Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to talk about the Barren-Ground Caribou Management Strategy that this government plans on implementing over the next five years.
I do realize that this is an important initiative in addressing the declining numbers of caribou in the NWT and the importance of traditional knowledge to make this plan work. But, Mr. Speaker, also very important to NWT residents is the public dollars attached to this strategy. Mr. Speaker, the very conservative estimate of $8.8 million over five years in the baseline funding and another $4.62 million of new funding, which nobody knows where we are going to get that from yet, this is all required to carry out this management strategy. That makes $13.4 million, or $2.7 million per year, that the residents of the NWT are going to have to commit over the next five years just to get this strategy off the ground.
Mr. Speaker, the management plan outlines five principles with 16 strategies to carry out this five-year initiative and the majority of the money required will be for more data collection, as the strategy outlines. I know that it is responsible to follow due diligence before the dollars are spent, but more studies seems to be a duplication of a lot of work that this government has been doing for the last number of years, both in house, in partnership with industry, mines, other NGOs and the federal government.
This government has already invested millions of dollars of public money to the collection of data on the eight caribou herds. I would like to see that money put to some good use and not have to spend millions more to collect similar data on caribou numbers. I would like to see that a comprehensive plan be done which has the buy-in of all the affected people and organizations before we embark on this five-year, $13.4 million initiative because, obviously, that is not the case today, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.