Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve heard the concern. There are some options that are out there in terms of ex-officio members, observers; as well, the GNWT will have two to three seats available, of which in any given time we can bring stakeholders to the table, depending on the issue being discussed. Thank you.

Thank you. I’m assuming that the Minister means by any of those issues and what’s appropriate here that when we’re talking about the use and enjoyment of wildlife, there would be everybody at the table. Their recent wildlife management controversies and failures demonstrate a lack of early and critical input to the process.

Debate, even when perhaps overly enthusiastic and a bit rancorous and extreme, provides an important role in society’s ability to arrive at good decisions that recognize and respond to the rights of all. This is particularly true when the legislation is abundant and complex. How will the Minister ensure that mechanisms are both identified in the legislation and funded to ensure this key debate helps form the backbone of the management process?

Thank you. As Minister of Finance I caught the keyword of “funded.” The issue is going to be to address, through the management, the conference process to see and make sure that everybody is represented. As a public government, the

Government of the Northwest Territories, we are charged with representing the interests of Northerners at that table as well. There are options to make sure we have representation from non-Aboriginal harvesters and, we believe, mechanisms to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the openness and commitments of the Minister here and I guess I would ask him that he commit to even further discussions on this outside the House. But what will the Minister do to ensure that the interpretation of the legislation goes the distance to consider and meet government responsibility to provide for all citizens the opportunity to use and enjoy wildlife? I’m thinking here of, for example, the interpretation of priority access to mean exclusive access. Case law clearly has indicated that’s not the case and we’re talking interpretation of the legislation. Thank you.

Thank you. The bill, when it comes forward for first and second reading, will be as complete as possible. It will have been amended numerous times. We’ve fully briefed committee on this. We laid out all the very many changes that have been made based on a lot of the feedback that we have received from groups and individuals from across the North, outside of the North, from business, from industry, from the airlines. So we’re going to bring forward a bill that will be there to be further viewed by committee through a consultation process. We’ll look to advice that comes back from that process to see if there are any final amendments that need to be made before it comes into the House, hopefully by no later than August, for third reading.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for those remarks. Certainly the caribou population, and with what we’ve been through recently and are going through, are a big and tough challenge. Will the Minister be providing an analysis of how our systems broke down and led to such failure, including the failure to a reliable measure harvest, a basic management parameter for wildlife management, and how this will be addressed in the Wildlife Act? Mahsi.

Thank you. I don’t know if I would agree with the assessment that there was a breakdown of our systems. We definitely know that there was a decline in the various caribou herds.

We will address some of that through the Wildlife Act. The vehicle that will probably provide a better form for that is going to be the Barren Ground Management Strategy that’s coming forward and the need in this part of the country to look at a multiparty board or arrangement to look after the number of herds that are in this part of the country.

Go from east to west with the Beverly Qamanirjuaq, the Ahiak, the Bathurst and the Bluenose East, which as well extends north all the way up to Inuvialuit area. So it is a very complex undertaking, be it one of the big issues, of course, is to make sure we have sufficient funds to do the constant survey work that is required and that we can’t afford to wait for decades to do this. We need to, as we have been doing for the last many years now, come up with a plan and funding to do all the herds so that we have a very good baseline information that will allow us to better track what’s happening in terms of the health of the herds. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions as well today are addressed to the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources and I want to follow up on my statement.

I mentioned a number of concerns that I’ve heard from constituents with regard to the draft Wildlife Act. I’d like to ask the Minister first off, he mentioned, I believe it was last week, that he was on draft number 54 of the act. I’d like to know what draft number we’re on now, and as a result of that, what changes have been made to the draft act as a direct result of concerns expressed during the consultation process. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we’re about draft 56, and I have a list here, Mr. Speaker, it’s a request for technical detail. The committee was fully briefed; the Member was fully briefed last week. We gave a good overview of the changes that have been made and there are numerous, and in an attempt to be as responsive as possible and still maintain the integrity of the bill. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that at least we’ve made some changes since last week. That’s a good thing, but I am concerned that the people that made submissions, the people that have concerns... For instance, I heard concerns from air carriers, I heard concerns from individuals, I heard concerns from organizations. How will those people and their questions be advised of the changes that have occurred to date? How will their questions which they posed during the consultation process be answered, and how will that information and the answers to all these questions and concerns also be made available to the public? Thank you.

