'm just not convinced that this bill solves all the problems we want to be solved and, in fact, it may cause further problems and all of a sudden changing what is the structure of our emergency management organization that has been set up. So I hope it gets through second reading and committee can have a thorough and, you know, as much time as we got left we got another month now in this Assembly, to try and figure out some of those problems. But thank you to the sponsor of the bill. I hope that the government hears her concerns and the EMO hears her concerns about, you know, bringing in the Tlicho government and those governments that, you know, were not directly evacuated but now sitting in a territory with questionable supply lines. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the mover and the seconder for bringing forward the bill, but the public should know that we received by email exactly one hour before this special sitting. So I really haven't had a lot of time to consider the bill, and I think it's kind of very unusual to get a bill in this manner. Of course, these are very unusual times.

I do share, I think the intent of wanting to improve emergency management, and I think that's a shared value amongst us all and if it isn't, we are not doing our jobs. But I guess I do question about whether this is the right approach.

I'm not sure that I can agree with all the points that the Member for Great Slave raised. I think at the initial part of the evacuation, things were chaotic and perhaps communications can and should be improved, but it's not my understanding of the work that's being done now with Indigenous governments. Perhaps there's some room for improvement, but I don't think that this bill would necessarily do that even in the current emergency that we're in.

I guess I also think that we need to very carefully take the necessary time to do a proper review and evaluation of what's happened in the current emergency with the evacuation orders and the response as well, and my view is that I think that would, I guess, be done probably by an independent third party. And that's in no way any criticism of any of our staff, the firefighters. They need to be a central part of whatever review takes place. But certainly the nature and of fire is changing as the climate is changing. It's a climate emergency, and I think where the nature of fires changed dramatically over the last few years and that needs to be part of whatever review takes place. Like my colleague from Yellowknife North, I'm not sure that it's it cannot happen within the lifetime of this Assembly. I think we need to be very honest. I think if we have a sitting in September, that'll be an opportunity to ask some questions, have a debate around all of this, but we're still in the midst of this emergency and I think we need to focus our time and effort on getting the work done to protect our communities, getting the supporting the firefighters, the contractors, the volunteers that are doing the work, and working on behalf of our constituents, many of whom have been evacuated, to make sure that their needs are met as well. So I think our time and effort would be much better spent on those areas.

I did have a look at the current legislation, and, you know, section 6(4) of the current legislation, this is where, under the direction of the Minister, the emergency management organization shall do a number of things. I will acknowledge that coordination with Indigenous governments is not mentioned in this bill, but it certainly does sorry, in the legislation itself, but it does speak to the issue of emergency support, the emergency management activities of local authorities. So, yeah, that could probably be fine-tuned. But I'm not convinced that doing this on the fly like this is the best way necessarily to address the issue, the problem. In fact, it may even be more desirable to better define membership in the emergency management organization and what sort of scope and breadth that it deals with in particular kinds of situations. But I'm not an expert in this area, but I think it does warrant some public debate and discussion but as part of a broader more comprehensive thoughtful review.

All that being said, Mr. Speaker, I'm prepared to have this bill go to second reading and, like my colleague from Yellowknife North, have it studied by a committee or, indeed, in the context of a broader review of, you know, the emergency and our response, but I'm not prepared to have this go to third reading today. And if unanimous consent is sought to do that, I will nay simply because I'm not convinced that this is necessarily the best approach. I'll also need more time to look at this, and I think it should be part of a much more comprehensive review of what's happening and we need, again, Mr. Speaker, to focus our efforts on supporting those that are working and putting their own lives at risk to support to sorry, protect our communities. So that's where I think our effort would be best directed. Mahsi, Monsieur le President.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Nahendeh.

So first and foremost, I've been in touch with the impacted IG leaders. MACA has been meeting daily with Tlicho. I can tell you that right now. The Yellowknife Yellowknife is working in partnership with Yellowknife Dene, and there are several senior GNWT staff in Yellowknife working.

Mr. Speaker, amending the Emergency Management Act in the middle of a severe ongoing emergency response is not safe or a responsible thing to do. The act provides the structure to coordinate emergency response through a territorial emergency management organization called TEMO. The TEMO includes representatives from jurisdictions actively responding to the emergency, including federal agency, territorial government, department and local governments. These folks work under incredible difficult circumstances to action activities quickly under an incident command model, which is best practice for emergency response around the world.

I commend the work that the Tlicho government, Gwich'in government, Inuvialuit Regional Council, Deline government, and other Indigenous governments and organizations for taking action to support their residents, and we'll continue to commit to have our officials as they are available to work collaboratively to support our shared goals. I cannot, however, agree that we should be retooling our emergency management in the middle of a crisis.

Presently, we have seven communities that are evacuated from their homes. Implementing structural changes to our EMO in the middle of a crisis is not fair to the people already working, the organization, and they need to be able to rely on predictable approaches and clear responsibilities as they're doing their work. To suddenly and without planning 15 new organizations are added to the response activity, I am gravely concerned that TEMO's ability to function as intended and as needed. Right now local governments are part of the TEMO and, in some cases, the local government is the Indigenous government. I recognize that we should be doing some work to consider better or defining roles for Indigenous governments in the TEMO. That day is not today.

