Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to my previous colleague's comments; I'll just add a little more to that. Certainly, the committee respects that ENR has a number of major commitments during the life of the 18th Assembly's mandate. It has an ambitious legislative agenda as the government goes forward and implements new responsibilities for land and water management after devolution. Of course, with important initiatives like the Land Use Sustainability Framework and the Water Stewardship Strategy, the department, of course, has led the way in demonstrating collaborative and cooperative policy development process with Aboriginal governments and key stakeholders, and that is well appreciated.
The department is currently also in the midst, as we heard earlier today in a presentation, of preparing a Climate Change Strategic Framework that will help the territory meet its emission targets and, of course, ultimately help Canada meet its commitments with the Paris Agreement. These are no small matters and, of course, require time, expertise, and commiserate resources as we move forward.
We all are aware after many of the Members' statements today in the House that climate change is placing significant pressures on our land, our plants, animals, people, and, of course, as well the infrastructure of varying kinds throughout the North. The technical expertise, monitoring, and research within ENR is an asset to this government and will be an asset going forward with the decision-making that we have to make.
We need to continue to support these efforts, not just in principle but in allocating appropriate resources required to implement effective programs, and, of course, this is going to have dire effects going forward on our budget that's already arguably stressed.
Those are some general comments, Mr. Chair, but I think it is incumbent upon me to also indicate some of the aspects that the committee has shared with the Minister in the past with regard to areas within the department that we have either proposed or shown to the Minister that we are in opposition of a particular reduction or would like to see a certain investment instead. So as we move through today, we're going to hear folks as we get to key activity 2 under corporation management, the committee has shared in the past that we're opposed to the reduction to implement a corporate services model. We have shared our opinion on being opposed to eliminating the communications position. ENR is advancing a suite of environmental legislation that needs policy and communications and we see that that position will be critical in moving forward with that legislation.
Key activity 3, which is the environment; we've expressed opposition to eliminating the environmental protection officer position. This is a position in a small community and instead of removing it completely we would like to look at ways to modify the job description to better fit the immediate needs of the region.
Then, Mr. Chair, in key activity 5 under water resources, the committee has been in opposition to the source water protection. We understand the argument that the program originally funded by this line item has run its course, but water monitoring, baseline information gathering, implementing transboundary agreements are all the things that remain very important, and with climate change putting pressure on our resources we think it's crucial to continue to fund water protection and monitoring initiatives.
Those are just some of the general comments, Mr. Chair, that I wanted to share and just a repeat for the Minister and his staff, in particular new staff, as to some of the positions that we've been maintaining. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
