Caroline Cochrane

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, I will move that Bill 8, Emergency Management Act, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Absolutely, I will take that into consideration. I just want to note that a lot of people who work for the government actually have a real concern. They want more women in leadership. My understanding, and I will check on that because I may be wrong, is that the majority, I think all of them except for my special advisor, actually were not paid for any of the work that they have done for the campaign schools. It's tended to be on the weekends on our own times, so I will confirm if that is true, because it's important to note. If it is not true, I will come back to the speaker and stand up...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As stated earlier, we are just in the stage of renewing it and making it fit the people more appropriately. We will be doing an evaluation at that point, where we will be deciding what we are going to do with it. I also want to say, though, that we are looking at expanding it so that it can meet more of the needs of people and addressing municipal Indigenous governments, for example, but also the budget, we want to make sure that we can do it the most cost-effective way to be able to reach the most communities. It's important. These are important schools. They actually...

That is totally incorrect. From my understanding, the Status of Women did put out nominations. It closed in February; I am not sure of the exact date. They stated that they couldn't do the awards because of financial limitations. Those are things that we are looking at within their budget. As stated before, they are looking at their budget to see how they can best provide the services that they need to provide for that.

We do have a pot of funding. It is a small pot. It is $50,000 a year. The Status of Women never applied for that this year, Mr. Speaker. It wasn't that they couldn't get the...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by clarifying. When I was asked questions the other day on the Status of Women, if there was anything in my statement that said that I was going to ask the Status of Women to go against the legislative act, then I sincerely apologize because it is important, as members of the public, that we do not lie in the House. I don't remember making that statement. I will check Hansard. If I did, I will apologize in advance. I hope that other Members will, as well.

I don't plan on changing the mandate of the Status of Women, Mr. Speaker. What I plan to do with the...

I think that being accountable to the public and having the most input from the public is advisable. I don't want to make it a public show. What I will do, though, is I will commit to doing a survey to find out, and hopefully from all residents, but especially for women. This is the Status of Women, so trying to get a gender-based viewpoint on what the women residents and young girls and women residents of the Northwest Territories feel that we should be doing as the Status of Women, I will commit to doing that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I won't make that commitment at this time. I need to go back and look at it. The review that we did was internal, and it wasn't actually done under my direction. It was just an employee who offered to assist us with that, so I have to go back and look at it to determine if that was a formal report or was that just a volunteer who was assisting us with looking at making the campaign school better, so I'm not sure if it was a paid position or just a volunteer.

The move to bring it into government at this point actually wasn't because of any animosity or any other reason. The reason was because the previous campaign schools for women that were done focused on just the Legislative Assembly.

It was when we did the first workshop during my term in Hay River that it was quickly realized that, if we focused just on the Legislative Assembly, we were defeating our purpose. There were a lot of women who didn't want to run for it because they had childcare issues; they didn't want to do the amount of travelling; they didn't want to leave their communities...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I must state that the Member looks very good today. The fire department in Norman Wells is something that I will have to look into. I will get back to her with that answer. It is a municipal issue; it is not a territorial issue. We provide support to the community governments. They are responsible for actually developing and maintaining their fire departments. We provide training and support for fire departments, but we don't actually look after the day-to-day operations of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, the Member is right. We need to communicate better and we need to communicate with the communities when we are going into their communities. I know that there are some communities that listen adamantly to the question period within the House. I'm hoping that those who hear will spread the word that we are coming on March 27. I'm hoping that the MLA, when he returns to the community, will spread the word that we are coming on March 27. I do state that we will make sure that we have adequate communications going into the community to make sure that as many community members as possible...