Thank you. As I’ve indicated in this House previously, the proof will be in the pudding, as it were, as we come forward with a draft or the bill for first and second reading that will lay out the result of all that work, all the many iterations, the improvements, amendments and adjustments that have been made and are currently being finalized so that that fact can happen. Thank you.

To the Minister, I appreciate that the changes will be made in the act and that the act will come forward, but at the consultations that I attended there were specific questions from individuals and organizations and there were assurances to those people and those organizations that their questions would be answered, that they would be advised of answers to their questions. So again I ask the Minister, will people be answered? Will the questions that people asked be answered not in the act but in a letter, in an e-mail? We owe it to the people that made presentations and asked questions to give them an answer. So will that be done in a concrete manner apart from the act? Thank you.

Thank you. I’ll talk to the department about a concrete response outside of the act.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that the Minister is willing to talk to his department. That’s always a good thing. I would like to know from the Minister if he expects that this will be a public document or will it be an individual response to the people who asked the questions. I think, in my mind, the public is also owed these answers, not just individuals. When can we see this?

If there were public meetings, we’ll have to see the best forum to respond. There were public meetings held in every community. As well, there have been e-mails and representations by individual groups and individuals themselves. We’ll have to see what the most effective way is to publicize this. Unless the Member is suggesting somehow that we do a blanket response to everybody and maybe publish in the paper or some such thing, I’m not sure what the Member has in mind.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are in follow-up to my Member’s statement and are related to the consultation

process currently, or just finished, with the Wildlife Act.

Public consultations are an important tool to the GNWT. They allow us to go out and meet with our constituents and residents of the Northwest Territories and hear what they have to say and allow them input into our important acts and legislational programs. Could the Minister tell me -- and he started to go down this road a little bit -- how he intends to provide some comfort to those groups that feel that their voice was not heard during these consultation processes?

Yes, I participated in the briefing and I heard some of the things that they're planning to do with respect to the act, but I’m only one person. We’re 11 on this side. The public need to hear it as well. What is the Minister doing to restore some of the confidence of those people that their voices are being heard?

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once again, I don’t necessarily agree with the Member in terms of the restoring of confidence. There was a very public, long-term process, very expensive and exhaustive, and we will demonstrate that we’ve been listening, when you look at the bill. That’s the comfort that we’re going to provide people. Not everybody will be happy. This is a consultative process. We’re a consensus government. There’s lots of compromise, but this bill, compared to the bill that is currently there -- 32 years old -- is going to be a huge improvement. It’s long overdue. It’s going to reflect, finally, our obligation under land claims and self-government agreements. It’s going to reflect that we’ve been listening to the concerns from Northerners in all areas. Things like the residency clause; that is where it’s going to be reflected and that’s where people should be looking.

I’d like to thank the Minister for that response. There are other obligations to the ones he’s referring to here today. We have an obligation to all the residents in the Northwest Territories, including the non-Aboriginal hunters who don’t feel that they have a voice in this act.

I know the Minister’s department went out and met with different groups. I’m asking the Minister what he’s going to do, or have his department do, to restore some of the confidence to those people that their voices have been heard. If the department has made changes based on what these groups have said, let’s stand up and say what those changes are. Let’s demonstrate that his department did listen to the people of the Northwest Territories. That’s what I’m asking. Can he give us some examples that demonstrate that he heard the people of the Northwest Territories, in particular the

non-Aboriginal hunters who did not participate in the drafting of this act?