Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Chutskoff, Mr. Neudorf and Mr. Loutitt, welcome back to the House.

Committee, again we are on Bill 60, An Act to Amend the Motor Vehicles Act. I will open up to general comments. Mr. Bouchard.

So it’s safe to assume that that $1 million that was in last year’s main estimates were spent directly on the YK Centre tenant improvements? Thank you.

Thank you. I liked the Minister’s reply. I know they’re doing lots of work behind the scenes and I applaud their actions and I encourage them to continue.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the department here again today for the appropriations. Maybe if we can just start this off with a simple lead-in question here, if we can get some level of explanation what this $1.5 million means with respect to tenant improvements. Thank you.

Everything that we do here is to provide facts for the public to understand the money that we’re spending on their behalf, and as the Minister indicated, there was correspondence given to Members. I don’t believe that information, in terms of public utility letters, is in the public domain. But I know that Members on this side of the House received some correspondence just in the last week or so, which puts Members in a bit of a handicap situation because we weren’t made aware of the correspondence to and fro between the Public Utilities Board and the department. Can the department confirm if...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said earlier, Yellowknife has 40 percent of these establishments, not way more that we heard from the Minister.

Finally, it shows in the statement of operations that in 2014-2015 there were three compliance hearings in the NWT for a total compliance penalty collection of $2,800 from NWT businesses. For this measly $2,800, the Liquor Commission spent $25,000 in travel and amassed $34,000 in honouraria.

Again, can the Minister inform the House, does he still feel we’re getting good value for money? Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s offering. I will take it with much enthusiasm. Unfortunately, it may not help us a lot today. It’s important, as we said, on a go-forward basis that Members on this side of the House, if we’re dealing with any type of appropriation, it doesn’t matter the dollar figure and especially when it does matter with specific large numbers, such as we have before us, that Members are well informed to the point that we can make good decisions for the people that we serve. I take this information with respect and I look forward to the expedient performance of the department in...

Again, the numbers don’t lie, and to take this one step further, the report also shows from 2013-14 to the 2014-15 year a decrease in inspections of licenced premises in every community in the Northwest Territories except the Yellowknife community. In fact, inspections are up in our community by 3 percent.

So, can the Minister offer an explanation to this trend? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I’d like to welcome the department here today. I guess, first and foremost, I want to extend my congratulations to the fire suppression teams that work with us, that work alongside us through our MARS agreements for doing an outstanding job this fire season. In the wake of what we’re continuously hearing as some of the heaviest drought years that this territory has seen for many years, decades, I’m very pleased that there was no loss of life and that there was very little loss in terms of buildings and dwellings.

The reason why I’m leading into that is I want to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through you and to you, I’d like to introduce one of our recipients, we’ve heard earlier today, for the Ukrainian award, and that is a member of Range Lake, Trisha Graham. Thank you for joining us today.