Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to go on record as supporting this motion right off the bat here.
Just the other evening I was reading George Blondin’s book about Yamoria. There’s a chapter in there where he talks about how the elders had to advise the people to not hunt the caribou so strongly, because deep snows and a summer that never happened led to bad condition on the caribou and they were very vulnerable to hunting. The elders got together and said we’ve got to hold off. In fact, they even fed the caribou to help the caribou to get through that winter.
Now, I don’t think we’re quite at that state, but looking across Canada and even parts of Alaska, so many of these caribou herds are in decline. There must be a natural element to it and there’s also, of course, always a human element and that’s where we come in.
We need to respond responsibly. We have quite a bit of science now indicating that we have, indeed, serious concerns with our caribou and that action is needed. Unfortunately, I think we’re dealing with a bit of a failed process here, because the rate that the Bathurst caribou has dropped has been incredible. We went out, we measured the caribou. There was 400,000-plus in this herd. We measured them again and they were declining. I think three years ago when we measured them there was a hundred and some thousand. That’s an amazing decline. That’s like a 70 percent decline already. Then we let it go another three years before we measured this population. By then, of course, they dropped down to 32,000. Now, had we been doing surveys more regularly, everybody would have been together on this and either changing the methods, testing the methods or being convinced and with an opportunity for better information on which to base their decisions and judgments.
That’s part of the thing that’s behind all this. But, clearly, another is the process for establishing management guidelines, Mr. Speaker. Here, I think we have a good record where we have clearly established management boards across the Northwest Territories, those that have been established and in place long enough to have the experience and maturity and so on of working with each other to work effectively. But we now realize there are places in the NWT, in the Northwest Territories where we don’t have those management
boards in place, and the Chief Drygeese territory is a good example of that. In fact, we have the Wekeezhii Renewable Resources Board adjacent to us here that has authority, but they’ve really just become established and are faced already with this incredible conservation issue. The measures that WRRB puts in place do not actually apply, as I understand it, to all of the Chief Drygeese territory. That’s something still to be ironed out and the Yellowknives need to be brought into that equation to deal with some of this. They are clearly, not having signed a land claim, part of the management process and the authority that should be consulted.
We need to get together to establish a consultation process that will apply in these areas where co-management boards have not been established. This situation, the degree of conflict here speaks to a failure to establish that process and it’s probably something that we can anticipate happening in other areas, perhaps with other types of wildlife. Partly, as well, though, the science is out there without agreement of everybody. I don’t know what the solution to that is, but certainly getting together and trying to work to all get on one page is part of that. The motion that’s called for… I have to thank my colleagues, Mr. Yakeleya and Menicoche, for bringing this motion forward. I think it speaks to a lot of the concerns we’ve heard over the last two weeks in session here. It calls for an agreed process that is also called for, in fact, in the resolutions that have already been passed, for example, by the Dene Nation. I think that’s already been referred to by Mr. Yakeleya. This is a good motion. It really says, perhaps somewhat belatedly, some of the things that had been established by the Dene Nation motions and the Yellowknives Dene.
In summary, really, it can all be brought together by what the elders have repeatedly told us, and that is it’s only by working together that we’re really going to get there and we can achieve so much. This motion speaks exactly directly to that, as did the Dene Nation motion. Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting this motion and I want to highlight the theme, which is working together. This is a huge issue and I think we know from the overlap with other herds and so on that it does bring into play several of the other co-management and established management bodies that we have in the Northwest Territories. So let’s get this going. Let’s all get together and establish this. This is not something we’re going to recover from immediately and we need a process in place where we don’t have an established process now. I’ll be supporting the motion. Thank you.