Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It might be working well for the Minister, but it sure is tough to be an MLA when there is a fire in your riding and you are getting a lot of heat from your constituents. Basically, you go to the Fort Smith fire centre and you can talk to the head honcho there and his attitude is, "Sorry, we do not have the money, and we have better things to spend our money on rather than a fire up in the Mackenzie Delta." My view is that this type of attitude from the government has not changed.
Consultation to you is, "Oh, after the fire is over we are going to come in and say, what should have we done?" after the fact. That, for me, is not consultation. People want to be involved in the fire that is affecting their communities from the time the fire starts until it is put out, not leave a fire to burn for two-and-a-half months and then come back to the community and say, "Sorry, the fire is out of control, we are going to have to evacuate." Is that consultation?
My view is that because of the situation I found myself in last year with the forest fire in Tsiigehtchic, the fire burned for two-and-a-half months. The only time it became an issue to this government was when the Dempster Highway was threatened because they had to shut the road down, and the NorthwestTel Tower that was there. The people in this community who had to live with the smoke day in and day out, were not a priority with this government. For you to say that consultation took place, we do not want to do it again, is exactly the cop out that I am saying that this government has. They have to seriously allow communities to make decisions for themselves on issues that affect them.
Forest fires affect people in the communities, not people sitting in the forest fire centre in Fort Smith. They are the ones making the decisions. That has to change. You talk about forest fires, and sure, forest fires have happened. A large portion of these forest fires that have happened over these last couple of years, especially in the Mackenzie Delta, even in the Sahtu region, have burned large sections of lands that are privately owned lands under land claim agreements. The land claim agreements say that they can be compensated for the loss of forest items.
Maybe the aboriginal groups should consider filing a lawsuit against this government because you did not respond to these fires that affected the forest that stands on private lands. Under the agreement, you are responsible for that.
I feel that this idea that we have to go back and consult. It has been going on for years. We have some major costs to this government because of some forest fires that have basically reached a point where the cost of evacuating communities; it happened in the Sahtu, it happened in Yellowknife; it happened in the Mackenzie Delta region in the last number of years. The cost of that comes to a point where we depend on technology that comes out of Fort Smith, and not the people who live in the communities and on the ground. That has to change. I feel that the argument to say that, "Oh, we are going to go back and consult again", is that we did not do it right the last time.
I will ask the Minister again. Will he consider allowing the communities more responsibility with regard to forest management?