Michael Miltenberger

At this point, we’re looking at agreements that would last 15 or 20 years.

The acronym MARS stands for Mutual Aid Resource Sharing Agreement. That is the agreement that encompasses the arrangements for fire suppression sharing of resources. Thank you.

This is not a federal program. When it’s a federal program, all the provinces and territories have agreements signed with each other. So if there’s a significant demand in, for example, Ontario and they need help and they call us and we’re able to send people, we will do that and we will recover our costs. Henceforth, going forward forevermore it will be listed right now under page 13-38 under work performed on behalf of others. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the comments from the Member. In regard to the reduced budget, part of the money that’s in the budget from last year that is not there this year yet is about $6 million that we got through special warrant and through the House to fight fires. So chances are, given the issue of the base budget, and the fact that things are drying out rapidly, and the relative humidity is dropping, and we’ve already had some fire starting, we will be back requesting further funding to fight fires as they do arise. So the $9 million, as the Member said, it is actually what we...

Mr. Speaker, in 1997 the governments of Canada, the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan signed the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement. When we signed, our governments agreed on the principles for co-managing the Mackenzie River Basin’s water ecosystems. We also made plans for signing bilateral agreements between each of our provinces and territories.

It took us longer than we’d planned, but we are making progress on the bilateral agreements. This follows the work that happened in the 16th Assembly to develop a Water Stewardship...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The list that the Member outlined I think is fairly progressive and it’s reflected in the number of collisions that ENR has in their database. There’s been a steady decline since 2009. There’s 17 collisions in 2009, six in 2010, five in 2011, none so far in 2012. I think the work is paying off and the ultimate responsibility, of course, for the control and care of the vehicle is that of the driver and making sure they drive appropriately given the conditions on the road, be it the condition of the road itself and if there are animals in the vicinity. Not just bison...

In regard to the initial question that the Member asked me to repeat, there are basically two tracks when it comes to the regulatory reform. What’s happened in the Yukon is they just accepted delegated authority from the federal government, keeping the federal legislation in place and they just administer that legislation which, of course, makes any type of amendments very difficult.

The other track is one where there’s mirrored legislation where there’s an agreement to develop northern legislation that would mirror the current federal legislation, a similar process that was used when division...

The numbers agreed to for the A-based funding, which the Member is referring to, which is to compensate and offset the cost of taking over all the positions and programs, is in the neighbourhood of I think $63 million. That is the figure that is enshrined in the agreement-in-principle and that is the figure that we are negotiating for that is part of that, as is the other part of that financial equation, which is the resource royalty sharing, which will be about $60,000 this year, which was up to 5 percent of our gross expenditure base, up to 5 percent of their gross expenditure base. Those...

I’ll commit to have the ENR officials contact the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to get a full update on that particular issue which I will share with the Member.

There have been discussions with DFO with the community. There have been quotas put on. Especially during this time of year when the fish are running. There have been the renewable resources officers on the water more often and if they’re taken away by other fire duties, for example, we’ve in the past as well had local fish monitors making sure to check the fishing that’s going on. We’ve been making sure that all the folks that are fishing have the proper licences and making sure that the catches are within the established limits. Once again, I’ll look forward to having a more detailed...