Michael McLeod

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, will be voting in favour of this motion we put forward. I commend the Minister and his department for bringing this forward. I believe they want to do the right thing. We want them to do the right thing. The whole of the Northwest Territories wants us to do the right thing. The right thing is to get these people off the streets and, as the bill says, make the neighbourhood safer. But at the same time, our committee was given this bill and we were asked to bring it out and listen to what people had to stay. I thought we did that.

It has been a tough couple...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for that answer. It is encouraging to hear that we are hoping to make some changes within the next year, but we have been hearing from the people across the Territories that are going to school here for a few years now, so we should base our decision on what they are saying and not what we are hearing from somewhere else. I would like to ask the Minister if this is a decision that has to be made through legislation or is it a policy decision that he can just sign off before his term is up? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we would sit down and evaluate the ask. Mr. Speaker, we have had some discussion on this. There are still a number of options out there. However, if there is infrastructure investment required and it is something that the community can’t handle, we would certainly want to work with them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If it was demonstrated that the need was an emergency, we would certainly consider it. In this instance, there may be other options. There may be treatment options. The municipality has also indicated that they may have to look at settling ponds. So we would really have to be convinced that this is an emergency. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the departments bring their requests for funding forward, is there a particular line item in there for all the NGO funding that they propose to give out during the year? Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today, well they’re regarding money and funding so I’ll direct them to the Minister of Finance. It’s regarding the NGO funding. I’d like to ask the Minister if all requests for NGO funding have to go through regional offices? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s been contact with all the different regions regarding the situation with the caribou herds in those specific areas. We’ve had action plans discussed with the different resource management groups and aboriginal governments. Some of the actions have been readily accepted, others we're still discussing on if there’s better ways to do and implement some of these actions. Mr. Speaker, they’re all at various stages and I certainly could provide that information to the Member if he wanted. It’s quite a lengthy process and there’s a lot of different actions. Some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for his carefully crafted question and I’ll craft my answers accordingly. Mr. Speaker, we work with all aboriginal groups, all aboriginal governments and we respect and abide by all the land claim settlements and all the agreements that are out there, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we talked about our concerns with addictions across the Northwest Territories. We have studies on addictions across the Northwest Territories. We have people, Mr. Speaker, who work the front lines. They not only talk about all of these concerns, but they want to do something about it. They are hard working and caring people who do their job 24/7, Mr. Speaker, because they care about the clients they serve. They do this, for the most part, very cheaply. We have board members who are volunteers who do it for nothing.

It came to my attention, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to lend my support to this bill as I think it’s a very well written piece of work. I spoke with a resident of Inuvik who follows this type of stuff very closely and they mentioned that this was very well written and the fact that it was written in the NWT by the NWT and for the NWT is something that I’m quite proud of. It’s not something that we’ve borrowed from somewhere. We put the bill in committee’s hands and took the bill out, people spoke to us for the most part, well, I think everyone spoke in favour of the new Liquor Act. There were a couple concerns...