Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we were looking at the deficit figures, we did consult with the NWT Association of Communities on their advice on what the infrastructure component should include. It should be noted, though, that if we did include things like paved streets then the infrastructure deficit would be quite a bit larger than it actually is. It should also be noted that we haven't changed the $28 million; the funding is still allocated to the communities as previous. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, there is an allocation done for each community, and then it is project-specific after that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do recognize that the Government of the Northwest Territories is spending eight times the amount of funding that is provided across the other jurisdictions. So I think that we have to recognize that we are spending a lot more than other jurisdictions. We also have to recognize that we have a small population base and our federal funding is really limited. So the fact that the GNWT is spending that amount on housing shows our commitment that we do care about housing within the Northwest Territories and it is a priority for our government.

The department has actually done quite a bit to support firefighters. We recognize the importance of firefighters and we really value the services. It is a huge honour to be able to represent the firefighters within the Northwest Territories. It's a huge honourable field that they go into, and so we're cognitive of that.

We've done quite a bit of things. We've released our volunteer firefighter recruitment and retention toolkit for the community governments, that's done. We've established a web-based community fire protection page for community governments and fire departments to access...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MACA's in the process, we've done some research over the years, we're actually just in the process of determining the stakeholder engagement process that we're expecting that'll roll out over the summer of 2016. Once it's finished, then we'll be looking at various things within the act. The act hasn't been updated since the 1950s, very small thing, so it's a lot of work and we'll be looking at a full review of the act in total. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

At this point, like I had said previously, we are in the process of just rolling out our engagement strategy. After that is all received back, we will be doing a cross-analysis, so it's a little bit premature of me to actually approach my colleagues and ask for additional monies when I don't know if we're using the monies that we are providing at the moment appropriately.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The motion that was put forward was that I would provide a comprehensive response to the motion and then a comprehensive and fully costed strategic plan at the earliest opportunity. So it's a little bit early to give a fully costed comprehensive plan at this point. We're in the process of negotiations with the federal government. We've made some serious progress within that. The federal government has agreed to look at a northern component to the national housing strategy, and they've also -- the three areas of the core need, the federal core need, have always been...

We are working across the departments to find our way forward with the ground ambulance services and the highway rescue, and we are hoping that we can actually address that act as well within this legislation.

Again, it's really hard to put a definite timeline on that. We do need to do the public engagement strategy, it will go to MLAs, it depends on their timeline, recognizing that they are very busy within their committees and they have a lot of things to put forward. I'm not sure if the MLAs would like to do a public engagement of their own on that, so it is dependent on the process of government. But we are committed; we are trying to get this act passed within this legislative term.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to try to attempt both. So the federal negotiations is not up to me actually, it is a federal government ruling, and so we are advocating very strongly and, as soon as the federal government lets us know when they've developed their strategy, at that point I will know what the timing is. I'm not sure that they know at this point either.

The engagement survey that we're putting out, we are allowing two months to people within the communities to actually provide their feedback because we do want as many people to answer the survey as possible. So we are...