Bob Bromley

I think that was a good, brief discussion. As for your last statement that you’re not a supplier, I will hold my comments until we get to petroleum products division. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I take that criticism. Excuse was probably not the best word. Perhaps “reason” was a better word for that.

I again appreciate the Minister’s positive response here. I would say that we’re very fortunate to have a resident community of world-class experts in building standards and so on. They’re very active in national organizations and government-level inputting to national standards and so on. Would the Minister agree to meet with those representatives of those associations and professionals as one of the steps towards developing this legislation?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Very quickly, I would ask the Minister what would constitute certainty around the supply of wood pellets in the Sahtu. Is it a contract with a supplier or is it a transportation issue? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs following up on my Member’s statement and actually the Minister’s statement as well where he notes that the department has a role as a coach, advisor and supporter in terms of infrastructure. I think it’s much more than that. I think there’s also a responsibility for inspections on the safety and efficiency front.

I’ve noticed that all provinces and Yukon, our sister, have building acts to ensure these sorts of safeties are in place. In contrast, lack of comparable law here leaves us out of step...

I think that’s it for now. Thanks for that information. I’ll look forward to updates.

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...

I appreciate the Minister’s flexibility there. It sounds good. Even the best Anti-Poverty Strategy could fail to produce strong results without concrete action to carry it out.

Because the solutions to poverty lie at the community level, we will need to work out our partnerships, roles and programs to ensure success. As the lead Minister begins the work to create an Anti-Poverty Strategy, recognizing that he’s already drawing upon work done as he mentioned and so on, will he also commit to creating an implementation and action plan as an integral part of that strategy?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to salute the good work going on in my Weledeh riding with the construction of two new homes with assistance from Habitat for Humanity.

Construction is expected to start in June on a new duplex in the Niven Lake subdivision, houses that will eventually be the homes of two four-person families. The new families will move from the rental market into home ownership, thanks to the socially progressive work of this organization and the affordable terms of construction and purchase.

Habitat for Humanity assumes a CMHC backed mortgage which families begin paying as soon...

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?