Michael McLeod

Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to visit the community with the Member. In fact, over the last year we had tried to get into the community on two different occasions, and both times we were weathered out. I feel we owe a visit to that community. I would be glad to accompany the Member to the community and have meetings and discussions around these issues and others that the Member would like to bring forward.

I’d like to respond by saying that the Member can consider it started already. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the government of the 16th Assembly has appointed a committee made up of all the infrastructure departments in the lead, and what we’re tasked with is to review the infrastructure process and the process used to select and determine prices and also do the construction. We’ll certainly, as part of that, consider the concerns the Member is raising, and we will report back as things progress.

Mr. Speaker, most of the capital has been turned over to the communities. There have been some areas where we haven’t turned over some of the capital items or facilities — more in the case of the facility not being up to standards the community would accept. We still have some carry-overs that were on our infrastructure plan that we intend to move forward on. Those are some of the water plants; I believe we have eight that we have still to deliver. However, for the most part, the communities have accepted the infrastructure. We still need to work on and develop some capacity in some of the...

Mr. Speaker, the new deal is here to stay. We expect the communities to be more independent through this program. We expect the communities would become municipal taxation authorities. That is the goal we set when we worked with the communities. They have been asking for that for many years, and that is the goal we have worked towards.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve been a supporter of the Northern Youth Abroad program since 2005. We partnered up with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. We’ve been providing financial support and meeting on a regular basis to see some of the outcomes and have been very satisfied with what we are seeing. We’ve had a number of meetings and recently had some further discussions. We have decided that we will continue to support this program.

We as a government have committed to doing a lot of work in the area of infrastructure and infrastructure development and all the different aspects, including planning of budgets and looking at the costs and being able to accommodate the contracts so they get out earlier. I would be glad to try to include…. We’ve agreed that we will be as comprehensive as we can, and I’d be glad to bring the issue of the P3 forward to that committee for consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I’d have to go to the department to see what we have in place, but I’d venture to say that all P3 initiatives are done on a case-by-case basis. Thank you.

I thought I had been very clear and concise when I committed to take that on as part of our review. I’ll reinforce that by saying yes, we will take his advice and follow it up.

The whole area of capacity building has been one that has been brought forward as a concern. There are concerns regarding the number of available qualified SCOs. There is also the concern that was raised yesterday or the other day by the Member for Tu Nedhe about qualified recreation workers in the communities. We also need to have people who are qualified and certified in the area of finance.

We are working with LGANT, or Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories, to see what we can do. There have been a number of suggestions. One of them is to develop a pool of qualified...