Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise on 23(h), that the Member in his statement and line of questioning is making allegations that in fact the government has broken rules in this Legislative Assembly and I would raise the fact that though a process was engaged, he’s referring to in fact Ministers or a Minister has broken, and suggested breaking, the rules. In fact, that has not been the case. So I would say that, again, a point of order in the fact that he’s having debate and making allegations against another Member of this House. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, the overall programs and the list we have and the criteria for the programs do look at the consideration of having people and seniors in their own homes versus a separate. For the areas of ensuring forms and our programs are understandable, through the Department of Executive we’ve recently put in place community service offices in a number of our smaller communities to try to reach out, as well, to our seniors. In fact, they do have a program where they go and visit the elders in our communities to make them aware of programs we have and help them through that process. In...

Mr. Speaker, in fact, I think we are in full agreement in our goal, is to keep our family members, seniors, in their homes as long as possible before having to look at settings of long-term care, for example. We have tried to design many of our programs. As we continue to look forward, we continue to look at how we can try to better address the needs of our seniors throughout the Territory. We are in agreement that the cost of having seniors or any individual in an institution setting versus a home setting is much more costly. When we look at those programs like our fuel subsidy, our power...

Mr. Speaker, I know in the past that the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs has spoken about working with communities on emergency preparedness plans in those communities. We would have to work with the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk to see what plans they have in place. As well, we do have other responses around the region that we do involve when there are large problems, so the weather, for example, the communications issue that affected the whole Beaufort-Delta, we had incorporated our teams to become involved in that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the issue of the outages in Inuvik and the surge that occurred that caused the equipment to fail in Inuvik was a result of the Power Corporation’s power plant operations. The issue in many of the other communities across the North is the fact that when weather comes into it, we can’t control what Mother Nature does in the Territory. As I was saying, there is funding available through the Housing Corporation Emergency Repair Program which provides up to $11,000 for assistance for low-income earners in our communities. We would be more than happy to try to align the people to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The purpose of my statement is to update Members on the Taltson Hydro Expansion Project.

Late last year I asked the chair of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to review the proposed business model for this project. Based on what has been reported to me, it is clear we need to adjust our course.

Earlier today, the chairman of Deze Energy submitted a letter to the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board requesting more time in the environmental assessment process to address economic gaps.

Recent discussions with the diamond mines clearly indicate that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I think there were some comments made by the Member and I don’t know if this will just turn into a two-way discussion. He has his strong viewpoints. We have the language in the agreement-in-principle. I made a commitment in this House that in fact if there is any infringement on land claims, that those land claims prevail. We’ve said that, that the groups have been included from the earliest days of 2001 in the framework agreement and in fact in the life of its government through our regional leaders’ table and more specifically when the issue of the agreement...

Again, for the life of this government, in February, and part of the report Members were briefed on three occasions of this work that was being done.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The fact that this process that the Member is questioning has been used since 1999 and is in fact part of documents that are available to the public on indemnifications, that indemnification to the exemption of regulations used, and they are public, a process used since 1999. So this wasn’t done for a project specific to this for avoiding rules. It is something that’s in place and, in fact, I believe the Finance Minister is working on an updated formula finance or a Financial Administration Act that would bring more clarity to issues of this nature. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has raised this issue a number of times in the past and, in fact, again, questioning this government about a previous government decision on what’s to be happening. Clearly it’s laid out in the Financial Administration Act. There is process to request indemnification in this process clearly laid out and Members are aware of that. So that process was done and it’s the FMB that votes on any of those decisions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.