Bob Bromley

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just had one question. I’m wondering what the contract services are for, the $625,000. I see that’s up from $343,000 a couple years before, and if I could just get an idea of the sorts of contracts that are being budgeted here for contract services. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just under the Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program budget, I believe the federal government bumped this up quite a bit. They committed about $8 million or something to it just before devolution. It just seems like a modest amount to that, but I don’t know that for sure. It just seems like it from my hazy recollection.

Could I get some understanding of where that ended and how that’s being carried forward? I think there are some very pithy issues. The defining thresholds seems to be a big research topic and so on with which to interpret things that we’re monitoring. If I...

Mr. Chair, thanks for that update. I’m just getting a little concerned that this pause on protected areas could last for years upon devolution. I’m just finding there are all kinds of costs to devolution that weren’t discussed before. Here’s another one.

Is the Minister in touch with Lutselk’e people on the northern tools and are they at least privy to the Minister’s thinking on this more than those few words? Are they looking at northern tools?

Mr. Chair, we’re not talking about people that live outside community boundaries; we’re talking about people that live on the land away from civilization and make their living on the land. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The reason I see a difference here is because there are land use plans in place for the Mackenzie Valley Highway and we don’t have those for the area for the road that’s being discussed. As the Minister knows, those things take in the order from five to 20 years to do. To do it right, we need to get started yesterday in land use planning in this area.

On the establishment of protected areas and development of an ecological representation network, where are we at on ecological representation? I know what we’ve done on the cultural representation side, working with our...

I’d like to ask the Minister if he’s aware of a policy gap associated with the compensation for fire losses only being available to trappers and not to others that live on the land and make their living off the land and through important roles in remote locations.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question is on… I note the division is responsible for regional land use planning and I know through our Aboriginal government partners we’ve got a lot of land use plans in place, Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Sahtu, Tlicho, I believe even the Dehcho have done some work there. But there are two major areas, the North Slave and South Slave, where there hasn’t been much work done.

Has the Minister initiated processes there to get that work done? For example, this government is talking about a road to resources, Slave Geological Province highway. Where’s the land use plan...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and the deputy minister for that. It sounds like a very comprehensive look. It would have been very nice, of course, to have had that in hand as we review this budget and as the department develop the budget. I understand that the Minister will bring this to committee at the end of March. I guess I want to confirm that.

Is that the intent, that committee will hear about that at the end of March and discuss any budget implications at that time?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to all my colleagues for their comments. I appreciate that the Minister is very active on this file. I won’t attempt to comment on this voluminous statement. I will look forward to studying that and getting on top of all those things. I speak very slowly, Mr. Speaker.

---Laughter

I do note the Minister is taking this very seriously. I guess the one point I would make is that this was brought to me by the staff. I don’t want to miss out on stressing the vulnerability that patients have to this violence and the need to recognize them in particular.

I think the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. WHEREAS all workers in the Northwest Territories deserve a safe workplace that is free from the threat of physical assault;

AND WHEREAS non-violent crisis intervention is not adequate or appropriate protection of staff and patients in the face of violent physical attack;

AND WHEREAS contracted security personnel and other staff at Stanton Territorial Hospital and territorial health care facilities are not trained to protect employees, patients, themselves or others from violent people;

AND WHEREAS staff at territorial health care facilities are currently at high risk of...