Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The inspections that have been done on the facility indicate a number of safety concerns. We have advised the department that the building should be vacated and that the facility should be dismantled. Thank you.

That’s not something we’re prepared to commit to at this point. We need to have further discussions with the different organizations that have expressed concern over our investment in the area of youth. We need to look at all the sources of revenue that we have and also to have the opportunity to discuss this with the Regular Members. We haven’t really gotten to that point yet. I’d like to do that before we enter into the business planning process.

Mr. Speaker, this is an area that we’ve had a number of communities express interest in. We’ve also had some early discussion with the Council of Sport and Recreation Partners, and we’ve talked with the Aboriginal Sport Circle staff about the needs in our communities. We all recognize that more has to be done to assist the communities.

We have a number of funding programs that are directed to the communities. However, we recognize that there are probably other areas, especially in the youth programming area, where we could provide further assistance or find a way to do that. We have already...

That’s quite a list that the Member has rattled off. I’d have to go back and check to see if we have indeed talked to each one of them. I would have to see which organizations he’s referred to, but all the organizations that have concern regarding our infrastructure and our delivery are in contact with us on a regular basis. We are members of the Arctic Energy Alliance. We usually take very seriously all the recommendations that come from these organizations so we can incorporate them into this review we’ve undertaken to have with the Regular Members over the next while. I guess the answer to...

Mr. Speaker, yes, we’d be happy to share that information. In fact, we’ve committed to the council of Inuvik to sit down and talk about different issues within that community, so we’ll probably be talking to them regarding this issue also. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we did have a request to have a second opinion on the safety and structural concerns of this facility. We did hire a third party to do that for us. We recently got our results in, and they indicate that the facility has become a safety issue and that we should move forward on the recommendations.

In fact, the assessment raised the level of risk from substantial to considerable, and we’ve recommended to ECE that the building be vacated and demolished by sometime this fall. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we just went through a departmental reduction that has in fact just come into play. We don’t have any funding from within to hire. If I understand the question correctly, it’s to hire staff and it sounds like right away. We don’t have those resources. We’d be reluctant to hire without the proper discussion and without being able to come forward and have that developed into the business planning process.

Mr. Speaker, I wasn’t expecting to get that request this soon after concluding our budgeting process. In our recently approved budget we did increase funding to youth by way of creating a second youth position for the north side of the Territories, and we have still retained one position in the south end. We will look at what we can do. We need to have more discussion with our recreation, sport and youth organizations to see what we can do as we come forward for the business planning process.

We didn’t develop our recommendations in isolation. We did contact the different organizations that have interest, concerns and professional advice they could offer from the different sectors. We will continue to do that as we move forward. We have a pretty good indication of where each organization is on the different issues, but we will stay in contact. I will make that commitment to the Member, as he’s requested. Thank you.

We’ve indicated to the House that we are reviewing our whole contracting process. We are reviewing the way we do business and deliver our infrastructure. We’re going to look at all the concerns that are being raised and all the concerns that have caused issues over the years. We are looking at all the issues that have been of concern.