Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following two documents: Northwest Territories 911 20222023 Annual Report; and, Municipal and Community Affairs Wildfire 2023 - High Level Chronology. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess I didn't make myself clear, and I apologize to the House and the public out there. It's going to be my recommendation to the next Assembly I repeat the next Assembly, not this Assembly here. We only got two weeks left. So there is no way we could do justice to the work that needs to be done. So what we're saying is that we're making the recommendation to the next government, whether Cabinet and AOC, to look at this, develop a terms of reference, develop a special committee to do the work. It can't be done, and we don't want to shortchange the work that needs to be done. We need to be...

Thank you. That's kind of both portfolios. So we will be both both departments will be doing an afteraction review of what the situation is. With ECC, we deal with individual situations that are impacting communities. So there will be I call it a number of chapters that we're having impacted communities that were with the wildfire. So we'll be doing that. And then we will do an overall review of the impact of the fire season itself.

Now, in regards to Municipal and Community Affairs, it's going to be an independent report. We will be going out to the public. We will be going out, and we will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with those type of questions, I would encourage the Member to reach out to the Minister of Finance and Minister of Infrastructure to answer the energy and finance. I know Members on the other side think that I have all the answers, but other departments have the work that do the work on this area. So I would encourage the Member to reach out to them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at the end of June 2023, I wrote to the Paradise Gardens residents to advise that the GNWT is not amending the DAP to provide for a different approach. The GNWT is providing the eligible claim under DAP. The government is also directing or directly paying for damage assessments, emergency work, structural assessments, mitigation assessments, and property appraisals. Finally, the GNWT is also providing mitigation funding of up to or of $75,000 per claim. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Disaster Assistance Policy has been applied to both the 2022 flood and the 2023 fire season, and this tool that will continue to be used to help those who have experienced property losses or damages during these events. The DAP does not contain specific buyout or buy back language, but its provisions do accomplish similar results in supporting home and business owners to relocate if they choose to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to recognize this year's historic wildfire season, the challenges faced by so many NWT residents and others across Canada, and the heroic efforts of firefighters and emergency management personnel to protect our communities.

Before the 2023 wildfire season began, weather forecasts predicted an early start to the season and a high risk for many areas in the NWT. We saw record temperatures, little rain, and severe drought throughout the summer and fall. All of this resulted in extreme fire conditions for most of the season.

Based on the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm not going to speculate on what conditions or where that I would take some time to think about it. So right now, I will not be able to answer that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thursday wasn't perfect. I had conversations with the military. The military people that were there helping us were pretty calm about it. They said, for the first day, it's actually going pretty smoothly. Yes, was there a long lineup? Yes. Were flights not ready to go? Yes. But I can tell you the next day we had people out and when people were registering, we were getting them on flights. We had the military that brought in four extra crews to help us get those flights out. So we did have that. We were still within the timeframe that we had. I understand where the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, ECC has internal funding available each year to help communities implement their community wildfire protection plan, which can include building of fuel breaks. I can advise this House that we work with NWTAC who successfully applied for $20 million of disaster mitigation and adaptation funding from the federal government. That money will be as I said yesterday, will be brought forth to NWTAC and they're going to give it allocate it to the communities, those 29 communities.

Mr. Speaker, NWTAC realizes that work needs to be done now. So they've reach out and...