Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have been talking about a territory-wide midwife program for a long time now. Originally we had programs in Fort Smith and Yellowknife, but the Yellowknife program was dropped with a plan to beef up the program in the Minister’s home community of Fort Smith.

The plan was to expand the Fort Smith program to Hay River, the Beau-Del, Behchoko and Yellowknife. A start was made and we have since seen progress in Hay River and Fort Smith. However, the Minister reports that the health authorities in the Beau-Del decided that instead of a midwifery program they would maintain...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had one other set of questions here. I’m wondering when the Minister will be purchasing the $20 million worth of diesel fuel for this purpose.

I agree with the Minister there. Would the Minister agree that comprehensive planning can help mitigate what the costs will be without planning?

Just for perspective here, would the Minister agree we’d be talking probably in the tens of millions of dollars for that exercise?

I am calling for a cross-departmental response here and headed up by the Housing Corporation, although they are primarily capital approach, they certainly have a lot of housing programs. Housing First recognizes that the first step to helping homeless people out of poverty is to put a roof over their heads. Only then can the identifying problems that lead to homelessness be addressed effectively, sort of a step number two. In some areas civil society contributes to the caring of a family with a Housing First client to help provide social supports.

I’d like to ask the Minister, how is he working...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are also for Minister McLeod today. The recent reports from the YWCA in Yellowknife show that there are 64 families in emergency and transitional housing in the last fiscal year with more than 100 families on the waiting list, 50 women waiting to get into Lynn’s Place here in Yellowknife, 152 families on the waiting list to get into Yellowknife Housing Authority’s housing units. So these are obviously appalling numbers. Housing First programs are getting lots of kudos as a housing solution across North America.

I’m wondering: what is the Minister’s...

Given that the whole government can see this except this side of the House, I’m wondering if the Minister could share with us what are the major elements that the paper will address when finally delivered. Mahsi.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. Will we be doing another one this year? Is there an intent to do that? Maybe the Minister commented on that and I missed it. I am just wondering if this is something we now do annually. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on questions I started last week with the Minister of Public Works and Services on the Energy Efficiency Act and discussion paper. The other day the Minister outlined some of things we have done to reduce energy consumption. I was pleased to hear of that progress. However, we’ve got a long overdue Energy Efficiency Act and a commitment to getting that in place. Since we didn’t do that, we committed to at least doing a discussion paper. Where is that promised document for our review? Mahsi.

So, what would be the final amount for this year for fire suppression?