Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is not unknown to legislatures or to government systems in Canada that independent reviews will contain recommendations that governments disagree with. Often when they agree with recommendations, there will be so many caveats that it might as well be a disagreement. In this case, there are 35 recommendations. One recommendation was not agreed with, and that is the recommendation to create a dedicated emergency management agency.
Many times in our parliamentary procedures here in the House, we will disagree with the government's disagreement and encourage them to accept the recommendation. We have a standing committee of public accounts. Before that, we had standing -- we had various standing committees that would review independent reports or reports of the auditor general and say the exact same thing - we disagree with your disagreement, we encourage you to accept that. The purpose of this motion is to do the same thing here, but it arises to a special attenuation in the minds of the public because it was the one recommendation that was rejected, and this wildfire evacuation review was so important to our constituents.
The findings of the report were very clear, and for me the most concerning one is the lack of trust that Northerners place in their government after that event. Trust is very slow to rebuild from governments or from anyone in a position of authority. It's easy to lose and very hard to get back. We need to do everything we can as an Assembly to ensure that the government is working to restore trust with the public. And rejecting this crucial recommendation, one of the most urgently -- one of the ones that was urged to be recommended with the same class of immediate recommendations in the report just shows how crucial this was. And reading from the report -- which I won't do at length, Mr. Speaker -- but the independent experts that we retained for this work said establishing a dedicated wraparound emergency management model, such as an agency, rather than relying on the current as-needed linear EMO, emergency management organization, approach is essential for enhancing resilience and preparedness in the Northwest Territories. Agency models effectively oversee all phases of emergency management. This fosters a culture of preparedness and ensures a nimble and coordinated response to emergencies and disasters.
They further state the agency organization would be responsible for facilitating collaboration between federal, territorial, and local governments, along with public and private organizations, to ensure a unified approach to emergency management while ensuring the local authority maintain ownership and authority for the emergency, implement strategies to reduce the risk of disasters through proactive planning, develop and maintain comprehensive territorial emergency plans, and provide clear guidelines to communities for their local plans, conduct regular training and exercises to ensure all relevant parties are aware of these plans and how they complement one another, rather than replace or hand off to one another, provide emergency management in unincorporated and special areas, and support communities to recover from disaster by providing resources, guidance, and assistance as a wraparound service.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we have heard that the concerns from the Minister are that such an agency would be seasonal. They would only work for the warm summer months and then, you know, sit around for the rest of the year doing nothing. I think just the bullet points I read out show how that could be a year-round job, you know, ensuring training is ongoing, especially in the off-season so you can be prepared for the next season; ensuring that reports and plans are well documented, well vetted; ensuring that disaster recovery efforts -- these take years to facilitate. We have multiple members in this chamber, Mr. Speaker, who have communities who are still recovering. And notably the member for Deh Cho, who had another community over the summer evacuated, and it was not a smooth evacuation. We saw that very clearly, you know.
And I said this at the time when queried by the media, I'll stop complaining about, you know, the lack of -- seemingly, the lack of care towards public safety and emergency management when the public stops complaining. Because when these evacuations are going on yes, there's people -- there's always two sides to a story, but we are hearing loudly from the community that alerts are coming too late or not at all, that firefighting activities are not listening to local community concerns, and these are all the things that a broader mandate on public safety would allow us to accomplish that we're currently not achieving as a government. And the recommendation is very clear about an agency, and it cites the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, the New Brunswick Emergency Measures Plan, and the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency as best practices. I don't think government needs to, again, take every -- just do everything the recommendations say. They're to be interpreted, to be massaged, let's figure out a way to do this. In this case, I do think we have a lot of expertise in the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. I don't think it's structured as effectively or efficiently as it could be to manage public safety. But we do have experts. We do have a strong volunteer contingent across the Northwest Territories that many members, including the Minister, who were a part of during the 2023 wildfires. So it's not that we lack the expertise, and certainly any criticism of how we manage public safety is not a criticism of the volunteers who are doing it, but it is the systems they are doing it in, which we have 165 pages to show how they were insufficient and were tested to the limit and broke under pressure. And now we are trying to fix that so it never happens again and so the public knows they can trust that their government takes their lives and their property seriously. And the fact that that's a question at all should have made it a number one priority for this government. But I would argue it's a number one priority for all governments, whether you write it down or not.
So when we look to how we can make this work, we drafted -- this motion was drafted to allow government, or to encourage rather, not just allow but to encourage government to look towards its own resources and be flexible and creative about how to meet these recommendations. If an agency isn't appropriate, a new departmental mandate might be, or maybe you could do both. Maybe there's other means to do it. But the EMO, the ad hoc, as and when, incident-based EMO, is not fit for purpose in an era where climate change is causing these disasters each and every year. We hear this all the time - it's only going to get worse from here. We get that reaffirmed every year when it happens. And recently there was reporting from experts saying it's going to happen again and increasing severity and as especially our most vulnerable communities, rural and remote communities that are very small, are impacted by these events. If the emergencies are not managed well, people are unprepared, if communities aren't prepared, we will get to a place where there is a significant loss. And I don't want to be in that place. This is preventative management of emergencies to ensure that they don't happen. And there are plenty of governments in Canada and the world that have departments of public safety and emergency preparedness.
