Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my statement on holdover fires aka zombie fires, my first question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, in preparation for the upcoming 2024 summer fire season what is the Department of ECC doing to assess holdover fires in our territory? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Member, for the question. I would say climate change and the extended drought that we've had over the last couple of years has certainly shown us the need to be proactive in how we're approaching these types of fires over the winters, and I think one of the things that we're doing is we're monitoring. We've got staff currently monitoring fires throughout the winter. And as the fall came and last fire season ended late in October, staff identified that these are potential challenges for the early spring. So the department has worked to plan to bring our staff and resources on earlier in the spring to ensure that we're prepared and ready to address any of the existing fires that were held over over the winter. There's a plan to do aerial as well as drone scanning early in the spring as well as having staff on the ground also doing assessments on fires. Currently, as they're monitoring over the winter, there has been some action on a fire at Paradise Gardens outside of Hay River because there was significant smoke that was bellowing from there that was bothering some of the residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that response.
Moving on to my next question, I'm glad to see that there is a monitoring assessment and an inventory of these holdover fires in the different locations across the territory. In particular, I've heard remarks made to me on several sites along the winter road south of Tulita, so if the Minister could put that on the radar for assessment.
My next question is is there communications underway with each community on the assessment and inventory catalog to the holdover fires close to the communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, annually the department regional wildfire management staff teams undertake community engagement every winter as part of an annual process. They meet with all the community governments, Indigenous governments, Indigenous leaders, and community members, provide them with information regarding wildfire response. And then also the community members are given an opportunity to bring forward their concerns from the past fire season, more concerns or thoughts they have on the upcoming fire season, and there's a public forum which gives them an opportunity to address those issues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My last question to the Minister on the subject here is I'm very glad that there's a working relationship, more importantly communication with the department and the communities so the community leaders could feel very comfortable and safe as we approach the summer months here.
My next question is, is the department working to upgrade the emergency response plans in each community? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the emergency response plans are the responsibility of the community governments, and they're the ones that are responsible to prepare, adopt, and maintain the emergency plans and programs, including reviewing their emergency response plans annually. Environment and climate change is indirectly involved with these plans as they move forward or as they come into implementation in that we provide, you know, support and information to those activities. Over the winter, I know MACA will be delivering community emergency planning workshops to assist community governments in developing, updating their community emergency plans. MACA's also been delivering tabletop exercise workshops for community governments who want to validate their emergency plan and increase preparedness through practice. MACA has also had a wide variety of tools and supports for community governments for their emergency management role to add and build to capacity, including community emergency plan templates, an EMO portal for community governments to assess tools and templates to assist with community emergency management programs, a community emergency management video series to educate community emergency management officials on basic emergency management in the NWT emergency management system, and programming to be involved in the incident command system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from the Tu NedheWiilideh.
