Jane Groenewegen

With regard to this, I do applaud the efforts of the staff at the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority for coming up with some of these innovative programs. They have very good programs dealing with diabetes and some specialized areas that we see as emerging problems and issues.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister if I could advise the authority and the people of Hay River that there would be a very good opportunity for such a program to be funded and staffed in our community.

I’ll be happy to inform my constituents that they may be able to have some input into that consultation that will set those policies in place.

Mr. Speaker, under the current Business Development Fund process and in the upcoming SEED program, will it be possible for businesses to apply on a consecutive-years basis for those business development funds? Would it be possible for a business, for example, to apply every year and get those funds, or will there be something in the policy that will preclude that from happening?

I think the Minister is aware of the situation I brought to his attention, where one business is producing something in a community and getting business development funds to bring that product into Hay River to compete directly and head-on with existing businesses in Hay River. Now, this may be a bit of an anomaly, but it has happened. What could the Minister tell me to assure me that that type of thing would not be accepted — that it would be part of the application for the applicant to tell where they’re planning to market their product?

I don’t represent them all, but I’ve certainly seen them around a lot lately, and I want to thank them for the fine job they are doing, representing their constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about how the market disruption policy is interpreted in the business development funding guidelines. Under the current policy, market disruption is said to occur when an investment by the government in a community impacts an existing business. Exceptions to this policy will only be considered if it can be demonstrated that a substantial portion of the market cannot be served by existing businesses, and that those existing businesses will not be seriously impacted by the proposed projects.

Recently a constituent who operates a small business informed...

The proposed Deferred Maintenance Program is billed under the work undertaken by the Risk Management and Assessment Program to identify critical maintenance deficiencies with the GNWT’s current infrastructure stock. The committee supports this initiative and sees it as an effective approach to managing future maintenance and energy costs and extending the life of these assets.

Public Works and Services provides water and sewer maintenance services on a contractual basis to several communities in the NWT which do not have trained personnel to carry out those services. Committee members would...

The Committee wishes to proceed with the Main Estimates for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations and, depending on how that goes time-wise, proceed to the Department of Public Works and Services.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not hearing that we actually do have a lot of flexibility to do some of those things, so that is a discussion I would like this government to embark on with the union. I really do believe there could be cost savings, and it could be a win-win situation for everyone.

I have a situation in my constituency, for example, where a person wants to retire, but they want to know that they can come back as a casual. Why can’t that kind of thing be facilitated?

Mr. Speaker, my questions are for either the Premier or the Minister of Human Resources. We as a government, as everybody knows, have been looking at ways to save money. The Regular Members got together and came up with a list of potential reductions. We submitted that to Cabinet. As yet, we have not had a formal response back to that, because we were told that those would require some analysis.

I would like to know what kind of flexibility we have. Everybody knows that during the 13th Assembly we came up with something called Donny Days, where non-essential service providers were given the...

Mr. Speaker, since we’re on the verge of a new SEED fund and setting up policies to go with that, would the Minister commit to undertake to ensure that if someone is applying for that funding to operate a business, which they then plan to operate on a regional basis, you would ensure that regional activity would not be impacting on existing businesses competing with them, causing market disruption?