Most communities, I think, are charged with trying to manage their resources within a certain area as best they can, and we support that. That might be the case here, where there may be an objection or concern expressed that you should harvest your quota within your own designated area and, unless you get approval from your neighbour, your constituents in your jurisdiction, that they could not give their blessing to that. Thank you.

Yes, I think the Member said this was raised two years ago. I hope it has been resolved. If not, then we will certainly make sure that we ensure that this is cleared up, because it doesn't make sense, as the Member says. I am not privy to all the facts so, as it comes out, it does sound like there is no basis for the objection in the first place. But we will look at it and see if we can recall the incident and deal with it so it doesn't occur again.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This area is an area that (microphone turned off)...forest fire. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman. I was trying to get the correct page, forest fire management. This area is an area that receives a certain amount of concern from the general public when it comes to protecting forests. There are pros and cons expressed. Some people feel that they fight too many fires. Others feel that they don't fight enough or else they don't fight them in the right areas. There is a policy that directs that only certain fires be fought. There is a period of time from the time the fire starts or is originally spotted to the time they decide to fight it. There are a number of things that are controversial. It has been felt that it is a natural occurrence that fires happen and should be allowed to burn. It does good to the forests.

On the other hand, there are areas that are used by harvesters to collect both food and furs as part of their income. If that place is burnt, there is no more income because of the trap line areas being designated. It was not as if there was open territory. If it burns, you could move somewhere else. If it burns in your area, your trap line, it is burnt. It is finished. There are cabins and equipment that go up in the fire. Many times, trappers feel that, once the fire is spotted, it should be fought while it is small and put them out so they don't get out of hand and become a threat. It takes enormous amounts of money, manpower and equipment to fight a fire. If attacked as soon as the thing starts while it is still small, it would not result in such an enormous cost to Renewable Resources to fight the fire and to the hunters and trappers in that area who lose everything.

In the current policy at the moment, is there a set policy that there are certain areas that they will fight fires in and designated to be top priority? What is the policy on initial strike, that is, when the fire gets started, they go out and put it out and not wait until it gets a good foothold?

Mr. Chairman, the fires that are fought are done, not with zones, but more with the idea that we should protect those things that we value out there. If there are people out on the land who are at risk from fires, then that

would take priority. If there is real property, like trap lines, outpost camps, cabins, property or people, once we identify them, we assign resources to protect them. If we identify fires as they start, if they are in the area rich in wildlife, prime registered trapping areas, again, those are the ones that would take precedence. If they are in a good timber area, then we will fight them.

If a fire starts in the middle of muskeg, for instance, I don't know if the community will want to fight it, then again they might. It is a judgement call that people have to make depending on the value of it. In some cases, people have no objections to certain areas burning. We are looking at doing prescribed burns. Some areas, like Mills Lake, which is just south of Providence on the Mackenzie River, we could get rid of many willows that are starting to overgrow so that it is cutting into the habitat of the ducks and geese that fly through there in the spring and fall. There is a need to let burns happen in some of the prairie areas that are the habitat of buffalo. We don't do it according to zones.

There is much local involvement, as much as we can. There is always the suggestion that, sometimes, if a fire is too small, you leave it. Half a day later, it is an enormous fire. You thought it was going to rain, it doesn't. You think the wind is not going to pick up and it does. The wind changes direction, sort of driving it towards a lake and it drives it the other way. Those are all conditions people are always beating on the department for making the mistakes. There have also been some good decisions made in some cases. We just never bothered to mention them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the comments the Minister has made, but I recognize the fact that forestry operations do a good job in fighting fire and protecting our forests, and that does not necessarily mean that there can't be improvements. Each year, across the territories, they base water bombers in Yellowknife, Fort Smith and various places. In many people's opinion, if they were to send out one or two water bombers to make one or two trips and kill a fire rather than sending the same two water bombers on a hundred trips to try to fight a fire after it has gotten away, it makes good economic sense.

Mr. Chairman, I am sure Renewable Resources people in the game management part of the department will recognize the fact that certain animals are victims of habit. They continue to migrate through a certain area if the conditions are right. I am sure many Members here will recognize the fact that caribou, for example, will not cross an area that has been burned. They don't cross that for 25 years. In some areas near Fort Smith, when I was a child, we saw caribou all the time, before fires had gone through. You never saw a caribou in there again because fire burns off the lichen as well as the stuff that they eat. Caribou will not cross a burn. It doesn't matter how old this thing is until there is much regrowth. That takes many years. So, these two things fit together. Using the caribou migration as an example that have fixed patterns, if there is an area that has a fire, no matter how small it is, it kills the lichens in that area, there is going to be no caribou, regardless of whether it is an area that is outside of where a trapper has his trap line. The caribou just don't go into the trapper's area.

Those kinds of things are areas of concern that people certainly want expressed. I am sure they have been expressed before. They will be expressed again. I think this is a forum to let the department know both, what kind of a good job they are doing and, as well, to express the areas of concern by the people who are affected by it.

I don't expect any kind of major changes from this debate, but I think the other area I wanted to touch on when it comes to forest fire management is the fact that it is becoming very mechanized. There used to be a time when they had many fire crews. People in the community would be trained to fight fire and taken out to fires where they fought them by hand; a great deal of work that people in seasonal occupations depended on, they trapped in the winter and went out and fought fires in the summer. They would go battle these things and there was some pocket money there, enough to get them over the tough times -- like farmers in the prairies working as welders during the winter time -- not in their main occupation, but in some other area.

Subsequently, we've become very mechanized now. We have water bombers all over the place and we spend a tremendous amount of money. I got some information on the amount of money we spend on water bombers to fight these fires. We have DC6s and CL-215s, and each of these planes require a fire crew. There is nobody here in the territories who own these things. They even bring birdogs from the south. Helicopters and water bombers are brought in from the south. Where local people are wanting employment in what could have been considered a traditional area, they are now being unemployed because of money going to southern companies that own this equipment.

