Bob McLeod

Right now we’re focusing on our government. As well as having an advisory team we also have internal departmental teams, and I’m pleased to say that we have five interdepartmental teams that have undertaken a host of initiatives so that we’ll have a greener workplace and with the active participation of all of our employees. Thank you.

In addition to some of the activities that Mr. Bromley outlined, we have developed some other activities that I would like to note such as in-office composting, purchasing recycled bond paper, we’ve purchased bicycles for interoffice travel, also hybrid pilots. We also organize healthy lifestyle activities, we conduct in-house waste audits, have established recycling stations in every department, and we organize staff awareness contests. All of these activities play a role in improving our workplace and, certainly, with utilizing the deputy minister committee, we use that to make sure that it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Greening the workplace is a very important initiative that this government undertook as part of its 20/20 human resource strategic planning. What we’ve accomplished is we’ve set up an interdepartmental advisory Green Team that meets on a regular basis. We have representation from the majority of the departments and they make recommendations to our deputy minister committee on a quarterly basis. The green advisory team has developed an action and terms of reference that they’re working on. Thank you.

Yes, I would, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the 2011-2012 main estimates for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

The department’s mandate is to promote economic self-sufficiency through responsible development of the Northwest Territories natural resources and the promotion of tourism, trade, investment, business and manufacturing to create a prosperous, diverse and sustainable economy for the benefit of all residents. Through this mandate, we continue to support the commitment of our government that all residents of the Northwest Territories must have the opportunity to...

Thank you. Yes, that is given a focus on a departmental level. It is part of our energy priorities framework and that is something that is ongoing and we have invested on things to reduce energy for the GNWT like a wood pellet boiler for the Legislative Assembly, a wood pellet boiler in Fort Simpson, the Capital Asset Retrofit Fund under an energy efficiency for public housing. So those are some of the areas that we’ve been focusing on through the committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll present the statistics on a departmental basis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have to change our terminology. We are still calling it a backlog, but we recognize that every pay cycle it adds to our backlog. But from the original, when we consolidated Human Resources into one department and all the files were turned over, I believe there was something like 2,500 transactions that were backlogged. There probably has been another 2,600 transactions, what we call adding to our workload, but having said that, we have been able to deal with all of that and what we are still calling a backlog is about 936 now, so we are going to change our...

Mr. Chairman, whenever we meet with the mining industry or specific proponents of individual mining projects, most of the projects require two things to become feasible. It is usually some sort of road or cheaper power. Every opportunity we have, we try to facilitate. With regards to the Tlicho, we haven’t met with NICO. They expressed their concern with regards to a road, any road. The department had set aside money for a road, some sort of an all-weather road or at least improving the existing winter road. They were waiting for some response from the Tlicho government. I think they are still...

I don’t have a specific number but they do have technical engineers and specialists and policy people that work in this area and we rely on them for most of the detailed technical work with regard to hydro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess way back in the ‘60s or ‘70s, the Government of the Northwest Territories decided to become involved in Great Slave Lake Fishery and passed the Freshwater Fish Marketing Act. The federal government is responsible for fisheries, but we’re assisting fishermen with administration and transportation of their catch.

The other earlier reference to fishing was to develop local markets for fish in the Northwest Territories. That’s the difference. Thank you, Mr. Chair.