David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How can the Premier sit here and say that he’s working in cooperation with the First Nations government and all the people here? The only people I see him working with is one office that he goes into and he gets them to ask his questions. I’d like to ask him, why you are not involved in the aboriginal leaders who are elected by their membership in a face-to-face meeting, one that requested it in a letter six months ago to which they haven’t gotten a response or even a phone call? Is that the way that you operate?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

CREATE POSITIVE OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES

Positive outcomes will result from combining quality social services and interventions with activities that encourage community participation, ownership and empowerment. As an important step in developing better relations with the community, the department and its authorities must work with communities on all levels: project planning, implementation and evaluation. Empowering the communities to take responsibility for their own child protection and family services and supports would go a long way towards...

One of the other areas that I think we as a government need to put a lot more focus on is the fire departments and training that is required in communities, especially looking at front-line workers and the people who have to deal with them. In most cases it’s a volunteer fire department. A lot of people volunteer, but they need the training. They need the capacity to do their job. They need the equipment to make sure that when they put their lives at risk responding to a fire, we equip them with the equipment they require. The same thing for ambulance services on the highways. We do have to...

I think the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and Department of Transportation have a lot to offer in technical support and having the capacity in their different organizations to assist communities. Communities don’t have engineers. Communities don’t have the technical staff on hand. I think that’s where the departments can play a very important role in this. I’d just like to ask the Minister to find a way to assist with the human resources aspect of the engineering people who deal with the technical side of laying chipseal or dealing with the area of dust control for our...

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, again, I think it’s crucial that this government seriously look at this issue. I will just use a statistic here.

Looking at Yellowknife, for instance, there are some 6,000 households; 6,625. Fifty percent of the households in Yellowknife make over $100,000 in which out of that the average household income is $111,419. Compared to a community of Aklavik which is 220 households, basically it is 9 percent of the households which make over $100,000, which is $44,000.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we talk about the cost of living, trying to find ways to reduce the cost of living. The only way I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think my question is better presented to the Premier, so I will ask the Premier the question in regard to my Member’s statement.

Mr. Speaker, in regard to statistics that I received at the conference that we held on poverty, it clearly states that the communities I represent, such as Aklavik, where we have 45 percent of the income levels per household is under $30,000, and in Fort McPherson it’s 43 percent. Also, households under $10,000, it’s 16 percent for Aklavik and 11 percent for Fort McPherson. I’m just looking at the unemployment statistics for Fort McPherson...

Mr. Chairman, we do spend millions of dollars in correctional facilities. I notice that we are looking at more money going into correctional facilities. I think that we have to reprofile those dollars to make use of those facilities that are useable.

Like I mentioned, the healing camps. We are also looking at alternative means of having people that basically have minor offences, that they don’t have to serve their time, taking them out of the communities, find a way that they can serve their time in our communities than having all of these expenditures made to fly these people out; court costs...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to community justice and corrections, one thing that we’ve been pushing for years from a community perspective is having more say in the judicial process, but more importantly, finding ways instead of incarcerating people in large facilities, to start looking at community-based justice programs and incarcerating people closer to their homes, either on-the-land programs or also working with community justice committees in regard to having community sentencing circles. I’d just like to know where is the community involvement when it comes to community justice...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is around the area of capital with regard to fire equipment and making sure people are equipped to do their job. More importantly, we had an instance here in Yellowknife where two firefighters lost their lives. There was a major review done on that through the Workers’ Compensation Board. There was, basically, an injunction filed against the City of Yellowknife because of the incident, and there were a whole bunch of recommendations that came out of that inquiry. I think, if anything, we should learn from that and make sure that we do give those...