Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to state again that the fire was actioned as conditions allowed from start on August 2nd. The tragic event on August 13th were because of the environmental conditions and extreme wind event. Wind gusted higher than forecasted in the area that already had severe drought and burning conditions. Our team worked with the best information available from the beginning of this fire and used the tools and approaches available to us. The unfortunate reality is that we had a perfect storm of buildup of forest fuel, very high drought codes, and extreme...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, it's the community. Hay River evacuated that. They called evacuation. What happened there, we declared a state of emergency. We declared a state of emergency not because of just Yellowknife. We had Inuvik being threatened. We had Kakisa. We had Jean Marie. We evacuated Hay River, Fort Smith, and K'atlodeeche First Nation, Enterprise. We were seeing we're not like Alberta. We don't have all these aircrafts that we needed and we were sitting there seeing that we needed to get these aircrafts to be able to do that. Part of the evacuation...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, we've already started to turn our attention to the lessons learned on the emergency management side. People have been taking notes. We've been working with the municipalities, hearing things that work really well, and things that we can improve on. There will be an independent third party review. It is a standard practice in all jurisdictions to conduct an after-action review after disaster events to examine what happened, what worked, and what didn't, and to make recommendations for improvements going forward. The 2023 wildfire after-action review is...

Thank you. I'm going to answer the caribou question. The other one is a different one, and I'll just go on to that later, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regards to the caribou, the traditional knowledge, we work with our Indigenous governments about caribou. We talk about that. We talk about how we protect it. We talk about the environment. We see where the area is that we need to protect. What we need to do is make sure our caribou survives for generations to come. So it's just not now. Yes, we have had the mobile zone, but that there was what we worked with the Indigenous governments on there...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Finance is not considering expanding the scope and amount to the Evacuation Travel Support Program. The Evacuation Travel Support Program was established to provide financial relief to NWT residents who evacuated in a vehicle during the evacuation that occurred as a result of the 2023 wildfires. I recognize that funding through this program alone does not cover all potential costs associated with the evacuation or incurred by residents.

In addition to the Evacuation Travel Support Program, the GNWT offered a number of different supports for...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we take that into account. We have our fire crews are very much Indigenous. We work with them. The fire crews and people we brought back were Indigenous. These people have been in the system for 20, 30 years or 40 years, and we've worked with them. I've had conversations with them. We've had that they talk about it. In the old days where people would use to like, burning was part of the ecology of the landscape. It would then help them regrowth and stuff like that. The problem is if we don't do those things, we get these tinder boxes that are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Adam Blake Yeadon was born on August 30th, 1997, at Fort Nelson BC to Barbara Bertrand and Jack Yeadon. Adam was the fourth of five children.

Adam was raised in Fort Liard where he lived most of his life. He went to Bella Coola for a couple of years with his dad and brother Jackson, but his heart was calling him home and he came back to live with his sister Donna and her husband Norman.

He was dedicated described as a loveable and happy child who grew into a generous young man with drive and enthusiasm. He was always willing and smiling, hardworking, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So two departments, Municipal and Community Affairs and ECC, are doing an after-action review. So that's part one. We are reaching out to the municipalities, working to see that there. We're also setting up training events. We're looking if there are the emergency plan, how it worked, where we can improve on it, set up training, tabletop exercises so people are better prepared on that. We're also working with ECC to come in and work with the communities on their fire smarting or their fire smart to the communities. But also when the Member talks about, you know, fire...

Yes, it's more of a Municipal and Community Affairs question. So we do have a hosting grant available to communities. We have identified communities as evacuation centres, like Fort Simpson was for Kakisa and Jean Marie. The reason we identify these evacuation centres is so that we don't burden the community on there, so. But we've noticed that some of the communities have been working or getting evacuees into the communities. So we did establish a hosting grant, and the communities can apply for the hosting grants on that there. In regards to if he's looking for equipment and that, we are...

Yes, that's correct. The second thing is who to contact, reach out to the department, or give it to yourself as the MLA, reach out to them and then work with us. I can tell you the Member has given me a number of emails, and we've been working on those situations. So please get us those emails because we need to get fix this because it was unfortunate that situation happened. We have to rely on our host province, and that's what they did. Some of them had Red Cross to help them there, and they were working on it. So, again, if we missed those things and we're going to miss some of those...