Mr. Chair, I bring this up because in the activity description on 13-24 it talks about wildlife health studies. I just wanted to make the importance of fish studies in my regions, in my communities.

Mr. Chair, at one time in my life I did fish studies on the Mackenzie River and we were catching Arctic ciscoes. When we caught the Arctic ciscoes, there’s a little tag on the fish. When we were doing the studies we would take these little tags and then send them out to Vancouver for analysis and when they get the reports back these little tags on these little Arctic ciscoes, they were tagged in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and we were catching them right across from Tulita. When we found out that they were tagged in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, but the fish were also spawning a month earlier. So it tells us change was coming down and people, I guess the elders knew. They knew that change would be coming. They were giving us warning. That’s why I want to ask the Minister, in terms of the wildlife health studies, that these are warnings and we’re being told and I’m hoping that he will put together a comprehensive plan to look at the monitoring of fish. As the elders said, the waters are getting warmer, the fish are getting softer, and there are indications that some of our fish are not healthy. A lot of these elders and my people, they love fish. A lot of them say they live on fish and love, because that’s what their main diet is. That’s why I raise this concern. I think the department has heard me and I just wanted to make sure that we look at the fish right down the valley to right through our whole region right up to the Beaufort Sea. Thank you.