Michael Miltenberger

I don’t have that specific level of detail, but we are active, we have a full contingent at the Sahtu Land Use Planning Process, full contingent with the Deh Cho as we get back to that one, and we are fully engaged with our own staff, as well, concluding the land use and sustainability framework. We have a significant amount of time and our people and resources tied up, as well, on the water side, which is tied into land use planning, as well, I would submit.

These are public boards. We have our officials involved with the boards, as well as we provide, with the Wek’eezhii especially, advice and recommendations, along with the Tlicho Government, to the boards on various matters of interest before the board.

I don’t think it would be appropriate for us to sit here today and pick a number out of the air and do wildlife management, caribou management in the bounds of this Assembly. I appreciate the Member’s intent, and we are looking at what’s possible given the numbers that we do think are there, even though we could not conclude all the work that we...

I point out, as well, that I looked over one. The Tlicho as well have concluded, I understand, their land use plan.

One of our priorities in this Assembly that has been handed down from Assembly to Assembly for 17 Assemblies now is the whole issue of the sustainability, the balance between economic development and the environment, the land, the water, the animals. We still have that as a fundamental principle that guides us. We’re spending an enormous amount of time and money and effort not only to look and see if we can support economic development, but we’re doing many, many things on the...

What exists today is voluntary targets for the Bluenose-East, no resident harvest, no outfitters, no commercial harvest. Just a voluntary harvest for Aboriginal subsistence hunting. So what we have started is the process, given the numbers that we do have that tell us the Bluenose-East, in our opinion, even though we weren’t able to complete the full survey, are in the hundred thousand animal range, that we’re back to being able to sustain additional harvest.

That process has to go through not just ourselves and myself as Minister making the determination, but we have to work with all the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this juncture, as I laid out for Ms. Bisaro, we’re consolidating and trying to make sure we have all these other broad planning pieces in place before we proceed any farther or faster with existing wildlife areas that have been nominated and definitely not adding any others at this point. I will ask the deputy minister if he could give some of the background information of the sites and any sort of catalogue of the work that’s been done over the years.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My understanding – and I’ll ask Mr. Campbell to speak further to this – is that the majority of outfitters that the Member is talking about harvest the Bathurst herd for the most part. We have commenced discussions with the various boards, with the Bluenose-East as well. We’re having discussions with Nunavut as well as the Beverly Qamanirjuaq Board and we’ll be talking to the appropriate Aboriginal governments, as well, about the Ahiak-Beverly herd and the numbers that have come in. At this point the restrictions in the Bathurst ban area are going to continue until the...

The Protected Areas Strategy is one that’s under review with both ourselves and the federal government. There are currently six candidate areas that we’re looking at that have reached, I think it’s about step five or so of an eight step process, consolidating all of the information. As we move towards devolution, the issue of how do we manage this is becoming more critical.

We’re pulling together all of the work and reports and recommendations. There are national wildlife areas that are being proposed. In some cases we have a major area, Edehzhie in the Deh Cho that has been under discussion...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The regulations are, in fact, guidelines that the Member is referring to. There has been a lot of discussion around the FPT table with Environment Ministers. They are looking, especially in the North, at some of the challenges that those guidelines could have. The federal government has told us clearly that they’re working on the guidelines, but don’t expect any more money than you already have through the various funding sources that are already there. There is a huge concern by all jurisdictions that there could be significant costs attached to whatever is agreed to...

With the anthrax outbreak, as the Member said, it came pretty close to decimating the herd. I mean, we cut it down significantly, as much as 40 percent. We didn’t find all the animals that were killed by anthrax, so there’s a total no harvesting ban. We are going to do a survey in March to see what the herd numbers tell us. These are a threatened species. This is a management area, so we have to look at keeping somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 1,000 animals, what’s considered acceptable for mammals like that as a healthy herd. We allowed tags, once we knew they were at that level or...