Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We always encourage our senior staff to get out of the offices and into the communities. We have a number of different initiatives out there that are utilizing traditional knowledge more and more. Protected areas, for example, is really an area that counts on the input from the knowledge of the people on the land. We will certainly have our people out there who will encourage all our senior staff to be involved and to make sure that they really fully understand and participate in this initiative. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we’ve been working close with everybody. My office has even kept the Member in the loop. We have indicated that we’ll transfer the land to the city. We’ve done the consultation; we have all the necessary requirements for us to start that process today. If the transfer is going to be to anyone else other than the city, then that changes the land tenure and that would require us to go through another consultation process, Mr. Speaker. That is the process and I apologize to the Member if he misunderstood that, but the process is right now that we go to a new consultation process...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the land request from the city, if the Member had checked, would indicate that there is privately held land in the acquisition request. I’ll have to check to see if the Member’s property is included in there.

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Mr. Speaker, there’s bodies of water that we don’t have jurisdiction over. There’s federal lands that we don’t have jurisdiction over. We can’t pretend that we’re going to transfer these over; we can’t take it to consultation. We have been talking to the city for I think around three months now to see if we can work our way around it....

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I know it’s difficult right now for the Minister to commit any extra funding to the Dempster Highway, but I would like to see him make a recommendation to the department to double the amount of money that they allocate to the Dempster Highway. Would he be able to do that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell you where that $35 million is and the $5 million they spent recently. It’s in the ditch.

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Because they are not getting the work done properly and it’s no fault to the contractor; they are given a contract to go by. So they go by that contract and I agree with the Minister, they do work hard, and that’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is the money that is going into the Dempster Highway has to stay on the Dempster Highway and not go into the ditch, because that’s the way it’s happening and the highway is still dangerous. I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there’s an old saying that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But I think with this ECE housing transfer issue, they are trying to invent that to say if it ain’t broke, let’s break it.

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Mr. Speaker, we brought motions forward recently, asking Housing to take the ability to do the assessments for the tenants back from ECE because, Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing for months now that this is just not working. I don’t know what it’s going to take for the department to realize it’s not working, that they should transfer the money back to the Housing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to offer congratulations to a member of our public service, Mr. Richard Popko, who was recently honoured by the Fur Institute of Canada with the Jim Bourque Award in recognition of his support of the sustainable development of Canada’s modern fur trade.

Richard is known for his commitment to the principles of sustainable use of wildlife. These principles include humane trapping practices and furthering indigenous peoples’ cultures. He is a good example of the vital stewardship role that trappers play in the conservation of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish the Member would read his information more closely because, Mr. Speaker, we’ve indicated to the city if there is a real desire for us to transfer to the city, we can do it within four weeks or a month turnaround. If there’s a desire for us to turn the land over to the leaseholders, that’s going to be a new consultation process and that would probably not be finalized until December or January this coming winter, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can’t understand why the Member would stand up and say that MACA is standing in the way of transferring land. I think historically this government has gone on record for transferring large parcels of land over the last while.

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This last land acquisition request that has come forward contains land that we don’t have jurisdiction over and, therefore, can’t disclose that. If we can’t disclose of it, it doesn’t make any sense to go to consultation, Mr. Speaker.

I think the positive comments on his tour were coming from the fellow Minister. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister, with business plans coming up, if they can commit 125 kilometres from Inuvik to Tsiigehtchic. My colleagues were with me on that road; we’re still wondering where the dust control is. It was dusty all the way. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could commit his department to doubling the amount of money they put on the Dempster and in particular fix the road between Inuvik and Tsiigehtchic, because it is a dangerous little stretch of road and it’s not very wide, there...