Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Chairman, sorry. Initially, we had four positions on a term expecting hearings and negotiations to be completed by this coming year. However, as everybody knows, the project has continued to move forward not as quickly as everybody expected. We have done a lot of work in terms of working with the communities to do the baseline studies. As the Member has indicated, we would expect MACA to have these as a matter of course. However, that’s not the case. We don’t have the information as to what assets are in the community, what size, what the capacity is. We also...

Thank you, Madam Chair. For $75,000 they are proposing a family violence survey. I disagree with that. If you want to get a survey of all the family violence that goes on, talk to the people at the front line. I think they will give you a much better survey. Who initiated this request for a survey? Was it the people that provide the services or is it another government initiative? The government seems to like to do surveys and studies. The people on the front line, I am sure, can use this $195,000 to enhance the programs and delivery of programs they already have. Thank you, Madam...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister makes a good point as we want to keep our students going to school in the North, but the high cost of living…It only makes sense that you may want to go to school south. Mr. Speaker, they are doing an income support redesign to reflect the high cost of living in some of the communities. Will they do the same thing with the Student Financial Assistance Program and have it implemented this fall? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly will continue to pursue this. It’s not something that we have as a high priority right now. There is still a lot of communication equipment and communication issues in our communities that we could focus on. There’s the issue of self-service, and self-service along the highway would maybe make more sense right now than implementing a huge, costly 911 service that is only going to serve a small part of the whole Northwest Territories. It’s something we’d have to sit down and talk with the other departments and the other agencies, but we’ll certainly follow up...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have the detail and the cost for breaking it out per community. We could, I guess, look at that. There’s a number of things that would come forward as one-time costs from the RCMP and also NorthwesTel or the provider and others. So we’d have to sit down and break all those numbers out. We haven’t looked at specifically providing it for one community. There’s still a cost factor. In fact, Yellowknife has made application to CRTC for some money and were turned down as this didn’t meet the program criteria. If there’s an interest, we certainly can sit down and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Of course, we will agree particularly with the Member’s comments. I will forward them on to the committee for consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, tires have been raised as one of the considerations that we have to look at. We are also working with communities to look at mobile equipment. We recently had a number of workshops and had some companies from Alberta come and talk about being able to recycle some of the scrap metals. As part of those discussions, several communities got together and are exploring the different ways they can deal with the bulkier products in their landfill, such as tires and mobile tire shredding is something we are considering. We are also going to be working with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the next few weeks we’ll have high school students graduating from Grade 12. The past couple weeks we’ve had Aurora College convocations, and we’ve got some students graduating from southern institutions. First, I want to congratulate all these grads and wish them nothing but the best in their future goals.

We continue, Mr. Speaker, to have one of the best systems for post-secondary education in the country, but there still needs to be some work done on the Student Financial Assistance Program. Imagine how many more students, Mr. Speaker, we may be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the certification I think really depends on the education level or the skill level of some of our water plant operators. In some cases, it takes some time. We have to do a number of different types of programming including some hands-on training where we have either a Public Works officer or a Municipal and Community Affairs officer work right in the facility with them to provide hands-on training. But in some cases, it is a very short number of courses through the School of Community Government that would certify them. Mr. Speaker, it really depends...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Premier for that. I also would like to ask the Premier if we have a federal election and there happens to be a new government, does this fall off the table or would it still be dealt with by Ottawa? Thank you.