Jane Groenewegen

Last year the province of British Columbia budgeted $50 million for fire suppression and spent $500 million. What does our government currently have budgeted for fire suppression in the Northwest Territories? What contingency do we have should we end up with a worse fire season than normal?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our news these days is full of images and descriptions of natural disasters around the world: earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes. Many times we sit and watch the news and say we sympathize but thank God that’s not here. Not to be predicting the negative today, I want to say that we do have disaster on our doorstep.

It’s impossible to think that our neighbour, the province of Alberta, could have almost virtually lost the infrastructure of a town of 7,000, thankfully with no loss of life or injury to this point. Alberta is burning. There are 115 fires...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion. I’d like to thank the Member for the Sahtu for bringing this forward.

Mr. Speaker, it is a well-known fact we have a huge problem with alcohol abuse in the Northwest Territories. Anything we can do to prevent that, to treat that, is something that I will support.

To the clause in the motion that speaks of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and to the beer cans over Mr. Hawkins’ fence, I can’t really exactly understand how that correlates to an on-the-land drug and alcohol abuse program, but that’s okay. I’m going to try and speak...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

I’m still not hearing that this is a formal policy of this government. When did this consent form policy materialize? When did it surface? When did it become an issue? How were Members and people in the North made aware that such a policy existed, because it does not seem to be consistent. Also, it does not seem to be in keeping with the actual Protection of Privacy and Access to Information Act itself, which clearly states that MLAs are excluded from some of the stringent rules regarding the protection of information.

I think everybody needs to handle information with respect and with great...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are in follow-up to my Member’s statement. They’re directed to Minister Miltenberger I guess as the Deputy Premier and Government House Leader and overseer of many things these days. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I talked about the request that we’ve been receiving as MLAs from certain departments when we are seeking assistance or advocating on behalf of our constituents, consent forms that need to be, well, they come as an attachment to the request for us to get them from our constituents. So there is a form out there called a consent form.

Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The wish of the committee today is to deal with Bill 8, An Act to Amend the Local Authorities Elections Act.

Thank you. I repeat my question: is this a policy of government now, or are we just making this up as we go along here? Is a consent form a required policy of this government, and does it apply government-wide to all departments or just to specific ones? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As MLAs we are often called upon to advocate on behalf of constituents for a wide variety of issues with literally every department of this government; everything from contracting processes to delays in medical travel, approvals to student financial assistance issues. Very often extensive information is shared with MLAs by constituents who do not have ready access to the answers, solutions or remedies that they are seeking. I’ve been an MLA for 16 years and see this is a large part of the constituent work that it is my duty to perform.

In recent months, upon making...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, the Honourable Jackson Lafferty. Mr. Speaker, a while back we’d raised concerns in this House regarding the potential closing of a storefront school facility in Hay River. The storefront had been extremely successful in accommodating students in acquiring credit, that had not thrived in the regular conventional school environment.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that subsequent to that the Minister and some of his officials have taken the opportunity to meet with the DEA in Hay River and I believe that some...