Mr. Chairman, that work has yet to be done and the Lands department is going to be picking up that coordination and lead in terms of pulling together the various pieces, working with all the other, once again, appropriate departments and will work at that context. The Member’s correct; there’s work done and the Dehcho Land Use Plan is quite a ways along. The two areas are the North Slave and South Slave with the NWT Metis as well as Akaitcho, or what’s there of the Akaitcho. Salt River is no longer part of that. But the Member’s correct; that work has yet to be done. Thank you.

I guess a couple of things. It sounds like the statement now is incorrect and needs to be updated. The first line on page 92, “responsible for regional land use plan,” I guess that would now be Lands that’s doing that with the participation of ENR. Maybe the Minister could just review that.

Second, I think the responsibility of the Minister is with regard to conservation of lands. How can this government be pursuing something like the Slave Geological Province highway without doing the conservation and planning work beforehand?

Thank you.

I’ll take the Member’s advice and review the text to make sure that it’s accurate.

Mr. Chairman, at this point we are putting out that particular project, along with the section of highway, for example, on the Wrigley/Norman Wells, the potential road through the Tlicho, extensive generation work that needs to be done. As ideas, part of a plan, a vision of going forward and that should the borrowing limit be adjusted and allow us to make those investments, then we will be moving forward on whatever projects are going to be funded with all the detailed work that is necessary. At this point it’s been identified as a project that is worth considering, just as we considered looking at transmission lines initially. A good idea, but the cost is prohibitive. So, too, is the road from Tibbitt to Contwoyto, the North Slave Geologic Province. It’s of great interest to the people of Nunavut as well. Should we be in a position to pursue that, then we’ll follow the process to the letter. Thank you.

Mr. Bromley, we’re actually on page 91. You might be ahead of yourself a little bit on the conservation assessment monitoring. So we’ll just finish page 91 and then we can go back to you if you have more conservation questions.

Page 91, active position summary, information item. Any questions?

Thank you. Page 93, conservation assessment monitoring. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The reason I see a difference here is because there are land use plans in place for the Mackenzie Valley Highway and we don’t have those for the area for the road that’s being discussed. As the Minister knows, those things take in the order from five to 20 years to do. To do it right, we need to get started yesterday in land use planning in this area.

On the establishment of protected areas and development of an ecological representation network, where are we at on ecological representation? I know what we’ve done on the cultural representation side, working with our Aboriginal government partners, and it has highlighted the need for ecological representation. Is that something the Minister can speak to off the top or provide an update on? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

A lot of work has been done in this area and we’re in the process of getting a document ready to bring to Cabinet and then on to committee that will show all the work that’s been done across the Northwest Territories. In terms of the ecological representative areas and the mapping and inventory that’s done, I would ask the deputy, Mr. Chairman, with your approval, to add a little bit further to that, if he would. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Deputy Minister Campbell.

Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Mr. Bromley.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for that information. I will look forward to that.

My last question is: Have we advanced any new conservation areas under the Territorial Parks Act in the last two or three years? Where are we headed with that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not that I recollect. We are currently at work with the folks in Lutselk’e on Thaidene Nene. We are looking at northern tools, our first big initiative post-devolution. We also have the five candidate areas that are there that have been waiting for us to put our attention to them post-devolution that were identified through the Protected Areas Strategy, but there haven’t been any other specific conservation areas. I will ask the deputy if he wants to add anything further in case I may have inadvertently misspoken.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Deputy Minister Campbell.

Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Mr. Bromley.

Mr. Chair, thanks for that update. I’m just getting a little concerned that this pause on protected areas could last for years upon devolution. I’m just finding there are all kinds of costs to devolution that weren’t discussed before. Here’s another one.

Is the Minister in touch with Lutselk’e people on the northern tools and are they at least privy to the Minister’s thinking on this more than those few words? Are they looking at northern tools?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Thaidene Nene has been

identified as a priority that we want to move on as a government post-devolution with northern tools. There’s been significant contact with the federal government indicating our interest in a small federal footprint complemented and supplemented by an array of northern tools that may be there, things like territorial parks, conservation areas, wilderness areas, special study areas, those types of options. We’ve been actively working with Lutselk’e now for a number of months. We’ve compressed, I believe, about 18 months or two years of normal previous negotiating into about six months. There is another negotiating session here in a couple of weeks. We will be going back to Cabinet next week for a briefing. We have a briefing scheduled, as well, with committee that will inform everybody as to where we are with the first step of getting our thinking clear both as a government and in our initial negotiations with Lutselk’e. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, that sounds good. It sounds like there are good discussions happening there. Will there be a public process to make sure that… As you know, the public regards this area as of extremely high interest and it’s a high use area. Will the Minister be going to the public for discussions as well? Or perhaps he already has.

Again, I will leave it at that. That’s my last question. I look forward to the document that’s coming forward on protected areas. I’ll be looking for an update on ecological representation in that document. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, as we move forward then through the subsequent phases, we will be working in arrangement with the public to make sure that folks have a clear idea of where we’re going. We’ll have a capacity for feedback. The timelines are very tight that we’re aiming for, which is before summer to have, hopefully, a northern position between ourselves as public government of the Northwest Territories and the Aboriginal governments that are involved in parks about the size of the federal footprint location and what type of potential northern tools would be there. As we move forward, the issue that Mr. Bromley raises is one that we’re factoring in to make sure that we pay the appropriate attention to. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on page 93, conservation assessment and monitoring, operations expenditure summary, $8.039 million. Mr. Blake.