Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I want to speak to this one. I want to speak to the resources that this government actually got for forest management. The responsibility was, of course, originally held by the federal government and back in 1987, there was a devolution agreement for forestry negotiated. And this government, at that point, received an indexed offset to the territorial formula funding arrangement of $24 million. And so that was indexed over time. We asked the department about what that would actually be these days. We were told that it's about $55 million in today's dollars. So that's money that was given to this government for the purposes of carrying out forestry activities, including fire suppression.

Now, you know, in a normal year -- and this is not a normal year -- the department spends about $35 million a year on forestry. That includes fire suppression and management. So there seems to be a gap there where maybe all the money that GNWT was getting for forestry is perhaps not actually being spent on it in a normal regular year. And the reason why I raise this is this new legislation creates some very significant new tools and responsibilities on our government when it comes to sustainable forestry. There's going to be forest eco -- there should be forest ecosystem management plans. There could be forest harvesting agreements. There's supposed to be forest monitoring. And a lot of this is going to be ecosystem-based management. Working collaboratively with Indigenous governments and co-management bodies. That's a lot of new responsibilities on this government, and this government needs to have the resources to do that.

Why is this important? If we want forestry to take off here and begin to replace wood that's imported, we need to be able to identify where people can do the harvesting and ensure that the research and monitoring that can support those economic opportunities are made available. And I guess I'm not convinced that we do enough of that work right now. But the ability and tools to do that are going to increase exponentially with a passing of this legislation. So our government has to be ready for that. And we need to be spending more money on forestry, on forest research, on inventory work to identify those opportunities so we can create jobs in the forest sector to replace the wood that we import, as much of that as we possibly can. That's why this is important because it can create jobs here. We want to make sure it's done sustainably.

But the department has to get a budget together to do that. You cannot do it with the current budget; it's not going to work. So I'm trying to make a case for the next Minister to get that work done and put forward a proper budget to make sure that we have sustainable forestry and the jobs that it can create in small communities. And that's what this is aimed at, but also making sure that while we develop those regulations -- and there's a lot more work to be done to develop those regulations -- that that work can be done collaboratively with Indigenous governments and that there's a better public engagement as well. Thanks, Madam Chair.