Daryl Dolynny

There will probably be a time when I will be asking to get the actual personnel, the people who are part of this group, and I would like to know what their qualifications are in this area with time. I’m not going to ask that today here. This is a question I would expect the Minister to answer here in due course.

The concern I have here is we just heard from the Minister that the findings of this working group might not be available until, as he put it, this fall. I think people are gravely concerned that we do have some gaps in our system. It was clearly indicated here by another Minister, the...

If we were taking it up in 2012, it would have actually shown up in the main estimates here as a line entry, and I didn’t see it as being a take-up item. I’m getting some conflicting response here. My goal with this information is to find out how good we were at acquiring this so-called free federal money to enhance the infrastructure in many of our communities.

I’m asking again: Would the department or Minister commit to giving a full background of the use of these funding dollars in the last number of years and share that with Members?

I will take the Minister up on his offer. I think I’m speaking not only as a Member of Yellowknife, I think there are community members here who would have very similar concerns. I would take the Minister up on his offer.

Last is, because we’re dealing with public safety, there is the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program. This was a federally initiated program, which I believe closed this year. I don’t believe it’s part of our budget this year. I think it was a zero. This was a cost-sharing program for capital enhancement at community level for safety.

Can the Minister indicate, for the years...

Thank you. I won’t disagree with the Minister. I believe those communities that have put the effort and have had the potential financial background to put such emergency plans in place are probably well prepared for such emergencies. But in the Minister’s own words, not every community is at the same level and that’s my concern, is that we have a disparity of situations out there, we’ve got communities at risk, and if we’ve got communities at risk, we’ve got a territory at risk. If you’ve got a territory at risk, you’ve got a nation at risk. It’s a cascade effect in which I think it’s...

I appreciate the deputy minister’s detail on that. One of my last questions here is, these trends that we’re seeing in injury, is this across the board in our corrections facilities or are we seeing certain corrections facilities with higher trends in injuries?

Madam Chair, I don’t want it to sound like a hypothetical question, but it’s almost impossible for me to ask this question without being hypothetical. In the event of a disaster or emergency services intervention, how do our federal counterparts, our federal partners for emergency management, how are they notified? By what means are they notified if not available through electronic real-time management? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions have to do with the increased claims growth of WSCC claims for injured workers which, I believe, corrections is causing some quite alarming statistics, especially in the last two years. Can the Minister indicate what provisions we’re using or doing as a department to reduce the amount of claims growth in this area?

Madam Chair, maybe I’ll rephrase my question because the question was real time. What I mean by real time are numbers, contact, policy charts, flow charts, contact of emergency services, basically an org chart of disaster management available in a database that is continuously updated or the department or community governments have access to, so that it doesn’t matter which community at any given time, this information can be pulled up off either computer, off Internet, security database. Is the department at this level of having this type of access to information? Thank you.

Madam Chair, my next question has to do with trends. Can the Minister elaborate, with his contacts with RCMP, are we seeing any trends in the Northwest Territories that residents should be alarmed? I’m thinking of things like potentially weapons offences, maybe bootlegging, these types of things. Are we seeing any large trends with RCMP involvement in our communities?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Committee wants to continue our deliberations here on Municipal and Community Affairs and, time permitting, we would like to talk with Justice and Executive.