Thank you, Member for Thebacha. General comments to the committee report? There are no further general comments. Member for Deh Cho.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Mahsi to committee and others who made comments regarding the bill.

I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories undertake an independent, third party, comprehensive review of Government of the Northwest Territories' fire prevention and suppression with public engagement.

And further, this review should consider the policy framework, coordination with other governments and agencies, funding for these activities, as well as departmental practices concerning firefighter safety.

And furthermore, findings of the review should be made publicly available on a Government of the Northwest Territories website. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion? Member for Frame Lake.

Sorry, I'm not going to let this one -- mahsi, Madam la Presidente, I'm sorry, I'm not going to let this go without talking about it.

Just -- I think it's important to understand the context in which this recommendation was made. This was made before the evacuations took place in, you know, August when we were trying to conclude the review of the bill. But I think it's even more important today.

Now, on Friday, I asked a series of questions of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who wears the same hat as the Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs, about some kind of a comprehensive, independent, third party review of not just fire management, also emergency management, those two things. And I'd understood from what the Minister said that that would take place. This Cabinet is not going to be making those decisions. It's going to be made -- those decisions will be made by the next Assembly. And he assured me that the requests for proposal that was put out and closes, I think on October the 13th, that that is not this broader third party independent review. I'm not even convinced that the RFP meets the intent of this motion because I think the RFP that was put out is really an after-action review. It's a template. They do these at the end of every fire season.

I think what we were suggesting in this recommendation is something that actually looks at, you know, the fire prevention and fire suppression policy framework and practices because we heard a lot of concerns/complaints about that during the community hearings that we had and in written submissions as well. So I think this recommendation even goes beyond the RFP that's out there. But this is certainly not what I was talking with the Minister about on Friday, which is a much higher third party independent review of both fire management and community -- or sorry, emergency response, emergency management. So I just wanted to get all that on the record, Madam Chair.

I still believe that this work is necessary, but I think it's even more in-depth and probably the RFP is not going to even meet -- that's out there is going to meet the intention of recommendation 1 that we have on the floor now to consider. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, I have a concern about what happened here, the fire here in the Northwest Territories. During the three and a half weeks in my riding, I listened to a lot of my elders, and the people in the community were talking about in the early days when fires happened they had a fire tower there. People were manned -- the towers manned by the RWED at the time.

And in those days, when they used to spot a fire, the guys would get on it right away. And they put out the fire. And they do it whether it would be three or four or five days, but they're on it; it's done, and it doesn't come back and haunt the community down the road. So, yes, there's overtime and so on that has to be looked at. But to me, this fire that just happened here in the Northwest Territories is significant. I don't know what to say about it because we never experienced this before. So, you know, this -- absolutely, I agree that we need to have a very comprehensive review of what happened here. And to undertake an independent third party review of what happened is needed. And, you know, we should really look at all those policies. They say that the fire's burning there. Well, then they should have been on it right away. But no, they -- and they said well, let it burn. No problem. We'll just monitor it. Well, you know, look what happened. So all that needs to happen. You know, I even would say that, you know, the firefighters that are now retired should actually be part of this policy review because they know the land. They're from our area. You know, they have the expertise. But right now, as it is, you know, this is something we got to learn from. But things -- we don't want to go down this road again.

And so I would say that, you know, this review is welcomed. And then I seen past reviews done, you know, internally, and it's like the RCMP investigating themselves. And we want -- we don't want that. You know, here we want to have an independent, and we just got to have clearer terms of reference and everything as to what the outcome should be. And so I'm going to support this motion because of that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Deh Cho.

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the department review what information it can and should provide regarding its internal interactive fire databases, its communication efforts, and how information is presented and organized on its website to improve access to and knowledge of fire prevention and suppression activities and practices. Mahsi.

The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So while we were reviewing the bill, we had an opportunity to go to Fort Simpson. I want to thank the Environment and Climate Change staff that we met in Fort Simpson. We went to their office and we sat in a boardroom, and there was this great huge screen where they were able to flash up all kinds of information about fires. I'd never seen this stuff before. It was amazing. They had, like, real live time data and information there. They could tell you where planes were located, where they were going to be fire bombing and all kinds of stuff. It was amazing the amount of information that these guys were able to show us. But it's not publicly accessible. Nobody knows about it. It's used internally, which is great, and I think it's a very helpful set of tools. But, and I guess I understand maybe the need to keep some of that confidential in terms of values at risk and maybe some of the, you know, the immediate work that they're doing in the air and on the ground. But to not have any public access to that data is not very helpful. You know, the staff are doing a great job, but they've got to find ways to share more of that information. And I think that's what this -- that's what this recommendation is really aimed at, is making more of that kind of information available to the public.

I also want to say, too, that just before the evacuation I was totally exhausted because I was trying to do FireSmarting around our own house. When I went on their website, there was a lot of good stuff there about FireSmarting, a lot of good stuff, but you got to kind of dig to find it. Some of it's not their documents. They're found on third party sites and things. There's a lot of really good stuff there about FireSmarting. We tried to do as much as we could before we left. But it's not organized in a way that's very user friendly. So my -- I think part of -- I'd like to add in here that that's another reason why this information could be better organized and communicated. It's just not there in a user friendly way. Anyways, you know, the staff do great work. They have some really great tools. We just got to find ways to share that and make it more understandable for everybody so that they can access this stuff. And that's what this recommendation is really aimed at. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. To the motion. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And, again, you know, I always ask myself how did we find ourselves in this situation? How did we get here? You know, communication is a big part of, you know, trying to get this information out to the public. And what went down here it was -- it was really scary for a lot of people, especially in my riding Tu Nedhe where I was in Fort Resolution. On one hand, we had fires happening in the south of us in Fort Smith and then you got the one in Hay River. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, Fort Resolution, we're caught in there. The roads get shut off, but we're okay. The thing is that the air quality in that community after for -- oh jeez, I would say about six weeks, it was poor. We had birds dying. And yet, you know, I was a little concerned about how the GNWT could have been more proactive as to dealing with the air quality in that community. However, you know, when I was there for that time, you know, I listened to all the -- you know, the announcements that were made on the radio and the briefings they got, etcetera, you know.

