Is the $335,000 for local hunters and trappers groups, or is it for our national lobby organizations? I see that CITES is included. Can the Minister indicate where most of this money has gone to? Has it been spent locally in support of local wildlife management groups, community hunters and trappers groups or is most of it spent nationally and internationally hiring lawyers and experts in different fields.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is for local hunters' and trappers' associations to deal with 12 separate populations of polar bears. It was cost shared by the federal environment and our government to establish management plans for five of the 12 polar bear population areas. It is for the local communities and local hunters' and trappers' associations to come together to draw up a management plan for their particular area. Thank you.

I am concerned about this $335,000. You have stated that it is for polar bears. If my history is correct, polar bears are basically in the Inuit communities. I am not trying to demean the significance of polar bear hunting, but throughout the year we have asked for support for trappers in the interior. They have had a poor season and they wanted some trapper support programs to offset the lost revenues this year. I do not see any amount of money asked for helping Dene trappers in the western Arctic for the type of year we had. Yet, here we are spending $335,000, not previously authorized, on polar bear research. I am a little concerned about the seeming imbalance here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a concern raised by international communities that polar bear trade for the Northwest Territories relating to the Inuit is approximately a $1 million economic benefit to the Inuit. There is an international agreement of which Canada is part of the signatory, a member for the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species. Polar bear is on schedule two of the endangered species list which requires that the animal population be monitored and managed to justify harvesting. We have to justify harvesting if we are to have these polar bears. If CITES is not confident that management is exercised then they move the species to schedule one, which prohibits international trade by signatory countries in that particular species. This would mean that sport hunters could not take polar bear furs out of Canada, therefore the economic value of polar bears to communities would decline drastically.

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman, five of the 12 polar bear populations are declining from over harvesting. Current information on population statistics to date is expected in six of the areas. Therefore, funding is required to establish a 20 year rotation inventory on polar bear populations. As a result, the local management agreements are developed to ensure public input and participation in decisions regarding management, such as setting quotas of polar bear populations.

Thank you. You mention there are 12 management zones that the $335,000 has gone to. Can the Minister provide the details of the amounts which have gone to each zone, where this $335,000 has gone to, for the record?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have that information readily available to me. It starts about Holman Island, Tuktoyaktuk, that area as being one particular zone. There is another zone including the Coppermine and Cambridge Bay area. There is another zone including Spence Bay, Gjoa Haven and Pelly Bay. There is a big area of Foxe Basin including Hudson Bay down to Churchill, all the Keewatin communities and parts of Baffin communities including Igloolik, Hall Beach and Cape Dorset. There is another zone Iqaluit and parts of Lake Harbour and Pangnirtung. There is another zone including Pangnirtung, Broughton Island and parts of Clyde River. There is another zone including Clyde River, Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay area. There is another zone including Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay, Nanisivik, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord area. We have been able to come up with a management zone for parts of the western Arctic including Holman Island, Sachs Harbour, Tuktoyaktuk and Paulatuk. Also, there is another management zone we were able to achieve between Coppermine and Cambridge Bay, Qingaut and Umingkitoak. We are able to achieve the management zone in Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay, Nanisivik, Resolute and Grise Fiord. Now, we are working between Clyde River, Broughton Island and Pangnirtung. As well, we are working with all the communities in the Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin at this particular time. The majority of the funds we will expend will be in the Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin area. Thank you.

I am very aware of the significance and the impact that the polar bear hunting and harvesting has on the north and I support the work. My concern is there is $335,000 in addition to, I assume, a certain portion of $3.559 million which has been approved is also used for polar bear work to support these management groups. Polar bear research, the endangered species, the concerns of international wildlife groups and the work we are doing in CITES, this is not new. This has been going on for years, so why could the department not incorporate that in their budgets rather than already coming back in a supp?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Including the communities, there is a new area. The Government of Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories, in terms of polar bear management, have never asked the communities how they would like to see their polar bears managed. In 1988, when I started visiting the communities, residents raised concerns that they were not part of the decision-making body in 1968 when the Government of Canada imposed a quota system to all the polar bear populated communities.

It is a fairly new initiative for our government to include communities and regional hunters and trappers. So, it is a new area that we are getting into. We are trying to use traditional knowledge to come up with a plan that would be acceptable to international communities, and at the same time allow our hunters and trappers to harvest polar bears which, to us at the present time, are not endangered. It could still be at schedule two of the CITES agreement. Thank you.

The point I am trying to make is I know this is a new initiative, or you are saying it is a new initiative, but this has been with us for some time. I am just wondering why. This amount of money, in terms of percentages, is very insignificant in terms of the $1 billion budget. Could this not have been budgeted for in November when the budget book was put together. I am just wondering why we could not have foreseen or forecasted this type of expenditure previously rather than coming in for a supplementary at this stage.

Mr. Chairman, in our initial planning we thought the Hudson Bay area, including Foxe Basin, was not going to be that keen to come up with a plan. When we initially visited those communities there was so much interest by those communities to be part of a decision-making body to come up with a management plan for polar bears. That happened last spring. They want to do this. We thought the Hudson Bay communities and the Foxe Basin communities would not want to do this until the following year, but they were interested and we did not have time to put it into our budget this year. Thank you.

You mention they were aware of it last spring and so again my point is that the Department had time.

Agreed.

---Agreed