What we can do today is to commit to work with all Indigenous governments and have a proper review of the Emergency Management Act when circumstance allow. So, therefore, Mr. Speaker, we will Cabinet will be naying this second reading or going to the third reading. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to thank the mover and the seconder of the bill as well because I think it does have merit. As far as I'm concerned, Indigenous participation is important and paramount when it comes to protection of our land, forests, and communities. However, Mr. Speaker, for me, at this time, knowing what's taken place in Hay River, Fort Smith, and Yellowknife, I don't think it's appropriate to change this piece of legislation at this point without consultation from all Indigenous governments. Some thought has to be put into this, and it's probably something that's best left for the future government. So I don't mind it, I guess, going to you know, moving on, but, you know, I can't support a change at this point in time. I think we got too much work ahead of us and right now, for me, you know, being in Hay River for you know, for the, you know, most of the what's happening here for the last week or two weeks, you know, we're in the fight to save our community and other communities are in the same boat as well, and then that's where our focus has to be. It has to be on our communities, and it has to be on the people at this point in time. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Hay River South. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Kam Lake.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, before we move on, I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank both the mover and the seconder for bringing this forward. I think that this is a really important conversation to be had, and I appreciate when people use private Member's bills in order to move things that they are passionate about and that are important to the people of the Northwest Territories. I wanted to just thank the Member for Monfwi for bringing this forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. I will allow the Member for Monfwi to do closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's good to hear what my colleagues think of this, of the bill. Mr. Speaker, you know that everybody knows climate change is here. It's maybe it's here to stay, or it's going you know, it's going to be different next year. We're not too sure, you know. But at this time, we are dealing with hot and dry weather. Minister of ECC said on the news article in a newspaper that this year he knew it was going to be a dry and hot summer, yet we feel they did not do enough to fight the fire that went that, you know, like, that burned out of control. And in the process, with the evacuations and all that, it created a lot of chaos. It displaced a lot of our people. Yes, I understand about 6.4(b), the local authority, but the local authority is not Indigenous government or Indigenous organizations. So what we're trying to do is that we want to put Indigenous government, to recognize Indigenous government or Indigenous organizations to work with us in coordinations, in coordinating some kind of to work with our organizations I'm sorry, I'm just a little bit upset here because to work with us, to work with the Indigenous government to do a better job of coordinating a plan. Instead, what they did now is, like I mean, like, just like one of my colleagues says, what happened in the south. We lost some members from the North, you know, and we are worried about the vulnerable people. So that's why we wanted to put in here Indigenous government, to recognize the Indigenous government.

We cannot be second class citizen anymore, and that's what you guys are doing. This is what the government is doing. We're second class. Like, all this was happening in our land and we were we were not consulted. Tlicho government was not consulted. Other Indigenous government were not consulted about the state of emergency and about the evacuation that was going to happen in Yellowknife because that state of emergency put our life at risk, and there's still 28 communities that we have to consider. And that 28 communities and they're still, okay, half of Yellowknife is gone, or almost all of Yellowknife population is gone, and along with the South Slave, but there's still 15,000 people here. And it is us that's going to be here, not we know we lost some some Northwest Territories residents as a result of all this, as a result of the evacuation. Some of them are not going to come back. We know that, you know.

So I wanted to say that, Mr. Speaker, in times like this, many of our elders have said, you know, we may not like each other but make an effort to work with each other to move forward. We should put our political difference aside and try to work with each other to support each other to move this government forward. This is not about us. It's not about the Cabinet. It's not about all the Regular MLAs. It is about the people of the Northwest Territories. So we don't have to go through another chaos like this, because the climate change is here to stay. And the expert that Minister keep referring to, well the expert needs help. They need to work well with the Indigenous government, Indigenous knowledge. For me, I don't consider them expert because they did not include the traditional knowledge. They did not include our elders who are the keepers of the land. And you guys, all of you, all of you Indigenous should know this. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Monfwi. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill. Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too want to just thank the mover of the motion and the seconder for their intent of the motion. I think a good review that will take place with the next Assembly will be we'll know what happened and what was wrong and what was right and but I'm not going to be questioning some of the you know, I want to remain calm because that's what my constituents would appreciate. I know for a fact as a former chief of the Salt River First Nation that I've been chief for 14 years, and Indigenous governments in the community of Fort Smith were always kept informed throughout the steps of every step until the evacuation. The mayor and council and the person in charge of EMO in Fort Smith was were all consulted, including myself. And I was always updated by the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Minister of ECC. I was always kept informed and, you know, I'm not a computer person. Everybody knows that. And so they either text me and then I'd look at my emails, because I know how to do that, and I was able to navigate everything that I've done for the people of Fort Smith. At this point, I really do not want to sound like you know, there might have been some communication gaps but those communication gaps were for me to make sure that the communication gap was addressed. Every MLA has to do that. That's my job. I was, like I said previously, the 1800 number. I'm not going to be questioning what the first responders are doing or not doing. It's not up to me because I know they're trying to save my community, which is still at risk. Okay, when you have 30degree 30degree Celsius at this time of year, that's unusual, but I will not be saying that we have to go ahead and go ahead and do the EMO bill that the private Member's bill that's before us. I will not be supporting that at this time. You can't do that in the middle of the emergency. There's a time and place for everything. And in the next Assembly, or in the next sitting in September, we'll have a debate on this. And I will not be supporting the amendment of Bill 98 in the second in this second reading. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Member for Thebacha. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill.

Question.