Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. In the last Assembly, the Minister of Justice agreed to carry out a comprehensive review of Victim Services. There are basically three programs; the Victims Assistance Fund, which receives the victims of crime surcharges, which are then used for application-based project. This program is working well, although there is an opening balance of $351,000 as of April 1, 2019, as shown in the most recent annual report tabled in this House.

The second program is the network of Victim Services coordinators that are funded through contribution agreements with the Department...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to go on record as strongly supporting this initiative. It is something that I raised in my first term, and I continue to believe this is the direction that we can and should be moving in. I think this is part of building a knowledge economy for the Northwest Territories. There are a lot of universities doing work here now. Laurier, Wilfred Laurier, has an office here in Yellowknife. We should be finding ways to build on those partnerships and including that as part of the polytechnic work that we can and should be doing in the future.

Our family, we have two...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Great to get that commitment out of the Premier, that she is going to be working and her Cabinet colleagues will be working towards developing ways of measuring local food production and consumption. That was, I think, something that we had recommended in the last Assembly as well when we reviewed the agricultural policy or strategy that was developed in the last Assembly. No further comments, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. While I am on a roll, another general observation I would like to offer with this particular mandate item is: there are a few deliverables here, but I had hoped to see some actual targets. Are we going to increase local food production by 25 percent by the end of four years or whatever the target is? I am just wondering: do we actually track local food production and consumption in a way where it is measurable, where we could set targets? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I think I will start over again. This is a guy who has already got chickens. He has got them here in Yellowknife. There seem to be some issues around food handling, maybe education, inspection stuff. This is not an ENR issue. As I understand, it is probably an environmental health issue, which is health and social services. What are the current barriers, and what are we going to do to improve food handling, inspection services, and so on to allow for local food production and retail? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm not going back to the "big toys for big boys." I'm going to go on to the broadband part of the table. I see that one of the items here is to complete the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk fibre line. That's great, but what about linking the communities that the fibre link line already passes by to it, and providing distributions systems in communities that it already goes by? Why is that not part of the work that should be done here? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. This is not the first time I have raised this issue. I've continually raised this issue, whether it was during the development of the priorities, and in the previous Assembly as well, that if you want to have evidence-based decision-making -- that's what this Premier always says that she's about, and she's shaking her head "yes" -- you need to know whether you're getting value for money. Even with the Minister of Finance today, a big part of her speech was about value for money. I want to make sure that, if we're going to make investments in these big infrastructure...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I concur with everything that my colleague from Yellowknife Centre has said, because I was in the last Assembly, and I disagreed with this priority when we were talking about it. I made no bones whatsoever about that, and I continue to think that it's very misleading to the public to say that we are going to continue to work on these three. We cannot afford them all at the same time.

The Premier and Minister said that we don't have any cost figures for these. After the Minister of Finance said in a supplementary appropriation, when I was asking what the cost of Slave...

I want to thank the Minister for that. I hope it's the Minister who makes the final decision and not the department. There was a lot of frustration at the meeting, particularly from the Dene communities that have shouldered the burden of actions to try to help with recovery of the Bathurst and Bluenose East caribou herds. They haven't been able to harvest those herds for a number of years now.

While I generally agree with the need for predator controls, virtually nothing has been done to protect habitat and slow down resource development. What is the Minister doing to protect habitat to ensure...

Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to once again thank the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources for the opportunity to observe the GNWT-Nunavut caribou meeting on the weekend. Can the Minister tell us whether there will be further meetings that include more harvesters, elders, interpreters, and presentations from communities and Nunavut organizations? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.