Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity for general comments on Environment and Natural Resources. I see there is an increase to this department, but I am happy to see that this budget is actually the same as it was two years previously so they are maintaining position. This is critical and important to me and I think to many people in the Northwest Territories and, of course, he is the one responsible for stewardship of the resources which allow us all to have a healthy life and a good future. There are good things happening in this department. I see the progressive work happening on emerging technologies such as biomass and geothermal energy. I appreciate the progressive work on wind energy. This is clearly an investment. I don’t think we can expect to learn things immediately and jump
into an economic situation but I think this is a good investment in the long term.
The climate change has been recognized as a serious issue as the Minister says for the NWT. That is putting it mildly. We now know, in fact, that we have been doing much too little and much too late as well acknowledged. I believe within the life of this Assembly, this Minister recognizes that the Greenhouse Gas Strategy does not go far enough. I would have thought there would be some attempt to either tune up the targets there or at least make sure that that is well understood and the public knows that we understand that and much more is needed. There is a certain gravity to this situation that must be recognized by this government and reacted to.
I am wondering where the reference is to community forest inventories, the need for community forest inventories and the important follow up to that, the sustainable harvesting plans for those forests on a community basis. Perhaps this is part of the Biomass Strategy and so on but we do have a number of or at least a few community forest inventories out there but we need to take that the next step to a sustainable harvesting plan and the education and support to actually get that happening on the ground. I think that will be an important step in any Biomass Strategy. Again, perhaps it is there.
I think also that there is room for new approaches in innovation in the area of traditional knowledge. This is an area that I think is extremely rich as we grapple with increasing challenges in how to make a living in and economic benefits from our land while minimizing the impacts we have on it and, in fact, now recovering the capacity that we have obviously lost and will realize increasingly.
The department is obviously doing things to implement traditional knowledge and bring it in when they can but there is concern that we are losing it out there. We have lost it in a number of areas. Most of the in depth knowledge holders are well known to communities and so on. I think there are real opportunities for having programs sponsored by this government that bring those traditional knowledge holders into play in a much more meaningful way. Get them out on the land. Perhaps subsidize their annual budget so that they can play an important role training young people and sharing their very meaningful knowledge that they have and also bringing that in in a more meaningful way to the challenges. We have to make a living in different ways off the land but drawing on this old knowledge.
I also appreciate the recycling programs that the Minister has mentioned, the beverage containers and so on. This is proven to be workable and I am
sure there are new challenges given the current recession. I also like the work that is finally beginning on the feasibility of recycling things like electronic equipment. I think we have been talking about that for a long time. I am happy to see it is finally starting although we are beginning to investigate through feasibility studies as opposed to actually getting to the action stage. So I would encourage the department to focus on that one. That is a serious concern in our environment.
The Minister also mentioned the milk containers being added to the Beverage Container Program. This Assembly has discussed quite a bit for a need for milk subsidies and so on. I am a little bit concerned and only a little bit because it is quite a modest cost but the recycling containers will add I think 20 cents a litre to the cost or something like that for a container with only 10 cents back. I wonder if this is an area where, in fact, we could give 100 percent back to the consumers because, again, we don’t want to discourage the use of milk which we know already is insufficient for a number of our families because of the exorbitant cost of milk in some of our communities and perhaps it could be on community by community basis or regional basis. I would appreciate some thinking there.
I wonder if this department could play more of a role on the opportunities we have for development of our fisheries. I know our renewable resource officers play an ex-official role with the enforcement of fisheries and so on. Perhaps we should be thinking about that and perhaps that could be profiled in any devolution talks as an immediate area for fruitful discussions.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, I applaud the energy initiatives that are being carried out by this department and I support their important role as the lead on climate change. I hope that gets a lot of profile and within the proper context of our current knowledge. I definitely like and support the work on the NWT Water Strategy. I think it is critical and, in fact, is being seen as a real model on how to recognize and steward resources that have such strong ecological values as well as economic ones. Perhaps only our climate is of greater concern and need. I want to honour that work and give it the recognition it deserves. That is all I have for now, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.