Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to first of all say to the Minister and the staff that there were a lot of really concerned people last year
because of the fires that happened in the south part of the Northwest Territories and the situation that called for additional dollars and resources to be used in the North to fight the fires.
So, my first point and my first comment is the ability of having well-qualified firefighters prepared and ready for any situation that might be in a similar situation as last year. I want to ask the Minister if he’s looking at the firefighters training program this year. It’s quiet now, and we can have some qualified, certified, trained firefighters using the Aurora College campus as having firefighters training while it’s really cold outside. Do you know what I mean? So, you know, you have some qualified people in the community ready to go when they’re needed and called upon. I think we can use, through some agreement with Education, Culture and Employment, people who are on income support can go to these, you know, and learn. That’s what we want to do. We want to get them off income support, and maybe some of them want to, and maybe learn further as they learn about firefighter training. That’s something I wanted to mention to the Minister.
The other one, Mr. Chair, I wanted to mention to the Minister, also I heard it from the Minister of ITI, is that the Sahtu and the other communities have a really strong fur trapping program and, as a matter of fact, Mr. Ramsay has mentioned that the Asian countries are really keen on the northern furs and our people are also very keen on what the outside people are saying. I wanted to look at a program in the communities as an out-of-the-box concept as maybe implementing a trappers certificate program in the Northwest Territories. I know they do that in Saskatchewan and other areas. They could take a program and that may have many benefits to attending this program and you have whole bunch of good things that could happen with this trapper certificate program. You would be a certified trapper and I think that might be something that is worthwhile to look at again. Again, it’s a concept that could do a lot of good things for our people in the communities. You know, people can be a certified trapper with many benefits. So that’s something I want to ask the Minister to look at.
The point I want to make, also, is that especially in the Sahtu there’s a lot of young men and women who like to hunt. A lot of families take their children out to a spring hunt. Last year I understand close to 400 people were out during the spring hunt, the ceremonial hunt, and even during the winter seasons here. I want to ask if the department would be willing to look at a gun safety program in the schools as part of that safety for the young ones.
I do want to raise a couple of concerns I have with the waste management, especially – and it might be down on the list of waste management recyclables – the old vehicles we have in our
dumps right now. I think that’s a good program, a long-term program. I think the Minister mentioned something about looking at this in the future and that was a couple of years ago, so this is now the future. So I want to see if there’s still an appetite to look at how to get rid of these old vehicles that are sitting in our dumps through a program. So that’s something that I want to ask the Minister about in my comments.
Mr. Chair, I wanted ask the Minister in regards to the trapping program for the kids. I just talked with an elder outside, from Deline, and he said that it’s good to have education within the schools and that, but you also need to have a strong educational program on the culture and on the land and using our own language in that program. I know kids get really excited when they go on these one or two day on-the-land programs, but it’s not long enough. They really get excited when an elder goes out with them and starts teaching about the land. I know it requires some coordination and some work from other departments, so I want to raise this with the Minister.
I wanted to raise some more concerns from the Sahtu leadership, specifically from the Renewable Resources Board they had on caribou, but I don’t have the information in front of me so I won’t be able to say very much. But the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board had some concerns on the caribou issue. I just want to let the Minister know that once I get the information, I will raise it with him on this one here.
I want to say to the Minister and his staff to continue to work hard on the transboundary agreements that we have with the other provincial governments. I’d certainly like to see some progress in that area.
They have really good staff up in our region. They work well with the people and the community. I noticed that when one of our ENR personnel has to go to Colville Lake and they have to either drive or fly to buy furs… Again, I’m going to make another request to see if we can put some type of personnel in Colville Lake, either a patrol person or someone who can look after the furs, because a staff member has to leave Norman Wells and has to drive. Do you know how long it takes to get to Colville Lake? Eight hours by truck. Maybe they need to look at adding an ROI in there because it’s valuable time taken away from the regional office. I just ask if that can be considered to monitor other issues and to help the community.
I want to leave it at that, Mr. Chair. I want to say that to the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chair.