Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there was two or three questions in there so I will try to answer which ones they are.

Do we -- if it's seven years, does it have the impact on wildlife? I'd have to get back to the Member on that. I don't know that detail. I don't get into that detail. I understand the importance of fire and what it does to the environment. It's part of the regrowth. It has happened in the past. It used to be part of it, the way of life. I was actually talking to an advisor, an elder who lives on the land, and we talked about, you know, the importance of fire and what it did. And he talked to me about in the old days they used to find areas that were really dry and that and they would burn it so it would be regrowth and that. So we do look into those things. And if the habitat on the caribou, it is an asset, a value. So it's a value to us. We look at that. We try to fight the fires there as best we can because caribou are important, so is their environment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. Since 2009, we have caribou restriction in place and our people need to know because we do rely on caribou. That's why I'm asking. And this is where they failed to work closely with the traditional knowledge. We do need those people. ECC needs to have to be working with the Indigenous government and traditional knowledge keeper so that they can be informed of what is happening with our caribou, and we do rely on that. So that's why I asked.

And, Mr. Speaker, okay, this is another question that I don't mean to be disrespectful in a time like this, okay. And I know it's too early to ask. And I don't know if MACA can answer me this or Minister of finance. And I want to know how much money have we spent to evacuations, and if all this money was spent to fire breakers, just like my colleague said here, knowing it is going to be dry season with less precipitation, we did -- we did not need to evacuate and respond to the fire as it started -- respond to the fire as it started. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to answer the caribou question. The other one is a different one, and I'll just go on to that later, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regards to the caribou, the traditional knowledge, we work with our Indigenous governments about caribou. We talk about that. We talk about how we protect it. We talk about the environment. We see where the area is that we need to protect. What we need to do is make sure our caribou survives for generations to come. So it's just not now. Yes, we have had the mobile zone, but that there was what we worked with the Indigenous governments on there. In regards to the complexity of the questions about how much money is spent and that, we're going to have to take that as notice because we still don't have that information, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. A final short supplementary. Member for Monfwi.

Thank you. Yeah, with the climate change here now --

-- sorry, the Minister took that on notice. Yes, I know, but it's taken as notice. So moving on, oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to thank my colleague from Frame Lake and the Minister for MACA for answering the questions. And I look forward to an after-action review, and I'm happy to hear that the public's involved. Although I just have a few clarifying questions on why exactly the city of Yellowknife evacuation order was issued by the GNWT and what exactly occurred in that very rapid 24-hour period there. So my first question is for the Minister of MACA. Can he explain why all the other communities were community evacuation orders, but the capital region was done by the GNWT, why that was the case? Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister responsible for MACA.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is probably going to be a little bit of a longer answer, and I apologize to the House, but we need to get the information out there.

The GNWT used the territorial state of emergency. The decision was based on a combination of multiple factors and not one factor. They included starting in May, the NWT had already experienced multiple community evacuations. In one week alone, just before Yellowknife evacuation orders had been issued, Enterprise, Fort Smith, Hay River, Jean Marie, K'atlodeeche First Nation had also learned -- been evacuated and we've also seen the devastation that happened in Enterprise. Very aggressive and unpredicted wildfire behaviour near Yellowknife area was causing significant concerns to certain -- to very knowledgeable firefighters. Previous wildfires had, in fact, critical infrastructure like the fibre optic link, highways, impacted communications and transit corridors. The fire break that was here around Yellowknife today were not in place when those evacuation orders were issued. There were potentially risk to the highway and airport given the current fire conditions. There were many factors that led to Yellowknife evacuations but, ultimately, the right decision was made. Given the same information that I had today from -- or when we did it, I'd do it again twice on Sunday, Mr. Speaker. The city is right from their perspective. The NWT health and social services is right from their perspective. But the GNWT had considered all perspectives. The fire conditions, one road, one airport, system capacity, etcetera. Conversations about what was said are largely irrelevant because of how quickly the situation changed from Sunday to Thursday, the day before the Yellowknife evacuation. But the city did formally ask for assistance with its shelter in place and a scenario for a city evacuation on the 15th, the day before the evacuation order was issued.