You know, there's a way -- we've amalgamated departments in the past as well. Infrastructure is an amalgamation of transportation and public works and services. Finance is finance and human resources, maybe a few other things I've forgotten about. You know, there's a number of amalgamations that we've done to save costs so let's do that now. Sharpen the mandate of MACA, call it the Department of Public Safety; move it into justice, and now we have all of our community safety programs and our public safety programs and our emergency management in one place.
Mr. Speaker, the motion in its preamble mentioned the search and rescue report which I've raised and raised on the House as well, and the government's response to that report that was federally funded was basically we don't have an EMO that does the stuff you want or you're recommending so we can strengthen search and rescue in the territory so we're not going to do it. Not oh, we should make changes so we have better search and rescue. Because that recommendation speaks to that. It's a vast territory, Mr. Speaker. You know this. We all know this. And when people go missing, it's a real concern to the community, and there are not a lot of resources. Again, they're ad hoc, volunteer-driven resources supported by RCMP and coast guard and other officials. But the people doing the work are volunteers, and there's only one volunteer search and rescue organization in the Northwest Territories that is organized, and that's here in Yellowknife. And that's not enough. You know, when people go missing in, again, rural and remote communities in the middle of the Arctic, that's when you need to have the support of a dedicated emergency management agency that can coordinate search and rescue activities, that can coordinate resources to ensure that volunteers are trained, that resources are marshaled effectively, and that communities are prepared when people go missing. That's just one example of the ongoing work that a dedicated public safety agency could do. And there are many, many more. They're enumerated in this report.
So it just shocked me that this recommendation was rejected in the first place, that the costing, the options, the approach to how could we make this recommendation work was not taken, seemingly. I mean, I'm prepared to accept that that fact might be untrue, and there could be something we haven't considered. But at this point, questions have been asked, and the answer have been we didn't -- we dismissed it, we didn't try to make it work. And Northerners expect their government to at least try before dismissing it when the stakes are so great. And that's why this motion is here today, you know, to encourage the government to reconsider this decision that they've made and to make the right decision, which is to invest in public safety like we would invest in a major infrastructure project, like we would invest in cost savings by amalgamating departments.
We make strategic investments all the time. We know things are going to get worse, not better. And even if we do have an off-season that defies predictions and there's no evacuations, there's no disasters, that doesn't mean we don't need this because we need to be prepared when it does happen. And not just one agency, not just one department, not one division, not one community. The entire government needs to be prepared.
We saw what happened when there weren't business continuity plans, when the government was caught flat-footed, when people left the territory on planes, what that did to the organizational structure of the government. We can't afford to see these things happen again. Many steps have been taken. Yes, we acknowledge that. The government has agreed to all the other recommendations. Not fully; there are some that are only partial or general agreement. And I take issue with some of those as well, but we'll address those at another time. They're not subject to this motion. But we need to see a government that walks the talk -- or sorry, that talks the talk and walks the walk on public safety. And until we have dedicated resources to make that happen, there will be a doubt in my mind and a doubt in the minds of the people we represent. And that needs to change, and it could be changed very easily by reconsidering this decision and doing the work. And at the very least, do the work and prove to us, the MLAs, your first audience, that this can't work in the Northwest Territories when it works so well everywhere else. If you can convince us, then we're going to explain that to our constituents. But as long as we're unconvinced, we need to do more. We need to do more as a government. And the rejection of this one recommendation broke through the acceptance of the others. And that's very true in the conversations I had with my constituents, in the conversations I hear in the community, and that's why it's here on the floor today.
So I urge this House to support this motion and to tell the government a strong message that this House cares about public safety, and we care about the great expense and the time and effort that went into the report that produced this recommendation, and we want to see it implemented, all recommendations fully so we have a territory that we know is safe and secure come what may in the future as we live in increasingly uncertain times.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And at the appropriate time, I will request a recorded vote.
The Member for Range Lake. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. The Member for Frame Lake. The Member for Great Slave. The Member for Mackenzie Delta. The Member for Yellowknife North. The Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. The Member for Sahtu. The Member for Yellowknife Centre.
All those opposed, please stand. All those abstaining, please stand.
The Member for Thebacha. The Member for Yellowknife South. The Member for Hay River North. The Member for Hay River South. The Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. The Member for Nunakput.
Colleagues, 9 in favour. Zero opposed. 6 abstaining. The motion has been carried.
---Carried