I would say that, you know, we should have had a better handle on the protocol as to who is speaking and that kind of thing because right now we just have one individual constantly on there but then, you know, that person's just an officer of government but yet, you know, the executive, you know, we should have been really there in terms of having somebody there, you know, speaking for this government. You know, this came up in my riding and -- to see that didn't happen. So we definitely have to improve as to how we communicate to the residents of the Northwest Territories, especially in a fire like this. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Member for Deh Cho.

Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that there be an annual meeting between relevant Government of the Northwest Territories departmental staff and each community to review values at risk, fire prevention and suppression preparedness, coordination of efforts and related matters. Mahsi.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.

Again, speaking to the motion, Madam Chair, I just was talking about communication. You know, when we talk about value at risk, etcetera, I know in our community in Fort Resolution, I was there when we had an intergovernmental agency meeting, and we talked about this. But any other time, you know, communication, again, has to come down to the leadership and shared with them. And I'm a little concerned that, you know, if we have one meeting, we only have one RWED officer there. But it didn't go far enough. There was too many questions. And, again, communication needs to be looked at for sure. But in this area here, I think there's going to have to be a way to -- the government to start working with the Indigenous governments on communicating what their plans are and especially when -- at value at risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.

Merci, Madam Chair. Yeah, some of the rationale behind this recommendation, the committee went to a number of communities, including Whati, Enterprise, Fort Simpson, and we constantly heard concerns around the size of firebreaks, whether they were adequate. Also concerns around, you know, the adequacy of their fire prevention suppression capacity within communities. Some people in communities wanted to have, you know, a fire crew based in their community kind of on standby. There was concerns around, I guess, the -- and I don't know all the details, but I guess the training and certification of the folks that fight fires. Very, very high level, very rigorous, as it probably needs to be.

But as people get older, they're not able to meet those physical requirements but they still have a huge amount of experience in actually firefighting, and there doesn't seem to be a way to continue to engage and keep those people on somehow to help younger people. So those were some of the kind of concerns that we heard. And this set of recommendations arise in the report, they're kind of beyond the scope of the bill, but we felt it was important to document these concerns and try to find a way to address them. That's why they still appear in the report. They're outside of the -- perhaps the scope of the bill, but we heard these concerns, and we wanted to find a way to address them.

So one way we felt that some of these concerns could start to be issued is to make sure there's at least an annual meeting that takes place between departmental staff and the community leadership, relevant people in the community, about making sure the proper values at risk have been identified, any changes there, fire prevention suppression preparedness and how people work together.

Maybe these things happen already. If they have -- if they do, they're not being communicated very well to some of the people we were talking to who are actually in leadership positions. So, in any event, this is the reason why committee has made this recommendation, is to try to make sure that we work together to deal with fires better in the future, and I'm sure that's a shared value and objective by everyone in this House. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. To the motion. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I look at this motion here, and I guess I think back to, you know, when the fire started and what happened throughout. You know, I spent most of my time in Hay River during that period. And you know, I saw what was going down. I saw the interaction, I guess, between government, between volunteers, you know, and with the community as well. And you know, at that time, I was thinking, you know, what we need is -- we need some better coordination with all these groups because in the three disasters we've had, what I found was everybody sort of kind of walks away and then you don't really hear much of it again until next time. And as an example, you know, you had a -- we had a fire in the spring and then we had this big fire and in between, there wasn't -- I there didn't appear to be too much discussion.

We also -- the other thing you got to realize too is that in the community, you know, we have, you know, staff and the community governments but they may lack the qualifications when it comes to firefighting. And that's a big issue. They lack qualifications when it really comes to, you know, emergency measures and looking after that in evacuations as well.

So somebody has to take a lead role. And I know that what I find is that, you know, the GNWT will say oh, the community has the lead role and the community says well, the government kind of has the lead role, and there's that confusion. And when you have that confusion, it takes away time and valuable time. And we saw what happens, you know, in Enterprise. We saw what happened in Hay River when we lost valuable time, you know. And so what I'd like to see, I guess, is -- within the Department of ECC is a section that deals with, you know, emergency measures more so. And not just with fires but also with -- you know, the flooding and anything else that we may -- that may come our way. And we need experts in that field. Just like when we -- you know, you talked about doing a review before. You know, we need experts to do those reviews. We don't want just somebody kind of off the street. But we want to listen to people as well who actually -- you know, that went through some of the fires that were on the highway and that. The big thing is that better coordination, better communication. We need a special section within ECC to actually deal with emergencies and preparedness. And we need staff that are actually qualified, and we need that staff to help the communities qualify to make sure their staff are qualified as well. Like, we do in Hay River, we've got firefighters and that. A lot of them are volunteers. And, you know, there's only so much you can learn. You know, we're lucky they were there. We had -- you know, they were looking after structures while the ECC staff were looking after the wildfire. So just -- and those are just comments and things that I guess I saw while I was on the ground in Hay River. I just don't like to see some of the confusion that does happen. And it could very easily be avoided. Thank you.