Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In may be to oversimplify it, but I think the strategy is twofold. It is about generating interest, and marketing is the way for us to do that. But it's also about developing product. That's why you see the breakdown and we have this discussion of developing regional attractions. We need that product in place so when we go and drum up business and create the interest, we bring people home and there are a lot of attractions for them. So we see the Olympic Games as a wonderful opportunity, Mr. Speaker. I know the Premier's also had discussions with the chair of the Olympic committee, Jack Pool, and invited him North. He's agreed to come North. I think at that point we can have a good discussion about what the opportunities are for the NWT, and promoting ourselves and enhancing our presence at those games. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Oral questions. The honourable Member from Tu Nedhe, Mr. Villeneuve.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to revisit the Barren-Ground Caribou Management Strategy that hopefully hasn't rolled out yet. I want to ask the Minister when I can get information about the traditional knowledge aspects toward how do we manage the caribou management issue and the continued decline of caribou in the NWT. But we hear this traditional advice coming and going, but it's never incorporated. It's not even in this Caribou Forever - Our Heritage, Our Responsibility. There's nothing in there that relates to the advice that we're receiving from chiefs, elders, hunters and trappers. Nothing that even mentions that, and all of a sudden we're throwing seven rules out there for caribou hunters, trappers and harvesters to follow, Mr. Speaker. To me, that's like treating hunters and trappers like a bunch of school kids and throwing a bunch of rules out there and say this is the way we're going to do the job. I get a lot of information from harvesters and hunters saying that, hey, this is just too cumbersome; these rules are just overbearing for a lot of hunters and trappers that basically a voluntary harvest limit would suffice for everybody. So

I'm going to ask the Minister if he'll just back off a bit on imposing these seven rules for hunters and trappers in the NWT, and maybe let's start with an education campaign. I think that would suffice, Mr. Speaker. Would he do that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the work we are proceeding with was done as a result, as I've indicated numerous times in the House, after extensive consultation with the co-management boards and a number of other stakeholders like the Yellowknives, the Northwest Territory Metis, the barren-land outfitters, and we've done a lot of careful work and we are going to proceed. I'd just like to point out that, as we speak, there's a major Bathurst caribou workshop taking place here at the Explorer Hotel for over the next three days. We've brought together an extensive number of people and organizations to look at, in particular, the Bathurst herd. We have DIAND officials, GNWT officials, the Government of Nunavut, the Tlicho Government, Yellowknives, the North Slave Metis Alliance, the Kitikmeot hunters, Nunavut Tunngavik, Nunavut Wildlife management, Kitikmeot Inuit, the Lutselk'e Dene First Nations. We have a number of environmental groups and Independent Environmental Monitoring Agency, Environmental Monitoring Advisory Board, the Barren-Ground Outfitters Association, NWT Metis Nation, the Dehcho First Nations, the Akaitcho Territory Government, the Nunavut Planning Commission, the Wekweezhii Renewable Resources Board, Land and Water Board, as well as the land protection department, and the Mackenzie Valley Land Impact Review Board. They have a very full three days laid out to look at the issue of caribou in this part of the country and I look forward to their feedback. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Supplementary, Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My point exactly.

---Laughter

I know there's a big meeting happening exactly with the wildlife management issue and all that stuff. So why are we putting the cart in front of the horse here? You know, he's waiting for the feedback from these co-management boards and all these people that have input into this strategy, but already we're implementing seven rules, immediate actions, that the GNWT's throwing out there that people have to adhere to before he's even heard recommendations from the big meeting of all these boards and agencies. You know, Mr. Speaker, why doesn't the government drop these seven immediate action plans that they have in place and wait until they hear from these recommendations of all these experts, and these hunters and trappers, and these co-management boards? Why...

Okay, thank you for the question, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd just like to point out to the Member, as well, that on page 4 of the strategy, we refer on the last bullet on the page to using local and traditional ecological knowledge. On page 9 when we talk about co-management, we talk about using traditional knowledge and technical information, and working together with the aboriginal governments.

Mr. Speaker, we're using the conservation principle. We have enough information to tell us that there's a problem and we have to start taking the steps to make sure that we are doing the right thing in regards to proper stewardship, and that is what is driving this whole process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Villeneuve.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We all know there is a problem. There's a problem with declining caribou. Seven action plans may be overdoing it. I know wolf furs are down in the market right now, but if we put an incentive out there for hunters to maybe harvest wolves, the government will pay them $50 to see what the wolves are actually eating. I was talking to a hunter here yesterday, Mr. Speaker. He said he went out hunting and he saw 200 wolves. He only shot 18. That's all he could shoot because he ran out of shells. You know, Mr. Speaker, that gives us an indication that predation is the key to this whole management issue, and I think that the government should really take our advice seriously and look at the issue of putting some restrictions or limitations on raising the limitations on the wolf predation. You know, increasing the...

Do you have a question, Mr. Villeneuve?

Would the Minister consider doing that, instead of throwing seven rules out there? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member does touch on a very key point in which is why it's been identified in our plan that we want to look at the issue of predation and try to do some work to quantify the number of wolves out there so that when we gather next fall and early winter, we'll have a clear sense of what decisions we need to make in regards to the whole issue of making sure we have herd sustainability. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Oral questions. The honourable Member from Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Minister of FMBS, the Honourable Floyd Roland, and it gets back to my Member's statement from earlier today and again yesterday when I addressed the issue of the $450,000 that was sole sourced to an American company to try to get to the root of the problems at our recently amalgamated HR division. I'd like to ask the Minister if any thought was ever given to going back to the individual departments where the problems came from and getting them to pay for the $450,000 study or review that's currently underway. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I did not bring that issue back to my FMB colleagues as I feel that the situation was we needed to move on this, we needed to move rather quickly on this and bring it back for discussion. Trying to get them to put some money back into it would cause further delays in actually getting the work done. So the decision was made, and I believe it was the correct one, to get on with the job and we'll deal with the issues later. We've had to put off some projects to go ahead with this initial piece of work. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I won't disagree with the Minister that I think we have to move on it and we have to move on it quickly. It's how it was done and why we're where we're at today that I think is the bigger problem, and the fact that various departments were allowed to get away with not doing their work, get away with sitting on personnel files for years, and obviously there was a backlog of work that got to the new amalgamated HR division. I'd like to specifically ask the Minister responsible for FMBS who these departments were, and is any disciplinary action going to be taken to the departments that caused us to spend $450,000? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the issue of the backlog and bringing that all together under one roof has been a problem for us, as I stated, under the review for HR. The fact is, that is the reason why we've gone to the system we have, is in a more decentralized version of each department having it's HR services and it's own interpretation of the rules that's caused us many of these problems. So our goal is to move forward from where we were to get a good grasp of where things were sitting, and move forward with some new implementation to improve on the way we can deal with our HR services. Thank you.