Statements in Debates
That’s all the questions I have, and I appreciate Mr. Guy’s comments there. I understand that this is not the mandate of this department. They’re providing that service in the absence of proper responsibility by other parts of government. I appreciate that service. I know our communities do too. I’ll be working with the Minister of MACA to see what we can do to take that off your hands. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to follow up with sort of an alert I gave in my general comments on the green teams, part of the Brilliant North, the plan. There was a record of failure on that and getting those established in the past, and I know in the 16th Assembly there was agreement to try and focus more on that. Has the Minister been able to get on top of that situation yet and what are the plans during 2012-13 here to make sure that those are up and running more effectively in all departments rather than in one or two? I know the one or two that are up and running have tried to...
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister and deputy minister for those comments. I’ll look forward to that.
On the inspection services side of things, again, I know this department has their own building standards and so on, but unfortunately our communities don’t have a building standards act. I know that there are many cases when they’re at a loss, they do approach Public Works and Services and when they are able, they do provide a response on an informal basis to help out there. I’m just wondering, is there an assessment of that sort of service that’s provided or is that...
My last question here is: Is this a unit of your department or is it a private enterprise contract? How does it work?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It does get hard to hear here. I think the Minister knows where I’m coming from here. I have to say that I’m not totally comfortable with his comment that it always has to be purely based on economics, these decisions, but I think so far we obviously have been doing very well, just based on economics. Although I see there are other government mandates and responsibilities here as well that need to be serviced. Could I get the Minister’s reaction on moving to a 40 percent better National Energy Building Code?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have some brief comments. I wanted to follow up on the response of the Minister to my and other general comments yesterday. Specifically, the Minister estimated the impact of the recommendations from committees, the financial impact of our recommendations at about $4.1 million and acted as if that was impossible to deal with. I did a quick calculation dividing $4.1 million by $1.5 billion and multiplying by 100 to get the percentage of what we’re talking about here, and it turns out that the 11 Members on this side of the House were recommending 0.25 percent of...
Thanks for the Minister’s remarks there. Nunavut has obviously been very successful in developing an Anti-Poverty Strategy thanks to their approach of community participation. One big lesson was that community events such as the community-based review of a draft plan must be carried out with the support of locally hired conveners.
As plans are put in place to create the draft strategy and take it out for community review and NGO review, will the Minister assure us that wherever possible community members will be hired to help carry out the community participation?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the lead Minister on the Anti-Poverty Strategy, Mr. Abernethy, and I want to note that there are good things happening on the Anti-Poverty Strategy development. I’m told by my people, constituents and acquaintances, that good collaborative basis has been established in carrying the work forward. I’m also encouraged that there’s at least one roundtable, maybe a couple established to get together and discuss this as it develops.
The one thing that I am concerned about is that there is an inexplicable attachment to a December 2012 deadline. A...
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few brief comments here. First of all, I’m very happy to see this department has been very fiscally responsible and I know that they’re making decisions when they do that and I appreciate that. I acknowledge that there’s a lot of work coming up with respect to devolution and challenges to work within budgets. I think our budgets are going to be pretty slight for when that comes up. That’s going to take some planning to be effective and so on.
A new four-year plan underway, under development, I’m wondering if there’s been a report on the success or failures and...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks again to the Minister. I’m assuming that that will include hiring local people to help with those local meetings.
The other aspect of this, of course, is that this is a very cross-departmental approach, and the Minister is leading this cross-departmental approach. Ultimately, the delivery of the program will depend on our public service across departments, again, delivering it. This is stepping out from the normal course of events. It will require an unusual degree of cooperation. What is the Minister doing to ensure that those mechanisms are in place and that our...