While I recognize that we need to keep up with the times and have the necessary equipment to fight this problem, we are moving away from what used to be traditional areas. I just wanted to bring to the attention of the Minister, through you, Mr. Chairman, that people are concerned about it. The business community in the north is also concerned that a lot of equipment is being brought in to fight fires and contracts are going to southern firms -- in BC for example -- when there are a lot of planes and helicopters here in the north that could provide that same service. They seem to be locked into a pattern where if you hire the water bomber, you also have to hire the birdog from the same company, or a related company. We have good northern businesses that need that kind of work.

I also wanted to use this forum to point that out. Perhaps the Minister has other information, Mr. Chairman, that contradicts what I'm saying, but my information is we spend a lot of money on both fixed and rotary winged equipment to fight fires that are not of Northwest Territories business connection. I want to point that out. Thank you.

Thank you. I have nothing to contradict what the Member has said. It is the intent of this department to suggest ways, along with other Members of the Cabinet, to maximize returns on money spent by this government on forest fires to northern communities and businesses. This is currently being discussed. We are going

to try to find ways to do that over the next few years, in terms of contracting local companies for aircraft.

There is some aircraft that is not available except from a few, select companies at this time, so we are using them. There have been similar expressions made by people in the valley, that for the millions of dollars we spend on aircraft, why don't we pay people outright to fly out in large numbers and fight fires the way they used to in the 1940s and 1950s. I know that some of the Dene have expressed that view. They say that we spend $10 million on fires and they all get away on us anyway and that we might as well pay them for fighting some of them, since your aircraft can't put them out any better than I can.

I don't argue with that. I know that we try to put out fires as quickly as we can, but during some days -- for example in the Sahtu last year -- there were 50 fires starting up in the span of a few hours. You can't fight them all. You decide to go to one 20 miles away and it takes off on you. In some cases, you can't do anything but let them go.

The Member should know that departments place priorities on caribou ranges and make sure fires are fought as far as 200 to 300 kilometres outside of communities to ensure the ranges are given some protection. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for the response. While I'm pleased to hear that forest fire management is going to be looking at northern operators for equipment, I think there's a lot of room for just the very thing other departments are doing right now. This morning, I heard the Minister of Government Services, or whatever it is, talk about how happy he was to have northern firms starting to do things, like building tanks. We never used to build fuel tanks here in the north before, but now we are doing all these things.

Maybe now we will have to start looking at northern companies in these areas. The reason there are only a few companies that provide forest fire fighting expertise is because they think the government will go back to the companies that have the specifications they want. It perpetuates the notion that no one else can do it. I have information, Mr. Chairman, that there are aircraft in the Northwest Territories now that were used formerly to fight fires in the United States, under US regulations. I don't imagine they're too much different from Canadian regulations when it comes to water bombing. But, they will go to others. Why? Because they have specifications specific to one company.

One company that provides a certain type of equipment, and that is where the specifications are drawn up from. They go out to tender and say what we are looking for has to be this, this and this. Nobody else can provide that equipment, because nobody else has it. But, if they were to allow northern contractors to tender and say they can provide another type of equipment which is just as good, they might be successful. They might have to use a different type of aircraft, perhaps a little bit smaller, that used to be used for fire fighting in the first place. Then, I think the government would be meeting its buy north, hire north policy to greater efficiency.

I want to point this out, Mr. Chairman, because northern business people bring this to the government and for one reason or another, they're not listened to. They have a stock answer sometimes that they require certain types of expertise and certain types of equipment and it can only be purchased here or there. It eliminates the establishment of northern contractors to be able to build the equipment and to be able to put money into purchasing the types of equipment that fire fighting requires.

I want to point this out, Mr. Chairman, because just this morning I heard how excited the government was about establishing northern business in areas that had not traditionally not been able to supply these things. Next year, I would like to hear the same response from the Renewable Resources people, especially in forest fire management, that they've reviewed their policy and now have located northern contractors who not only can do the job but can provide the equipment because specifications have changed to accommodate northern businesses and contractors.

Mr. Chairman, I would certainly like to hear that next year and see that some steps have been made in that area. If we give northern business an opportunity, people who stay here 12 months of the year and spend all their money here -- or most of it anyway -- in the Northwest Territories as well, and not go to some firm that bases their equipment in sunny climates or takes opportunity to make tremendous amounts of dollars here in our territories at the expense of the people who need the kind of work that we ask for. With that, I don't expect massive changes, but I certainly want the new Minister to know these concerns are out there. All he has to do is to contact some of these northern operators and talk to these people. Get the people who are based in those little offices somewhere in communities south of us, and go to talk to these northern operators and find out what they can provide for us in that area. How much of this stuff can you provide to us so we don't have to go south? Don't put tenders in there that are multi-yeared so nobody else can get into this field. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I agree with some of the comments my colleague from Yellowknife South said with regard to supporting northern businesses. I totally agree and I certainly hope the Minister would encourage, particularly in the contracts area for fixed and rotary wing services. A number of aboriginal organizations across the territories are getting into those types of businesses. I would strongly urge the Minister to support those businesses that want to get into fixed or rotary wing services.

I agree with my colleague for Yellowknife South encouraging the Minister to do so in that respect. I agree with my friend. If it is for a multi-year contract right now. It has been years since aboriginal organizations got into these types of businesses. It has always been concentrated only to a selected few, but now more and more the department has been opening up and giving these types of contracts to these types of organizations. I would encourage the Minister to continue to do so in respect to supporting northern businesses. Thank you.