Mr. Speaker, NWTHSSA was focusing on the hospital. They had patients there. They had long-term patients. They also had 60 evacuees from Hay River in Fort Smith that they had to get out there. So to do a shelter in place and to set up an evacuation centre, they would not be able to do that. So when the city came to us, we sat there and looked at everything. We looked at every avenue, what the situation was happening, and we made the decision that we had the time to evacuate the community, we'd give the 48 hours to get the community out because the fire was coming. 15 and 11. 85 was burning as well. These situations were occurring. If 15 and 11 connected, that highway would have been closed off. Then we would have problems with the air quality in for our residents. We'd also have the problem of getting -- to use the airport because we were seeing it, and the predictions were that Saturday it was going to hit, and we were going to see all the problems there. So that's why the decision was made moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that answer. And, you know, I appreciate the Minister made the decision, and he stands by it. I guess I'm still a little confused about the jurisdictional question. You know, Hay River has issued multiple evacuations in the last couple years and it's always the town of Hay River. And there is an understanding that's who does it. I don't believe we would ever step in front and evacuate their town without them doing that first, but that's what occurred in Yellowknife. And I'm just wondering, you know, god forbid we ever have an evacuation, whose call is it at the end of the day and is there a reason that the exception was made in Yellowknife?

For all the reasons the Minister just said, it seems to me he could have gone to the mayor, I'm asking you to issue an evacuation order. That's the chain of how we did this everywhere else. So I'm just -- is going forward, that's what we would do, or is it when we evacuate the capital, it's a GNWT decision; is that the current process? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, it's the community. Hay River evacuated that. They called evacuation. What happened there, we declared a state of emergency. We declared a state of emergency not because of just Yellowknife. We had Inuvik being threatened. We had Kakisa. We had Jean Marie. We evacuated Hay River, Fort Smith, and K'atlodeeche First Nation, Enterprise. We were seeing -- we're not like Alberta. We don't have all these aircrafts that we needed and we were sitting there seeing that we needed to get these aircrafts to be able to do that. Part of the evacuation order -- or the state of emergency was to be able for us to get the tools that we needed. So we were able to declare the state of emergency. Then we looked at it. At TEMO, we brought in the federal government. So the process, it starts out local, goes right to the territories, and then we look at the federal or ask our counterparts across the country to work with us. We had a situation where we had the military in with us. We had a situation where we were looking at sheltering in place. That wasn't a viable option. So at that point in time, we declared with the state of emergency. Hay River, Fort Smith, K'atlodeeche, we were not under a state of emergency at that point in time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. These questions are for the Minister of ECC. I'd ask the Minister have any assessors visited the communities that had structural damage to assess those damages as of today. Thank you.

Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister responsible for Environment and Climate Change.

That would be Municipal and Community Affairs. But, yes, so we've had assessors come into Behchoko. We've had assessors -- or we still have assessors in Enterprise. And then we would then be -- once we've done Enterprise, we would go on to Paradise Gardens that were impacted, those homes there, and then also Patterson. So we do have the assessors in there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Once the assessors do their job and the information is gathered, who will be responsible for working with those businesses and persons who had structure and equipment damage by the fire? Will it be Pathfinders; who will it be? Thank you.

Thank you. I think the Member answered his question. He's correct. But it did depends. If it's -- it's an insurance company it's with the insurance company. If it's -- they don't have insurance, it would be with the Pathfinder. And we are looking at trying to get a Pathfinder strictly for Enterprise because what we found is having Pathfinders specifically in the communities that were impacted seemed to be working better than not. So we are looking at getting a Pathfinder for -- specifically for Enterprise. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, considering that, you know, we still have, I think, 22 files left over from the flood that -- you know, that haven't been completed, haven't even started to be actioned yet, and we do have, I think, three Pathfinders in Hay River, and I'm not sure what we have for staff here, but now with the fires and the magnitude of, you know, what happened in the South Slave, will there be additional staff added in the South Slave to help people, you know, deal with their claims? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So right now we're adding an additional one right now. But as we see fit, if there's more -- if the damages we're seeing, we need more Pathfinders and then we will look into that. Right now, we feel we have enough Pathfinders right now, whether it's here in the city or in Hay River, part of that team. But we are adding an additional one right now to help with that Enterprise file. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there seems to be some confusion, or there has been anyway right from the start with Pathfinders in place, as to who was actually making decisions to either approve or decline applications. You know, I think that's very important so that when people are going to see a Pathfinder, you know, sometimes they think the Pathfinder is the one who might be approving an application, but I don't -- my sense is that they're -- it's not them. So I'd like -- I'd ask the Minister to provide, I guess, maybe with a flow chart of the process of who is responsible for the different aspects of the application as it goes from -- from when it gets taken in to when it's finally approved. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't know if he's asking me to provide one or to talk about it now. So the Member is asking me to provide a flow chart; yeah, we will work on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Colleagues, our time for oral questions has expired. Written questions. Returns to written questions. Mr. Clerk.