Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for that response, Deputy Minister. That was interesting information on the mobile zones. Sounds like a unique opportunity there.

We are, again, just to repeat, we’ve clearly failed with caribou management and I can guarantee as a biologist and a keen observer that we will fail with the Bluenose-East herd unless this government gets up the gumption to close the season when the cow harvest is filled because the cow harvest will not stop. If the cow harvest has been filled, then we know that many more cows have been killed than the department is aware of. How many...

Two questions. So we’ve gone from 2,100 now down to two. That’s an interesting leap. What the public is demanding and has demanded…and the Premier’s strategy of giving them a website to look at will work. Over time, people will lose interest, be disconnected from government and there will be no transparency as the Premier would like. Clearly, what’s needed is some real interaction.

Again, when will the Premier put out a plain language version of all these acts to people and put out word when the meetings will be, where they will be and give them a real opportunity to have some input and make...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That clears it up for me. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, that sounds good. It sounds like there are good discussions happening there. Will there be a public process to make sure that… As you know, the public regards this area as of extremely high interest and it’s a high use area. Will the Minister be going to the public for discussions as well? Or perhaps he already has.

Again, I will leave it at that. That’s my last question. I look forward to the document that’s coming forward on protected areas. I’ll be looking for an update on ecological representation in that document. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I ran out of time there as the Minister was wondering about how to define people who live in situations that I was trying to describe. I just thought I’d make the offer to work with him on that. Some of the things that come to mind is they get most of their food off the land from hunting and gathering. If they have children, the children are either home schooled or they have to leave home to go to school because schools are not accessible on a daily basis. The residents themselves rarely get into town and that sort of thing.

Again, I offer to help the Minister to help the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for that information. I will look forward to that.

My last question is: Have we advanced any new conservation areas under the Territorial Parks Act in the last two or three years? Where are we headed with that? Thank you.

Would the Minister commit to doing an inventory of the number of people that live out on the land? I don’t recall suggesting that the compensation would need to be more than a trapper receives, although perhaps there would be consideration for that since trappers don’t typically live on the land these days. Thank you.

I guess a couple of things. It sounds like the statement now is incorrect and needs to be updated. The first line on page 92, “responsible for regional land use plan,” I guess that would now be Lands that’s doing that with the participation of ENR. Maybe the Minister could just review that.

Second, I think the responsibility of the Minister is with regard to conservation of lands. How can this government be pursuing something like the Slave Geological Province highway without doing the conservation and planning work beforehand? Thank you.

Thank you. I look forward to that. Will we see some policy gaps being identified, and if they have, will we be seeing some proposals to address them?

I’ll leave it at that, other than noting that it’s 11 months. Thank you.