Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, kind of, moving on and in a similar vein, we do have a reindeer herd, which is not wildlife, although it is the responsibility of ENR. Along the same vein, I question why I do not see reindeer on more and more menus, why I cannot buy it in the grocery store. Can I get a sense from the department of what is going on with our reindeer herd and whether we can tap into that as a food source?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do appreciate that, and I think the move to traditional foods in the hospitals is a good step. Perhaps that will somewhat commercialize the market, but I don't want to see that principle of non-commercial hunting disappear. I do think there probably is some inconsistency in the messaging that is occurring between ITI, Health, and ENR in regard to the market of hunting, because I have seen more and more push to allow locally harvested game to end up in restaurants or end up in markets. To me, I don't understand how we could do that without commercializing it. I guess my question would be: would the Minister of ENR just be willing to reach out to ITI and Health and get a bigger, fuller picture of how this fits within the principles of conservation?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do recognize there is that contention here. To me, if we are talking about saving the Bathurst caribou herd and we can put an economic value that it's providing thousands and thousands of dollars of meat every single year ideally forever, I guess, I think it helps make those arguments when comparing a Bathurst caribou damage to nonrenewable resource projects. I think this is a conversation for another time, but I do think that economic value has some things.

Another, kind of, core of the North American model of conservation is to not allow market hunting, essentially to not allow people to hunt for the purposes of selling meat, which kind of goes in contradiction to what I just said about prescribing a value to it. I know there is some exploration of the idea of allowing our harvesters to sell the locally harvested meat and whether that be to restaurants. Can I just get an update from the Minister where that work is at?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that, in some conservation circles, there is hesitancy to put a value on wildlife, but I think, as we are going forward in this Assembly, looking at food security, and we are talking about increasing the harvesters assistance program, I really do think that there is a value to putting a value on what all of our caribou herds are worth to providing food security and then doing some of that assessment of what ultimately that benefit in food security is, being provided by local harvesters. Would ENR be willing to begin that work?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am wondering if ENR or any department has some sort of evaluation of the monetary value on the meat that local harvesters provide their communities.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll have further discussions with the Minister about this. I also believe that the federal government, through its climate change plans, is looking at reforestation as one of the many tools, so I think, looking at the pilot that we're doing and leveraging the money that we currently have set aside through stumpage fees, that there is probably an opportunity to leverage some more federal funding for reforestation efforts. I'll just leave that as a comment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We've had a number of really bad forest fire seasons and the boreal forest simply is not growing back to be the same forest that it used to be. Also, there is a reforestation fund. We don't require our commercial forestry operators to replant, like they do in many other jurisdictions. There has been a recommendation that reforestation is one of the number one ways we can fight climate change; also, it's a huge employer. I guess my question to the Minister is: do we have money presently set aside for reforestation?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do think that there is actually quite a bit of potential in working with ITI to make sure that we develop our forestry industry, and there's a whole spectrum here, whether it's community wood lots or a person building log cabins, or the large BC forestry companies who have come up and harvested in the past in the Northwest Territories. I would encourage the department, or the Minister of ENR, to work with ITI to see if there is some potential economic growth there. My other question is: do we presently conduct any tree planting, or are there any plans to do any tree planting?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I see we're pulling about $5,000 in timber-cutting licences and permits, which is not that much. I recognize that much of the Northwest Territories doesn't have trees, but there has been, in the past, quite significant commercial timber operations in the South. Can I just get a sense of what the department is doing to, you know, look into further developing our forestry industry?