Brendan Bell

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will go the Member one better. I also was a lifeguard at the beach and I hope I wasn’t frolicking on the job.

---Laughter

I recognize that it would be certainly helpful and it is important to make sure that the beach is safe. We are proposing that it be posted as unsupervised. I can’t guarantee that there will be lifeguard services at that beach, no more than the past Minister could for the past season despite the contract in place. The city was unable to provide lifeguards. So it would be misleading for me to stand here and say that I could guarantee that there would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the benefit of the contract in front of me, as it seems Mr. Hawkins does. I appreciate that he will table it later today, so we have it and I can probably give him some more important answers at that point. Just a little background, Mr. Speaker, though, I believe we approached negotiations with the city this year and were looking to sign a contract, recognizing that costs had increased. It has always been on a cost-shared basis in the past. Past expenditures have been about $12,000 for our government. We went into these negotiations and offered $15,000...

Thank you. In terms of negative impacts on the people of the Northwest Territories, obviously we want to mitigate those wherever possible. I can assure the Member that I’m sitting down with my colleagues, the Minister responsible for the social envelope, to first identify what those potential impacts are, and we have some I would say track record now. We can take a look at our experience with the course of the last couple of mines. I think we need to learn from that. We need to understand where the challenges are, and where there are potential impacts seek to mitigate them. There...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Snap Lake Diamond Project Socioeconomic Agreement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In many cases community freezers were not being well utilized anymore, and I know that the Member knows his riding well, and the Member’s insistence that Paulatuk residents do need this piece of infrastructure is one that I am listening to, but, Mr. Speaker, we think there are more cost effective options. We are truly concerned that because of the age of this piece of infrastructure that if it continues to operate in the manner it’s operating, there could be a situation where the power goes down, members of the community are not aware, food spoilage happens, and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Dennis Marchiori, who is the Human Rights Act implementation coordinator, and also I am hoping my colleagues will join me in giving a warm welcome to Therese Boullard, who is the new director of Human Rights for the Northwest Territories. They have a lot of work to do. We know that we’re opening an office very soon and we wish them all the best. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I recognize that it is soon getting warm. I think the community has been in discussions with our department for some time. This is not something that was sprung on the community, and I do believe that if the community made the decision to run the piece of infrastructure and operate the freezer as a stopgap measure they could do so, and we can sit down then when I go up there to discuss going forward, how we deal with it, and deal with this season as well. I would be prepared to do that when I visit the community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me first preface my comments by saying that this government supports and recognizes how important the harvesting of country foods are to small communities, and we're supportive of traditional lifestyles and we recognize and acknowledge in past times it was very important to have this critical piece of community infrastructure, community freezers, in our more remote communities that weren't accessible by highway, Mr. Speaker. Times are changing. We've looked at divesting ourselves of these pieces of infrastructure, and we've done that through Public Works and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a return to written question asked by Mr. David Ramsay on March 29, 2004, regarding government investment into the northern manufacturing industry over the last 10 years.

The Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development has a number of programs that support manufacturing in the NWT. The business development fund provides contributions to a variety of businesses for a wide range of needs. The BDF contributions, plus additional Ministers' contributions, in the amount of almost $4 million have been provided since 1995 to businesses...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, certainly, and I know the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation presented us with some information. We have acknowledged that it was done on the best-case or worst-case scenario basis. We can’t know what the true cost would have been because we don’t know what the outcome of the tender would be. But I will certainly bring forward the points that the Member has made here today to our discussion at Cabinet. Thank you.