Kevin O'Reilly

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I talked about my communication with the MACA Minister on the support for seniors and sports and recreation. In reply, the Minister indicated that her department is actively encouraging development of an application to support these types of services. How actively though is the department involved? That is, has the department proactively assigned an expert policy program delivery staff to assist in the drafting of proposals or is it simply asking seniors representatives to develop applications and come back with further revisions? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. Recent proposals to transfer lottery administration to GNWT coffers have raised a number of questions regarding the future of support for sports and recreation. One critical part of this picture for me is the state of funding to better support seniors in staying active through sports. Funding for senior sports has fallen sharply in recent years.

Seniors' representatives who have been in touch with me indicate that the ability of seniors to participate in the national Canada 55+ Games has been severely curtailed. I'm told that Municipal and Community Affairs has...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think I heard an interesting phrase at the end, "as far as I know." So is there a variance or not? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm just wondering if the Minister can tell us whether the Stanton project is still on schedule? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Again, I appreciate the response from the Minister. The Minister sort of outlined what might be a rather lengthy process here and I'm just a bit concerned about that. Does the Minister have any sense of what the timing of these meetings are and who is going to be invited? Could she just give us a few details about that? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I think I heard a little slip there; the word "fiscal" came into the picture. I did want to ask the Minister, I've got some ideas here, but in view of that MACA only delivers their programs through third parties at the present time, why doesn't MACA include specific terms and conditions in their agreements with these organizations, requiring funding such as a percent of budgets, specific dollar amounts, or required minimal amounts be dedicated to seniors?

Merci, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to recognize Mr. Todd Parsons. I'm not sure he's still here, but he was with us earlier. He's the president of the Union of Northern Workers and one of the cosponsors of the United Way program here, in Yellowknife. I want to thank him for all the work that he does on behalf of our employees. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Now that we've got that clear, can the Minister of Lands indicate what is the general regime for remediation of contaminated sites that are on privately owned lands in the Northwest Territories?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, Saskatchewan has had an Institutional Control Program since 2005, where properly remediated sites are accepted back by the government with payments into two funds to cover monitoring and maintenance, and then unforeseen events. More than two and half years after devolution, we still do not have a proper closure and reclamation regime in place to prevent public liabilities for future generations. I will have questions for the Minister of Lands later today. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I will be supporting this motion as well. Earlier in this session we reviewed a capital budget for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment that included some funds for improving schools to make sure we can deliver on JK starting in September of next year.

I will also be looking for the same sort of commitment in our O and M budget coming forward, in 2017-2018. We have to make sure that our school boards and district education authorities have the resources to deliver on JK. I don't think it's sufficient to say that they can deliver this with their existing...