Thank you. I've paid attention to the Member's concern, and it's a concern that we've had as a department. We recognize that we needed a cost-effective way to gather this information on wildlife population and habitat data. We need good baseline information, especially with the pace of development in the Northwest Territories. It's important that we're able to recognize where there are impacts and be able to mitigate those impacts. Without good baseline data, we aren't able to do that. So the rationale for the approach here was to avoid doing just what the Member has suggested, and that was to take on a very costly mechanism and set up a very costly system on our own. So the idea here really was to partner with the Alberta government and cost share this. The rationale then for this, in April 2003 we did enter into a memorandum of agreement with sustainable resource development of the Government of Alberta, so that we could get a copy of this wildlife management information system. It's under development, but we're working with the Government of Alberta to see this to fruition. We think this is a very cost-effective mechanism for us to move forward on. I think we don't have the money to do this on our own, and so that's why we partnered with the Government of Alberta.
Brendan Bell on Committee Motion 3-15(3): To Delete $120,000 From The Financial Management Board Secretariat Budgeting And Evaluation Re Foregone Interest, Defeated
In the Legislative Assembly on March 22nd, 2004. See this statement in context.
Committee Motion 3-15(3): To Delete $120,000 From The Financial Management Board Secretariat Budgeting And Evaluation Re Foregone Interest, Defeated
Item 20: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
March 22nd, 2004
Page 164
See context to find out what was said next.