Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a week ago I talked about this issue -- the
caribou issue, that is -- and I tried to frame it around the fact that this is more than just a legal issue that we’re talking about. It’s more than a caribou issue that we’re talking about. It’s also about an issue of trust and relationships. That’ s where the issue really lies, Mr. Speaker. It’s about the rights of aboriginal people being able to hunt caribou. It’s about the rights of aboriginal people being part of the decision whether they can hunt caribou or not.
Mr. Speaker, why didn’t we start with consultation in the view of how can you be part of the decision as opposed to how we can decide your fate? Mr. Speaker, I don’t think it’s too late to salvage the discussion here. I think that could start today. I spoke a week ago about having a caribou summit with the leadership I was referring to, not with endless delegates. I was talking about the leadership. This does not need a legal decision, Mr. Speaker. This is a political decision that could be made in consultation with our colleagues who work in the First Nations governments.
Mr. Speaker, if it was an ideal world, the Wekeezhii Renewable Resources Board would be making the decision, not the territorial government. If it was a perfect world, we wouldn’t now have to send this question to our Supreme Court to clarify do we have the right or not to make this type of decision. But as we all know, it is not a perfect world.
Mr. Speaker, I think that the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources should be working shoulder to shoulder with the chiefs across this Territory to work on a self-ban, if it’s necessary; one that limits numbers, one that identifies tags and a realistic harvest level. Mr. Speaker, consultation, in my view, means that they would have been part of the decision; they would have been part of the destiny; they would have been part of the end results. Mr. Speaker, in my view, there has been very little consultation other than our experts, whether they are right or wrong, who have shown up to say that the numbers are fluctuating. In my view, they are probably, to some degree, correct that the numbers have fluctuated. If I understand it correctly, the snapshots of the herd numbers have only been going back 30 years. Where is the 50-year knowledge on this particular issue? Where is the 100-year knowledge on this particular issue? Mr. Speaker, 100,000 caribou or more just do not disappear or fall off the land in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, I could be silly here and say maybe they were abducted, but the fact is, things fluctuate in nature. Perhaps the human species has had an impact, but where is the discussion about the wolf cull? Had people thought about the grizzlies that take caribou? I remember last year someone was telling me one wolf takes 40 caribou a year, Recently I read somewhere that the birthing rate of the caribou is very successful, but yet we don’t see that paying dividends in the numbers growing.
So, Mr. Speaker, in consultation with the aboriginal people, we have to take a much longer term vision of this problem than just the last couple of years, just the last survey that someone flew over and counted caribou.
Mr. Speaker, as I said at the very start, I think this is more than a legal issue. I feel very strongly that this is, yes, more than a caribou issue. We have set back relations with First Nations governments for years with this type of step. This decision, I think, could have been made with the decision in partnership as opposed to the decision of this is the way it’s going to go.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting this motion. I think it speaks to a much bigger picture about trying to figure out how do we work shoulder to shoulder with First Nations governments, because we’re going to have to be here a long time and find newer ways to work better and closer together in a meaningful way, and this certainly was not an example of how we should be doing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.