Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have the responsibility and the capacity. Coming out of the Water Strategy that took four years to do, there were two major issues. One was get the transboundary agreements done with Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the Yukon, and the other one was to come up with some good water monitoring, community-based water monitoring so we could do the work at the community level, work with the communities, which we’ve done, incorporated traditional knowledge, which we have done, to set up a community-based water monitoring system that would allow us to take the...

There’s been extensive contact and involvement of the media in this issue. I’ve just laid out a very comprehensive plan that we’ve taken to involve all the communities and Aboriginal governments and the public government to sit down in a very timely, compressed way to make decisions and to come up with options for the leadership that’s going to gather early in November. There will be decisions made early in November that will allow us to make the necessary decisions to protect the herds, the Bathurst and the Bluenose.

I would point out that the Member is very, very big on process and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First let me say that I appreciate the Member’s statement and we share the concern of the Member. We have had to call back, or we called together all of the Aboriginal governments, scientific staff and our folks. We’ve had one meeting with the political leadership a few weeks back to look at the results from the Bathurst herd survey, which indicates the herd has continued to decline now into the range of 15,000 animals, down from a high in the mid ‘80s, 1986, from about 460,000 animals. As well, we look at the numbers of the Bluenose-East, which had declined in the area...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The business case for Stanton as a P3 project was done last March and shared with the committee last March. There is a process underway. There has been no contractor picked or signed yet. A lot of final decisions have yet to be made in terms of what will exactly be included in the P3 project, what kind of hard services will be potentially part of that project. So, there is still a process underway.

I don’t have much more to add to what the Minister has already stated other than that, as he has pointed out, this P3 process is very prevalent now across the country. The...

Thank you. The intent would be to use the ENR staff that is available in the communities in the Member’s riding to be contacted within the nearest specific community. Thank you.

I don’t have that specific number, it would vary by year, but I will get that information for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do apologize to the Member for the protracted process that that strategy has, and I will commit to him that we will have a final strategy for him before we come back for the winter session.

The tax rate has not gone up. Consumption has tended to increase over time. So the taxes have gone up, but the tax rates haven’t gone up since the ‘90s. Thank you.

We deal with the beaver as we do with any other animal under our Trapping Program. There’s a price that’s there for fur, and people are encouraged and we support trapping and all the trapping initiatives to make sure that we do have folks that trap and that they pass those skills on to the children. We don’t have a specific program specifically targeted at beaver. We do have some special attention paid to wolves, trying to encourage folks to harvest them and receive some benefit from that.

The Member made a comment about the populations skyrocketing. I’d have to check that with our staff, of...

There have been hundreds of thousands of dollars put into baseline work. We know that we need it on a regional basis, but clearly, we’re looking at starting near where the proposed activity, or potentially, will be. There has been work ongoing over the last couple of years, and that work is slated to continue as we work to get that critical information not only on baseline for water, groundwater, surface water but also for wildlife.