Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. We will continue on with detail questions on page 34. I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Kaylo, Mr. Vician, welcome back to the House. Committee, as we agreed earlier, there will be no opening comments. We are going to proceed directly to general comments. Does committee agree that we forego general comments and go straight to detail?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Knowing this new information might reveal high housing corporation users of heavily subsidized power, what safeguards, actions or practices will the NWT Housing Corporation use to mitigate these high users? Will the Housing Corporation initiate any form of capping of power subsidies to these potential high users in the future?

Thank you, Ms. DeLancey. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Abernethy.

Mr. Speaker, what we haven’t heard is a common theme, and that theme is language, and this has been a concern in communities where they feel that the delays in wait time are the barrier of language.

Can the Minister indicate to the House, what has improved with communication in our nine official community languages with respect to breaking down such barriers? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Heath. We’ll continue on with Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier this fall the NWT Native Women’s Association raised the concern of unusually long wait times for RCMP to respond to calls in various communities. In events of this concern, it was suggested that this was more of a GNWT issue than RCMP. There is such a thing as emergency call logistics, contract services and language barriers. My questions today are going to be for the Minister of Justice.

Currently, the RCMP emergency call system for all communities is dispatched through Yellowknife. This seems to be a frustration point for many.

Can the Minister indicate why is...

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our territory has experienced very limited economic growth in recent years and our maturing diamond mines have reached their end of life cycle. Coupled with the decline in mining, oil and gas exploration, we have seen the NWT decline in investment spending in the last six years. In fact, since our peak of investment spending in 2007, we are down by 27 percent. As a result, our NWT gross domestic product, that is our GDP, has fallen to pre-2002 numbers.

Another way to look at this decline is to look at our mineral exploration, which has fallen from 6.8 percent of the...