Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't speak for Ministers from the other Legislative Assemblies. I'm not sure why they didn't move that forward. I'm sure that the honourable Member would have researched into that. However, I am committed to moving this forward within this Legislative Assembly.

Some of the feedback that we did hear right across was not only from the hotels, but there are a lot of stakeholders who we had to engage with. Some of the feedback that was voiced as concerns was: were territorial government employees going to get taxed? Were municipal governments going to get taxed? Were the...

The purpose of the study from the hamlet conducted was to look at all options to provide clean water to the residents of the community. The reservoir was one of the options that the hamlet reviewed, so it was one of many options that the hamlet could look at. Then it is the process that the hamlet has to decide which of the options provided in that study would best meet the needs of their community.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to break protocol for a minute. I want to make a recognition of Ms. Judith Sharpe, who was instrumental in helping me get elected, was on my campaign team, and I owe a great deal of gratitude to her. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

No. The department doesn't consider funding provided through the youth programs as sports and recreation funding. Those are treated as separate budgets and have separate program delivery.

As a resident of the Northwest Territories myself, I have always felt that often people who are living in the South do not really recognize the needs of the Northwest Territories. We are often fit into models that "one size fits all." I do not believe in that model. I do not believe that one size fits all. I believe that every community, every territory, every province, has distinct needs and distinct strengths.

Within that philosophy, my own philosophy: every time I go down to meet with any federal Minister, I not only invite them, I almost beg them to come to the Northwest Territories to see...

For clarification, three of the units are currently occupied. They are not looking at it, so, out of those seven units that are looking at needing renovations, we are working with Chief Fabian. Because of capital plans, we have to make sure that we spread the wealth throughout all communities, all 33 communities, so, in this fiscal year we are looking at them working in partnership with the chief, with the band, to actually develop five units. Five of the remaining seven will be renovated. Like I said, we are hoping that the chief will come forward and provide us a proposal so that we are...

To divide down the actual monies from what we spend on actually supporting of youth and taking part in sports activities, and from what we pay staff, is a process that would take some time. If the Member would like, he can either present a written question or he can come to my office and I can provide him that information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I agree. It's totally unreasonable that people who are homeowners are people who can't access services. I heard a story once when I first started that somebody had applied in one of the smaller communities, and it may have been the honourable MLA's communities, had applied for some repair programs, and we gave them a grant of $10,000. By the time they paid for their contractor to come in, stay, travel, stay in their community, they got a kitchen sink for $10,000, Mr. Speaker. That is not okay, and that is not reasonable. In order to address that in a reasonable way, I have changed the program...

Basically, Mr. Speaker, why did I include the line in the bill, is my understanding of the question. So I'm going to try to state that without getting into trouble for talking about the bill. Basically, it's important that the -- I'm struggling to not talk about the bill.

It's important, Mr. Speaker, that all of the monies that are obtained through the Lottery Fund are protected and that we can actually use it for sports and recreation, which was the intent of that funding. So I am proposing that we would maintain that, as we have historically done, that we would do that in the future.

The Northwest Territories Housing Corporation does try to work with communities. We do try to support local labour. Sometimes, though, the proposals that come in are just not doable; their bids are actually not reasonable. So sometimes we do have to go outside of the community. We do try to stay within the Northwest Territories, though, so again, we do try to support the communities as much as possible. We will look at negotiated contracts under the Negotiated Contracts Policy to actually help communities to build up their capacity; not for large corporations that have been in business for...