Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the idea of a public review of the events from the 2023 wildfire season has been top of mind for me from early days from when I started the end of my work with environment and climate change in the fire program into my campaign for MLA as I was elected to this House and as I became Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

One of the things that I want to emphasize today is I want to stand here and thank all of the people and the personnel and the firefighters and the GNWT staff who gave up so much through this event. They gave up time with their families. They spent days on the road, sleeping in tents in some instances, in the smoke, day after day. Mr. Speaker, this level of commitment was outstanding. There were single moms that left their small children at home in order to fulfill these roles. We had many elders that were long retired from the fire program that came out to support this event, that put their boots on and went back to work for weeks and weeks at a time. Our children and our grandchildren were on the fire line protecting our communities and ensuring that we had homes to go back to and that we were safe. These things are so critical to building trust in the Northwest Territories.

I want to relay and build on that a little bit, and I just want to talk a little bit about a couple of personal stories that I have from the summer of 2023 and my involvement in the frontlines of the fire program and in ensuring that, you know, all of the communities were protected. And I want to tell a story about a young man from Ontario who was in Fort Smith -- or in Hay River on deployment. And one day on the fire line, he was struck by a falling tree which split his helmet, his protective helmet, in half. That young man was sent out in a medevac. He went down to Edmonton. He got an MRI. He got checked out by a doctor. Three days later, he was told that he was good, he was okay, and he was fine to come back to work. On the fourth day, he was standing in front of me asking for a new helmet. That level of dedication is unprecedented in how people want to protect these communities and the level of dedication that they have to these programs.

I want to also say that sitting in a role in the wildfire management program, especially in a senior role where you're expected to make decisions day after day, instance after instance, you know, in those scenarios the people that take those roles have to make a decision. They're sitting in a seat that requires them to provide guidance to the rest of the staff and to the rest of the personnel. And all you can do when you're sitting in that chair -- and I can speak from experience -- is make the best decision that you can based on the information you have at the time. You can look back and say oh, I should have done this or I should have done that, and hindsight is 20/20 all the time, but when you're sitting there making that decision you're doing the best for the community or the person or the territory based on the information you have. And I think that really provides context for how we move forward and how we look at a public review of the processes and what we can put in place to ensure that those processes are improved.

Mr. Speaker, I've spoken about this numerous times since my election to MLA and prior to that in my role with environment and climate change and also in my role as deputy mayor of the town of Fort Smith. I was part of the community leadership. I sat as the acting mayor for a while, while I was also working with ECC. I was involved in some of the decision-making in that process. And part of that process, I recognized the level of trauma that many of the residents of the Northwest Territories faced and still face to this day. It was a traumatizing experience for a lot of people. But keep in mind that it was also a traumatizing experience for a lot of staff. You know, these folks faced this day in day out. They were there weeks at a time working through these, making the best decisions they could based on the information they had at the time.

You know, the wildland firefighting community in Canada is a very small one. In 2023, we lost seven firefighters, and one of our own here in the Northwest Territories. Adam Yeadon was killed by a falling tree while protecting his community in Fort Liard. And this is not something that I speak of lightly because it is something that is very personal to me and it hits close to my heart, Mr. Speaker.

Over the last summer, in 2023, the conditions were unprecedented. The indices were off the chart. The drought code was off the chart. We were having weather events like we'd never experienced before. Wind, high temperatures. It was a whole another climate than what we've been used to in the past. These were experienced all across Canada, Mr. Speaker. Four provinces in Canada had unprecedented events. Nova Scotia lost 200 homes and had thousands of people evacuated. British Columbia had 80 times their normal burn -- amount of forest burn in a year. Alberta had ten times their normal forest burns and they lost multiple homes, and they evacuated 38,000 people. None of these incidents in other parts of Canada resulted in a public inquiry. What they've resulted in is after-action reviews and expanded processes that look at what we're doing in the fire and emergency preparedness system and how those processes can be improved to make things better as we move forward.

We experienced some of the worst possible conditions in 2023, and this was the first time, the first time, that a home in a community was ever lost to wildfire in the Northwest Territories. There have been cabins, there have been things on the landscape that have burnt previously, but this is the first time a home was ever lost. That in itself, Mr. Speaker, has an impact on the staff at environment and climate change, on the first responders that attempt to protect these communities and protect these homes.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to speak a little bit about the difference between an inquiry and an after-action review. An inquiry, when I hear the word "inquiry", right away my mind goes to punitive and that an inquiry is about, you know, ensuring that we have someone to point a finger at the end of the day whereas I look at an after-action review as a process of looking at the past to ensure that we can use it to inform the future, to make sure that, you know, that we're growing as a community, as an organization, overall to ensure that we provide the best service to the residents of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I've discussed this with many constituents, some of which were directly impacted by this event and are still struggling with the inability to be able to tell their story, to be part of a public process. You know, in these conversations I've also spoken with some Indigenous leaders that their communities were directly impacted. And in these conversations, they've said -- I've explained the difference between a public inquiry, and I've explained the potential possible ways we can move forward with a public after-action third-party review that's separate from government. And I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, the response I got reflected the fact that at the end of the day, these people want to be heard, they want their story to be told, they want it to be done in a public way, they want to ensure that the past informs the future and that those things that come out of a public review are used to ensure that as we move forward we have better systems, we have better communications, we have better processes in place. It's not about saying that it was this person's fault or that person's fault. It's about ensuring that as we moved forward as a territory, we create a much better environment for everyone.

Mr. Speaker, we've heard the word "trust" many times in this Assembly over the last number of days and weeks. And, Mr. Speaker, the residents of the Northwest Territories put trust in 19 Members of this Assembly to become the government and to run this operation going forward. The 19 Members of this Assembly put trust in the Premier and Cabinet to do the same thing, Mr. Speaker. So as we move forward and we consider this motion, I suggest that we put trust in the process and that we allow the public to participate in third party after-action reviews, and after those are complete we look at the results of those, and if at that point we're still not satisfied that we've met the needs of the people, that we've answered the questions that have been asked, then let's have a conversation about a public inquiry. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.