Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Just getting back to what I was talking about in my Member's statement about the importance of the caribou here in the NWT to our outfitters' economy, to our food resource that the many small communities rely on, I just want to ask the Minister, the million dollars that we are supplying in additional funding to some biophysical studies and some Barren-Ground Caribou Management Strategy to me is just not enough. I think given the importance and the multi-million dollars the caribou generate here in the NWT for people, the money that it saves a lot of people in the communities, the cost of living now that we're going to have to deal with, all are offsets from or spin-offs from these declining caribou numbers and the impacts that the government has imposed on outfitters and hunters alike on harvesting caribou. I just want to know, given the anticipated surplus of $44 million that this government is going to anticipate in the 2006-2007 year, why can't we put more money into some mitigating factors, into some more research? I don't even know if we need more research into these caribou numbers, Mr. Speaker, but I think we should get more money into the boards and agencies at the local level to make sure that they have the resources to go out there and give the outfitters some real hard numbers that they can really live by and agree to some harvesting numbers as opposed to just letting the government impose restrictions without giving, you know, without due diligence, I guess, that they can give the outfitters and how many millions that they're going to lose. We stand to lose too much just giving the one million bucks that we have allocated for this initiative. I just want to ask the Minister, is there any commitment from his department to look for more funding? I'd say more in the $5 million range per year over the next two to three years to look at how we can mitigate the declining caribou numbers, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Robert Villeneuve on Question 292-15(5): Accuracy Of Caribou Population Estimates
In the Legislative Assembly on February 12th, 2007. See this statement in context.
Question 292-15(5): Accuracy Of Caribou Population Estimates
Item 6: Oral Questions
February 11th, 2007
Page 788
See context to find out what was said next.