Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The number of issues that this department has to deal with are very important to people in the North and people in my region. We are starting to see some of the impacts of the warming up of the environment, some of the concerns that my elders in Colville Lake are raising in regards to climate change, especially with the weather. It is very rare that elders would stop you and talk to you about the weather. They don’t like to talk about it in their cultural beliefs. That’s the first time that the elders said we’ve got to talk about it. When the elders say that to a young leader or anybody, it means something. I’m very happy that the department is having some discussions. I look forward to where our elders would get together and talk about the land, the water, the animals, everything on the climate.

They also want to talk about building the relationships with our government, the First Nations people in terms of working with animals, especially the caribou. They were concerned about the scientific method of monitoring and watching over caribou and the use of collars on the caribou. Their stories, I think the department has heard from our elders about the damage that the scientific method of monitoring caribou and collaring of them. Chief Kochon pointed to the illustration of this method by stating it’s like you walking in the bush and a grizzly bear comes right at you and starts attacking you. You get all scared and you get all frightened. He was saying that was just like us putting collars on caribou, it’s like that. Now, I give a lot of weight to Chief Kochon because people in Colville Lake know about caribou. Our elders know about caribou and this is what he’s been told about the collaring of the caribou.

So I look forward to a strategy from this department in terms of a caribou strategy and putting weight from the First Nations people into that Caribou Management Strategy, respecting the First Nations, the first peoples on this land, their traditional knowledge.

I do want to thank the Minister and his department for taking the lead in traditional knowledge. You went really far and I wanted to congratulate you for

that. You’ve done a good job. It’s a good piece of work that needs to continue to be worked on.

The energy programs, I’m starting to receive some interest from the Sahtu on the energy programs. The biomass, the mass force of possibly looking at manufacturing wood pellets in my region, stoves, just helping the communities to cut down costs and to look at opportunities in business for the energy.

I do want to say that the waste management recovery has been a success by the department and I know the Minister has been dealing with an issue with me in Tulita on the recycling program. I have a concern that the Minister is well aware of in terms of this issue. Hopefully I’ll get some answers going through the detail by detail. I’m starting to notice a lot of old vehicles in waste sites in and around the communities, in the dumps. It would certainly be good if you looked at future planning to commit some dollars to having a machine come into the Sahtu and go up to the community dumps and chew up these old vehicles, package them up and send them down south somewhere. There are a lot of old vehicles in our dumps that have been there, I guess since the opening up of community dumps. So that would be a good initiative that this department can look at, waste reduction. It’s something they could think about.

I spoke a little bit about the Water Strategy, about protecting our water. The territorial government, through this department, has a Water Strategy initiative going on. I passionately believe that if we are not doing anything drastic right away, that we would live to see the prophecies of Chief Kodakin and Chief Paul Wright when they spoke in the ‘70s. I’ve spoken about this many times when I sat down with leaders in the Sahtu in Tulita where these two chiefs stood up and talked about the Mackenzie River being polluted and checking their fish nets and having no fish or fish spoiled or rotten and dead in the fish nets. I never thought that far in advance of what they were really talking about. But according to my research that put information in front of me, there is pollution coming down the Mackenzie from various sources. I pointed out yesterday one specific location, the Alberta tar sands. You can talk to people in Fort Chip, you can talk to a lot of people down that way and you can talk to the Minister and in his riding, too, about the quality of water that we have coming into our communities.

I look forward to some discussions with the Minister on resource management and the issue of devolution and the impacts on my region in the Northwest Territories when we go through this budget.

I do want to say in closing, Mr. Chair, that I continue to support the Minister in his initiatives to bring forth the Wildlife Act. It’s a good initiative. It’s been there how many years it’s been on the table. The Wildlife

Act is something that needs to be put before us, dealt with and then we can start anew.

So I wanted to say I look forward to going through the budget items in this department. It’s a very important department. I look forward to the Minister’s continued support to protect our land and our water and I looked at areas in the Sahtu that need protection. Our land and our water are our life, Mr. Chair. It’s so important. You’re talking about the life of my people. So the Minister of Environment has a very important role in this government. Thank you.