Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate that. I'll just go back and ask one other question. The $430,000 for the barren-ground caribou surveys, does that, then, have to be brought forward through a supplementary? Thank you.

Minister.

Yes.

Thank you. Member.

Thanks, Madam Chair. You already have one vote. I appreciate that. I want to ask about work for caribou habitat protection. Where would I find it in the budget here? I see that there is a habitat and environmental assessment line. Is that where I would find money, how much, and what is actually being done to protect, I'll just pick on one herd, the Bathurst caribou herd?

Thank you. Minister.

For that detail, I will turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Deputy Minister.

Thank you. Minister.

We'll make that commitment to get that back to committee. Thank you.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister for that. I had understood that there were some meetings that were to take place in the fall, or maybe it was in January, with the Tlicho and some other Indigenous governments and communities to start to identify specific areas for habitat protection, critical habitat. Look, there is nothing else we can do on the harvest side, quite frankly. I do appreciate the work of the Minister and what he did in the media today, so maybe we can do some more enforcement stuff there. There's not much we can do with the harvesters to deal with that anymore. We have tried the predator stuff. That seems to have worked a little bit. The one area where we haven't done anything and is still outstanding, even in the range plan, is habitat protection. I had understood there were going to be some meetings. What is the status of that work, and have we actually started to identify areas that need to be protected, even permanently, for the Bathurst caribou herd? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

For that level of detail, I will turn to the deputy minister. Thank you.

Deputy Minister.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes. I will probably have some more questions on this habitat protection, maybe later this week. However, I did want to ask about the status of transboundary work with the Government of Nunavut. The Minister did invite me to a meeting not that long ago. I guess it was about a year ago. The Nunavut Premier was there. He is interested. There were some music groups there. Where are we at with a transboundary caribou agreement? I know the Premier of Nunavut has been diverted with some other stuff, even in his hometown, but where are we at with a transboundary caribou agreement for the Bathurst herd and maybe some of the other herds? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you. I will start and then turn it to the deputy minister. We have been trying to follow up on the meeting we had from last year, that the Member was invited to, a couple of Members from the House were invited to, which was really good. We had Indigenous governments. We had the Nunavut government. The Premier is the Minister of environment from Nunavut; not only is he the Premier, but he has taken that portfolio. Unfortunately, the situation has not arrived that we were able to have further conversations. As the Member talked about, he has been pretty busy in dealing with some of the challenges that are there. We are still trying to work with him. We have reached out a number of times, and we are trying to fit it into our schedule to have those conversations. However, the work for the staff, I will turn to the deputy minister.

Thank you. Deputy Minister.