Bob McLeod

I am pleased to announce that my colleague the Minister of Environment and myself have had the opportunity to meet with some of the businesses that operate on a territorial-wide basis, particularly of how we could use commercial subsidies that have been identified to help reduce the cost of goods for businesses that are operating not only in the Sahtu, but throughout the North. So this is an area that we are still working on, and certainly most of the businesses were very eager to work with us and to find ways to not only to reduce costs of the products they sold, but to make their businesses...

We are looking at the priority lists, because affirmative action covers a number of different areas which deem to be priorities in the hiring of this government. Certainly it includes not only affirmative action employees, but also women in the workforce, all hard-to-hire areas and people with disabilities, and they’re broken up into different categories and we are looking at it to see if there are ways to make it more effective in our hiring practices. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When those developments happen in the Northwest Territories, we will certainly make sure that the benefits to the people of the Northwest Territories are maximized. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are having the committee work with each of the regions and we are expecting that they will come forward with some recommendations in approximately six months or so.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason there is no IBA agreements is the project hasn’t advanced to that stage yet. It’s still under development and both Mactung and Selwyn are being very careful to make sure that they stay on the Yukon side. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would be pleased to visit the community with the Member and certainly anything we can do to help to facilitate, we will try to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are looking at ways to try to improve some of the existing infrastructure that’s there so that the Mactung can use or perhaps see fit to use the road and airport that is there now. I think in order to do that, we need to find a way to upgrade what’s being used as an airport. Right now it’s just the CANOL Road that was built 40 years ago and they’re using that to land on and the road that’s being used was built in 1945. So we’re very prepared to work with the Sahtu people, because we think there are some economic opportunities there and we think if we improve the airport and the road even a...

We would have some funding to do some planning work. I think that once we get closer to something concrete, we would have to identify funds through our capital plans. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve had the opportunity to visit the Mactung site this summer, along with the Member, and it was quite impressive. As the Member knows, all of the work that is being done on the Mactung site is on the Yukon side of the border. Having said that, I think there are opportunities to access that mine through the Northwest Territories, and we are well aware of the CANOL Park and we’re very prepared to work with the Sahtu to help develop that park. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that the implementation of 20/20: A Brilliant North, NWT Public Service Strategic Plan is well underway. This plan is the first of its kind for the Department of Human Resources.

Mr. Speaker, 20/20: A Brilliant North is an important and exciting strategic plan that will guide the Government of the Northwest Territories human resource planning over the next 10 years and is being championed by all deputy ministers. The actions contained in the accompanying three-year action plan are ambitious, with year one focussing on the development of a number of...