Thank you, Madam Chair. I welcome the Minister and his delegation here. It is always a pleasure to have you back.

I have to commend the Minister here. A lot of change, I think, within the last year, and a lot of good doing. We are hearing a Wildlife Act is going to be going back on the road here. I think the general population is looking forward to commenting on that and, I think, hopefully finally putting to bed something that has been in the works

for many years. I applaud the stewardship behind that.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here with respect to what has been said. I just want to earmark a couple of areas that I noticed in the opening comments of the Minister and another couple that aren’t on here that aren’t somewhat reflected in the budget.

First and foremost, in no particular order of importance, is the CL-215s. There are aging fire suppression fleet. The Minister is very much aware that I have asked many questions in the House before regarding the age of our fleet, the viability of our fleet, and the future outlook in terms of what we are going to do when these planes become no longer of value, more or less along the lines of questioning the end of life. We have yet to see a plan of action. There is significant infrastructure investment. I think the people of the Northwest Territories, including Members of this House, would like to see the long-term strategy behind that.

I have to give credit where credit is due again. I think our Minister has made incredible progress, not only territorially but nationally – I think we can use the word internationally – in terms of his ideology behind transboundary water agreements and the stewardship behind that. Even in certain books now has the Minister’s name been mentioned in it. I applaud the Minister for his bigger vision, and sometimes, again, we don’t give credit where credit is due and I think that is very critical.

However, with that accolade of accomplishment, I do put some regressive caution that these negotiations have cost taxpayers a substantial amount of money over the years. It would be nice to see an end in sight. Where is that end? Yet, we don’t really see this in the budget; we see a continuance here. I think that the people of the Northwest Territories, although pleased with the direction and stewardship, I think need to see some closure moving forward.

Other areas where I didn’t see much mention in the budget is the gathering of baseline information, whether we are dealing with species at risk or looking at all of the effects of our wildlife and the monitoring, especially migration and adaptive behaviour. I’m hoping and encouraging the department to make the investments in creating good baselines in our future.

Not necessarily last on my list is how we deal with our energy use. As we heard from committee, and as you heard from some of the Members, reducing our use of fossil fuels needs to be more than just a slogan. It needs to be more than just a flavour of the day. We are hoping that the department leads in this capacity to provide meaningful and thought-provoking means to get people off fossil fuels. We have to look at those viable options. We have to make sure we put those necessary dollars so that,

whatever we are putting in, the return on our investment is extremely tangible and not, I guess, fictional.

The last thing I want to talk about is our environmental watching or stewardship or watchdog behaviour. We have a lot of ongoing projects in terms of waste management. We have a lot of change on the horizon with the transfer of powers through the devolution portfolio. I think a lot of people, as it was very plain and obvious through the public hearings with the recent Giant Mine Remediation Team, that people are concerned. The people around Yellowknife are gravely concerned, but the people of the Northwest Territories should be equally concerned. Water moves upstream or goes downstream, I should say, from the Yellowknife basin all the way down the Mackenzie all the way to the ocean. This is a big issue. I am hoping that the ongoing dialogue with the people in working with the remediation teams is one in which we’re going to see, again, more of a closure, more of a long-term thinking than the current cryogenic, I guess, solutions that have been proposed before us.

So last is, we’ve got a lot of activity in the Sahtu with the central Mackenzie oil and gas. We want to make sure that we are stewards, we want to make sure that during this transfer of devolution, we know ENR is going to be busy more than they probably ever have in the next couple of years. We need to make sure that we provide those levels of comfort for all residents in that area because, again, we do not want to have another Giant Mine issue.

So those are my opening comments, but there will be a couple of specifics. But again, some of these were covered in the opening address. Some of them may be new. Thank you.