Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today is follow-up from my statement to the Minister of ECC. My first question, what did the ECC do to prepare for the 2025 wildfire season? Mahsi.
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Member for the question.
You know, I'd like to start off by saying that, you know, it's early days in the season for 2025 and to date, one thing that our ECC staff did is they've already responded to ten fires in the Northwest Territories. And, unfortunately, of those ten fires, nine were human caused. I'm happy to report that all ten have been declared out.
ECC has also done a lot of work in -- that we scanned for holdover fires to ensure that we're able to properly and proactively address those. We have brought our firefighters on earlier and done larger training engagements across the Northwest Territories with more centralized groups interacting from multiple regions. We've done cross-training between structural and ECC firefighters. And this has started and will continue through the summer to ensure that our -- we have a coordinated effort when we're -- if we run into instances of wildland/urban interface fires. We've worked with the NWT Association of Communities and held wildfire preparedness workshop in Yellowknife in April 23rd to 25th. We had participants from all across the NWT, Mr. Speaker, senior staff, community governments, fire chiefs, Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, structural firefighters, and from all accounts it was a very successful endeavour. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that reply. In conjunction, I'm hoping that the Minister is also in communication with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
My second question is how is the Department of ECC implementing the recommendations from the external 2023 wildfire response review? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the MNP report that came out last year, you know, had a number of recommendations for the department, and we've agreed in principle with all of the recommendations that were put forward and we've already started planning or implementing many of them. You know, our crews and aircraft were brought on earlier to complete training. That was one of the recommendations. We've gone through and started to -- to the Member's point, you know, a collaborative effort with MACA and the rest of the GNWT to built capacity within the incident command system. We've recently implemented a qualification and certification standard across the territory. We have installed backup communications in most locations. We brought on a safety officer to help deal with health as well as mental health concerns after our staff and our members. And we've been successful in obtaining significant federal funding that will assist in implementing a wide range of wildfire prevention and mitigation and response actions. And we will continue to work with all other departments and agencies, local communities, Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, and the people of the NWT to ensure that our communities are fire resilient in the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Final supplementary. Member from the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thanks to the Minister for that response there. If I can make a suggestion: The safety officer could be -- he or she's duties expanded for community audits.
My last question there, Mr. Speaker, is how does the Department of Environment and Natural Resources protect communities from wildfires? I understand there's a FireSmart program, for example. Those types of protection proactive measures. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the department has done a fabulous job of committing to, you know, improving our wildfire preparedness across the NWT.
We've increased human and financial investment. We have the community wildfire resilience contribution program that was launched this year and is offering just under $2 million of additional investment in FireSmart implementation for communities and organizations across the territory. We're actively working with communities to provide preparedness and mitigation training.
Additionally, we've been working closely with the NWT Association of Communities to fulfill vegetation management projects within communities, community wildfire protection plans. And we assisted in having them leverage $20 million in 2022 that will support these activities through 2030.
ECC has provided recommendations and advice to communities, individuals, and other organizations on hazard assessment and risk mitigation, which can certainly assist with the emergency planning. And we've worked in 29 forested communities in the NWT to update their community wildfire protections plans, provide advice in areas to help them reduce the risk from wildfires. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
