Caroline Cochrane

We will be starting the project in the spring of this coming year. There are a couple of issues. There are a few things that we are looking at as difficulties; for example, the municipality of Hay River seems to have issues with collection of fees, yet the municipality of Yellowknife has no issue with the collection of fees. We are trying to figure out what the difference is. We are looking at gaps. We are looking at overlaps. We have heard that even those we have given up boundaries and said, "These are your limits to pick up people," we are hearing that three communities are going to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Actually, we have been doing some movement on this file. The Government of the Northwest Territories recognizes that it is an issue. We don't want to leave people stranded and we want to make health and safety our priority, to take care of people.

We have met with the municipal government of Hay River to hear their concerns. We have also met interdepartmentally with Health and Social Services, Transportation, Department of Justice, and Municipal and Community Affairs. We have committed to hiring a consultant to go in and do an action plan; not a research project, this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to acknowledge some of the people who I consider role models at the Legislative Assembly: Mr. Tony Whitford, for all his service that he's provided to us; Sandy Lee and Jane Groenewegen, for being role models to all women to say that we need to get into political life, into the Legislative Assembly.

I want to also welcome the Equal Voice Canada here. I want to acknowledge the Daughters of the Vote, huge that they're there, and, of course, Olivia Villebrun, who will be our representative going to Ottawa to take part in 338 women taking part in the Equal Voice...

As Members should be aware, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs worked on a new deal -- what was called a new deal many years ago, I believe it was 2007, where the communities actually decide for themselves what they want. We provide funding for that. If the municipality of Hay River would like to hire somebody out of their own, then we would more than support that decision from the municipality.

We will be meeting with some of the communities, but the five tax-based communities is what we will be focusing on, recognizing that there are 33 communities within the Northwest Territories. However, not all of those 33 communities have road systems, and we are talking about ground ambulance, not highway rescue.

And his chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would really like to say that putting forward the issue, the legislation, around cremation, would be easy. However, in all honesty, I don't see it as easy. When I give more thought to it, there are a number of steps. Again, we would be looking at prioritizing what we need to do to make sure that we take care of the public safety of community members  that would be my priority number one  making sure that the stakeholders that are impacted by all the legislation have a say in what they say are their priorities.

Cremation, at first, I thought would be an easy amendment...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs actually has quite a bit of legislation that we are working on. Some of it is from our mandate. Some of the them are from the Auditor General's Report, et cetera, so the things that we are working on currently are the Civil Emergency Measures Act that needs to be amended. We are working on the 911 legislation and regulations. We are working on the Fire Prevention Act. We are working on the Western Canada Lottery Act and regulations. At a request by the City of Yellowknife, we are also doing some research on the Cities...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I put my hand up and said that I wanted to be a Minister, the biggest thing I talked about was being accountable, being transparent, and talking to people, asking stakeholders what was important before I made major decisions. I have followed that promise within my housing portfolio. I am following it within MACA. In order to keep my promise, I would have to bring that issue to the stakeholders and have them define what the priorities should be for us to move forward in this.

The topic of cremation actually was not in our mandate. However, it has been brought forward to us as a department. We are actually engaging with stakeholders in the spring, coming up here. We have added, actually, the cremation issue to our list of topics that we'll be working with stakeholders to define what the priorities should be and what order of legislation we should be working on so that we are not only meeting the needs of the Government of the Northwest Territories, we are actually meeting the needs of the consumers, the stakeholders, that will be impacted by these decisions.