Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to be able to introduce a constituent and friend from Fort Smith, Mr. Keith Hartery, visiting and contemplating becoming a nursing student to add further to his service in the North. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a process based on volume, large organizations, governments, corporations, traditionally go to airlines, in some cases they go to hotels, and they negotiate these types of rates that are accessible and a benefit to folks when they are travelling and in some cases with government, even when you’re just travelling on your own, if you’re an employee you can also use the fact that you’re a government employee. So that’s a negotiated arrangement with the different hotel chains and motel chains in some cases.

In the Northwest Territories we have a process in terms of how we prioritize access to wildlife and caribou in this case that has its basis in the Constitution where we talk about the Aboriginal rights to harvest for Metis, Indian and Inuit people. We have a list. When there are restrictions, Aboriginal subsistence harvest gets protected and we work our way down from commercial harvest to resident harvest, and then the last to be protected at all costs is the Aboriginal subsistence harvest. That is the basis that we have made all our decisions on, and that is what guides us in our decision...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have, in the Northwest Territories, an agreed-to process for the management of wildlife in settled claims. That process is going to be involved with the Bluenose-East and involves the Tlicho, Sahtu and Inuvialuit, which are all public boards. They are going to be working with the department and we’re going to be reviewing those numbers. We’re going to be looking at pressures and going through that process. They will come back to myself as Minister and to the department with their recommendations.

The Member raises a good point. If I could point to the work done by the Porcupine Caribou Management Board where they, over a number of years, came to an agreement on the very issue and process that the Member has so astutely suggested as a way forward, which is to agree on numbers that are triggers to certain kinds of action. If they get low enough it triggers a ban. Once there’s an improvement to a certain number, it triggers certain specific conditions. If it gets healthy enough, then there are no specific harvest restrictions. What has precluded us from doing that is being able to work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That process is now going to be underway. We’ve stabilized the fall. The numbers went from almost 500,000 in the 1980s down to 32. There has been a modest recovery from that point within our margin for error. The co-management boards, and all the biologists, and all the people on the boards will be looking at that management plan. The Wek’eezhii board plan is good for another year, which we have signed off on and agreed with. Their job, in terms of the Bathurst, is to review that and they will determine based on the science, the numbers, the feedback from the...

One of the most obvious areas that we want to monitor, of course, is the water, the Mackenzie, which comes through Great Slave Lake which in turn goes through the Slave into the Peace-Athabasca. There are monitoring efforts being looked at all the way from northern Alberta down right to the Arctic Ocean.

We are committed to this community-based water monitoring initiative that will give us that baseline information that will allow us to check the water, fish and sediments. It will also allow us for some of the airborne pollutants, as well, that we can hopefully measure.

If we are going to track...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What is in the works is a territory-wide, community-based water monitoring system that we are in the process of setting up with the ENR and the communities and the Aboriginal government so that, in fact, we can start addressing some of those very concerns that his constituent Mr. Manuel raised.

I understand that in some cases the Aboriginal governments, the Dene Nation or other Aboriginal governments would negotiate their own rate, be it with airlines or with hotels where they are patrons on a steady basis, or in some cases, up north where they actually buy and own the hotels, they have that advantage. If the Member is suggesting that we somehow partner up, I’d be glad to get the information and review the issue with Finance and the Member to see what’s possible in terms of that kind of arrangement. I don’t know if there’s any kind of group rate that the First Nations or Aboriginal...

Gobbledy-gook implies that it’s unintelligible and no one can understand what I’m saying. I think the Member can understand what I’m saying, he just doesn’t like it. So let me repeat the issue. We have a process in the Northwest Territories and across the land. There has been pressures on the herds. There have been decisions made by the management boards that we have agreed with, that have put restrictions on almost every herd. Some of them there are total bans, way up north. On some they’ve, like the Bathurst, there was a requirement from myself as Minister three years ago to make a decision...