Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Members of this Assembly have spoken at length on the importance of hiring Indigenous people. Will the Minister at ECC tell us how many ECC firefighters there are in total and how many are Indigenous? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister responsible for Environment and Climate Change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Member for the question. NWT fire crews type 1 firefighters, we had 34 crews, which is 12 person crews, for 136 extra firefighters, EFFs were 324, for a total of 460. So if you look at the breakdown of Indigenous populations of the BeauDel was 89 percent. Deh Cho was 100 percent. North Slave was 100 percent. Sahtu was 99 percent. And the South Slave was 97 percent. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very impressive numbers, and it's good to hear.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard about the challenges of certifying type 1 firefighters who were the frontline firefighters during the summer. Will the Minister tell us how ECC utilized these firefighters who were trained but not certified? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about certifications, it's type 1 firefighters. Those are the firefighters that we certify so that if we have to export them, then it's a standard thing across Canada. So we had, like I said, 136 that were certified that were able to then be exported. We didn't export too many firefighters this year because of the season. But the 324 other ones that were trained, they were EFF, so they're our type 3 firefighters. So they mop up things. You see them out there working just as hard as our type 1 firefighters. So that's where we did. So when people took the training, we still utilize them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I thank the Minister for that. Mr. Speaker, we have heard about retired ECC firefighters coming back to this fire season to help with firefighting efforts, which I know we all appreciate. Will the Minister describe how many retired firefighters returned and what their roles and responsibilities were? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, due to this fire season, we actually brought ten retirees back in. Seven of them were Indigenous people. So most of these people, actually of those ten, were incident commanders. So they were actually the ones that were working on the fires. They were the ones giving the direction, how they were going to fight the fires. So we were able to do that. But I had an opportunity to talk to one in Fort Smith and a couple in Yellowknife and as well as one in Hay River. And I talked to them about the work there. And they appreciated that, you know, that they were able to come in. They saw what the fire situation was going to be, where the weather was, so they came up and they volunteered their time.
I also have to recognize there was one Indigenous contractor who is doing work this summer, and he saw the fires and the impact on the roads. So he actually came to the office in Hay River and volunteered his time. So his business, actually, got put to the side and he started fighting fires as a crew chief. And so he was out there doing that work there. And I know we can't recognize people's names and that, but I have to say thank you to all 11 people. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I guess I know who the Minister is speaking about, and I thank him for his service as well in volunteering.
Mr. Speaker, has the Minister received any feedback or is he expecting or asked for feedback from those retired firefighters on their experiences and observation of this year's fire season and how will that feedback be used? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we did talk to them. I've actually had, like I said, conversations with five of the or sorry, seven of the ten retirees. And the first thing, without even me prompting, you know, I just asked them why, and they said because we knew the season was going to be bad. We had an individual in Fort Smith who was retired and saw the situation and he already, before the evacuation, was getting ready to leave. When the officers the regional office superintendent reached out to him and asked he said, yeah, let's get to her. And he said look, it was a severe drought, the weather conditions, he said fires didn't act the way they normally do. And he said that the work that these people put their lives on the line and, unfortunately, we did lose one firefighter and we had a number of people injured, these people were fighting the fire situation that was different. We will be engaging them with our afteraction review plan because this was very knowledgeable. They had some of them 40 years of experience, and they've said they could not ever see this situation as bad as it was. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
