On another topic: the $2.9 million for Environment and Natural Resources in regard to our fire season. We go through this every year at the end of the fire season. But we are under-estimating the real cost. It seems like there are always these unforeseen costs of forest fire fighting, especially when we have fires that get out of control, especially this year with the fires around Behchoko and also around the Snare hydro site.
I know we would like to see the forest burn in regard to revegetation of those forests, but also we have to be proactive when there is a fire that could be controlled earlier on so it does not get to the point where it’s out of control. We do whatever we have to do to protect those assets, investments, this government has, such as hydro facilities, communities, roads. In the past there has been a lot of discussion around these areas, especially from communities that would like to have been responded to sooner rather than the monitoring of the fire to the point it’s threatening communities or government infrastructure.
I would like to ask the Minister: what is being done to ensure we respond sooner to forest fires so they don’t get out of control? We’re coming every year for a major subsidy, such as almost $3 million again this year. Yet we’re spending in excess of $29 million in this portfolio. I was flying to Inuvik and Yellowknife, and I flew over that fire around the Snare hydro site. You could see from the aircraft it was a small fire that could have been controlled at that point. At the end of the day the hydro facilities were threatened because the fire got away.
I would like to ask the Minister: what are we going to do differently to prevent these types of expenditures coming forward next year in regard to forest fire management?