Caroline Cochrane

Yes, it was kind of dismaying for me to hear that, all of these years that we have been providing the multisport games, this has been an issue, so I have made it a priority that we will look at options, like I had said earlier, that we need to make sure as many children as possible, as many youth as possible, have a chance for these games. These sometimes change people's lives, and so it is critical that we look at this and we make it a priority, so I will make it a priority to make sure that we look at all available options so that more youth can attend the trials, at least, for the games.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The honourable Member is correct that each Territorial Sport Organization is supposed to have a selection process. Within that, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, however, does not take part in the selection process. We do know that we are notified whenever an appeal is brought forward. I will make sure that all of the Territorial Sport Organizations do have an appeal process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said before, the Sport North Association paid for transportation costs to get all the youth there. Based on that, then, I cannot ask them to refund for youth who took alternative methods. I will look into it, though, and make sure that Sport North only had the charter from Yellowknife and that there was no other option, understanding that, of course, the charter, if there was one from Simpson, was weathered in. If there was a charter arranged to get the youth from Simpson, then I will not reimburse that. If there was an expectation that the youth would have to find their way to jump on a...

As well as meeting with the communities face-to-face, we have online training, and that is available to communities. The online training in this case are particular basic emergency management and the incident command systems. Those are the two courses that, actually, we start with to develop community emergency plans. Those are online.

We also work one on one with communities. If they need our assistance, we'll come in and we'll help them either create or update their plans. We have tabletop exercises that we'll go in and we'll actually do a draft emergency plan to make sure that they have the...

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce the launch of the new Municipal Elections website, created by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs in partnership with the Northwest Territories Association of Communities. This website provides easily accessible municipal election resources to prospective candidates, community governments and to the general public. In addition to providing recent municipal election results, the website contains information on the dates, number of seats, and terms for upcoming municipal elections.

Mr. Speaker, the website targets three main audiences. These are...

Often, MLAs say to us, "Just say yes." In this case, I'm going to just say yes. We will actually work with them. Part of working and developing an emergency plan is having discussions on what resources are needed and what funding sources they have available. The regional superintendents and the management team will work directly with the communities, and we can also work as a liaison to work with other departments that they may need to access services from. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The answer's yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the Member's statement, he used the term, I believe it was, "MACA's always there to help." That's his term. I really appreciate that, and I agree. MACA's whole job is to help communities. How do we get the emergency planning into the areas of his region? Simple, we need to get the community government to contact the regional manager. At that point, we'll get a facilitator to come in and help them actually develop or update their community emergency plans.

We also provide tabletop exercises that they can take advantage if they're interested in that, which will help to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, that is correct. The Fire Prevention Act is being reviewed, and we are expecting that there will be changes within this Legislative Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the analysis was done of the shortfall of community governments a number of years ago, every single year, Cabinet has provided extra money towards that. We are hopeful that that will continue.

We are working at the moment with the NWT Association of Communities to finalize the plan, and at this point, we are not yet finished. Right now, what I can say is that every year there has been an increase, and I am hopeful that that will continue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the MLA is correct. We are seeing an increase in seniors who are applying for this, and so this is a forced growth figure. Thank you, Mr. Chair.