Kevin A. Menicoche

I’ve got nothing further to add. I just urge the Minister and our government to continue to press the matter. I don’t know, the Minister sounds like there’s a meeting in November. I’d be pleased to be given notice about that.

The other one is, I don’t know if and when we do our NWT Day it might be another opportunity to raise that issue as well.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to raise once again the issue of community policing, especially in the community of Wrigley in my riding. I know, of course, that the government supports two of the smaller communities getting a full RCMP detachment and it would, of course, have given me great pleasure to have seen that in our capital plan. I know that I spoke with the Minister in the House last week and he spoke about being at the Justice Ministers federal/provincial/territorial meeting. Maybe the Minister could just advise me of some of the deliberations that happened and...

I did receive the memo from the Minister that I wrote last week. They did use the date of October 25th, that’s Monday, as a potential date. Residents are concerned because they did get the same message from the Department of Transportation regional office in Fort Simpson. I just want to advise again that the residents have advised me that conditions are good and they don’t see the need for closing October 25th. I would once again, on their behalf, ask the Minister to do everything in his power to see that we can run the ferry until October 31st.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] Mr. Speaker, I phoned the community of Wrigley recently and told them the ferry services to Wrigley are very important to them. This is what I’m going to be talking about today. [Translation ends]

…closure of the Ndulee ferry. Tentatively, the Department of Transportation is looking at Monday, October 25th. The community has requested until October 31, 2010. The closure will have a big impact on the residents because they do not have a full-time store. They’re also awaiting shipment for their small concession store of staple items that they have...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I move we report progress.

---Carried

Just for my reference, was there any indication from the federal Ministers as to the timing of the detachments? I understood, talking with our Member of Parliament, that it may actually be in the capital plan. Has the Minister seen anything like that? Is he able to at least give a round, an estimated date of when the federal government may seriously consider providing the capital dollars for the detachments in these communities?

What type of plan is in place if shutdown is imminent, and how much warning can the community get? I know that sometimes they give 48-hour notice when they shut down in 24 hours. I’d like to ask the department to try to guard against that and try to give the community as much notice as possible. October 31st, if we can get it to that date it will be an extreme benefit to the residents of the community.

The Minister said soon. Does that mean he’ll begin some work during the winter months evaluating those communities? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. I think if they evaluate one community, pick one like Wrigley or any one of my communities in my riding and the concerns are going to be the same there. There doesn’t have to be a big study. They can wait and do their five-year evaluation. However, I think that the needs of a community like Wrigley have to really be examined and evaluated, because they are experiencing higher costs than the O and M that’s being provided in the New Deal. There...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Sounds like there’s going to be a re-evaluation of the core need income threshold or the guidelines. Perhaps the Minister can tell me if that’s something they’re planning for April 1st, or is that something that the Minister and department can apply for this intake season, which the application was October 15th.

Mr. Speaker, I guess one of the single biggest issues that constituents have raised with me is that the people that can afford it and have the good incomes, perhaps double incomes in the smaller communities, are actually being rejected from the applications because they are actually making too much money. But because we have such an arrears with our Housing Corporation, Mr. Speaker, I think these are the type of people that we should have within our Housing Corporation programs. These are the people that are hard working. They are able to make mortgage payments, and thereby the corporation...