Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m assuming the Member is referring to negotiations on an agreement-in-principle about the bigger issues or on land use and so on. But, Mr. Speaker, no, I don’t have anything specific to report. There was a briefing provided to the Akaitcho people last week, the Akaitcho leaders. The chiefs there, again, the same as with Dehcho, have taken a position that they would like to negotiate their own deal; they feel they can do better on their own. Certainly there is nothing that our government is doing to try to frustrate that. If they feel they can do better on their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Alcohol abuse is probably one of the most devastating and most expensive, costly expenditures in our government's programs. If we were ever able to get control on this, then I think we'd be amazed at the amount of money that could be saved and the amount of devastation and disruption to lives.

Mr. Speaker, part of the challenge is to help people to control their own lives, not have alcohol controlling it for them. Part of it is having laws that are appropriate. Part of it is having policing and, certainly, treatment is part of it. But more than anything else, in my...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For sure, I cannot speak for Grand Chief Herb Norwegian. I mean, I’m not 100 percent clear what the deal would be that he would find acceptable. Mr. Speaker, I can say that whenever we come to an agreement like this, there will always be people who feel that a better deal could have been gotten if we had done something differently. That’s always the case. My view is that this is a good deal. If it goes through from current agreement-in-principle status to final agreement, then I think this is a deal that gives us a lot more than what we’d get today, for sure. Is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The short answer is no, this does not affect it at all. The four aboriginal organizations, governments, and our government have signed the deal and I think it sends a strong signal to Ottawa that if we work in solidarity on our positions and we want a share of those resource revenues as soon as possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are going to go ahead with the short-term repairs to deal with the interim problems. Those are things ranging from water under the crawlspace, there was a sewage spill, there’s mould in some units, the roof leaking, the deterioration on some of the plumbing lines. Those are things that we’re going to repair in the short term. But right now, the consultant’s recommendation is to replace the facility, and our people in the Housing Corporation agree with that recommendation. So I fully expect that when the final report comes out, that will be the direction. Thank you...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Housing Corporation has been working on this issue for some time. We have a consultant who did a report. The Housing Corporation received a copy of that report on April 27th and are now taking a look at it. As I had said to the Member before, we plan to have the final report available by June. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of the recommendations come from the coalition itself. The government is one member on that coalition. There are the groups I mentioned before. What they are trying to do is get a balance between the support for salaries and so on for our front-line workers and training of workers. Just to put more money into workers and not giving the training that is necessary may not be the best arrangement either. So it has to be a balance. The idea of collecting the baseline data came largely from the coalition. They want to know whether or not what they are doing is...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again I want to remind Members that we have, we’re doing this in partnership with the Coalition Against Family Violence. Those are the people who are the front-line workers. Those are the people who are facing the issues every day. Those are the people, you know, the family support centre in Hay River, the Tuk women’s and children’s shelter, the Inuvik Transition House, the Alison McAteer House, Sutherland House in Fort Smith, the Centre for Northern Families, the Status of Women Council, these are front-line workers. I think it’s probably frustrating for them, they...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to mention first that we work along with a lot of other partnerships like with NGOs and so on. So it’s not always our decision or direction in terms of what will happen.

The people on the Coalition Against Family Violence feel quite strongly about the conference. They feel a need to build that awareness and at the same time do some training. The conference will accommodate 120 participants from across the North. It’s broken down into four sessions. Each session focuses on one action that has impacts in communities. They will use some expertise, as well as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, this is a recommendation to Cabinet so we will not be voting on it, but certainly there are many implications to the motion that deserves serious consideration. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.