Mr. Speaker, later today, I will be tabling the revised Northwest Territories Greenhouse Gas Strategy.

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In 2005, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources took a stakeholder review of the previous Greenhouse Gas Strategy released in 2001. This review revealed the existing strategy was on the right track and represented a good start towards managing greenhouse gas emissions. It also identified shortcomings, including a lack of emission reduction targets, the absence of an implementation plan, insufficient funding and a general lack of accountability for results.

The revised...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not in a position to tell anybody to dissolve or force them to dissolve. We’ve assured all organizations that they will continue running as they are currently operating. We have set up a board now with the sports council that everybody has a voice, everybody can share in the discussion. There’s a methodology of everybody coming together. We’re hoping that at some point some of the organizations are going to recognize that there is some merit to working under one roof, one umbrella structure. We’re not quite at that stage yet; however, some of that discussion with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are expecting the new Sports and Recreation Council to ensure that all communities have a voice in the decision-making. It was, for the most part, from the smaller communities and from communities that didn’t have TSOs raising concerns over many years that they didn’t have a mechanism for them to talk about sports and recreation. This has changed now and we’re also expecting the Sports and Recreation Council, through this whole system, to streamline decision-making and also to streamline program delivery. We would expect, now that everybody’s working off...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The whole concept behind forming the NWT Sports and Recreation Council was to try to pull all the organizations under one roof and to set up a funding program that would give everybody a fair share of the dollars as they delivered their own programs. It was also a cost-cutting measure so that the organizations would start to share some of the administration, cut down on the administrative costs and be able to put more dollars towards programming. Mr. Speaker, this has been working quite well. All the organizations are operating under one roof. We plan to put our sports...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t confirm whether we’ve done that yet. We’ll need to talk a little more with ITI, who has had some contact with the Farmers' Association. However, I certainly will commit to getting back to the Member on this issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we can certainly take a look to see if there’s any other method of doing what the Member’s asking. We have not received, I don’t believe we received, a request. We had made the offer to the Territorial Farmers' Association to do a presentation on the situation with lands. We must realize that this area -- this is being referenced by the Territorial Farmer’s Association -- is also further complicated because there are two outstanding land claims in that area. The Dehcho First Nations have a land claim in that area, and the NWT Metis Nation has also...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe there have been filings of appeal from six of the organizations. I’m not sure if that has taken place. My information was that there would a gathering of the territorial sports organizations in April. We are having our discussions with Sport North to see if there’s a better system, a more user-friendly system in terms of reporting. We’d like that to happen and we will continue those discussions. However, we recognize that it’s a real challenge for some of the organizations out there to meet the accounting requirements. We have to have good accounting...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the whole concept of amalgamation and putting all the sports organizations under one roof, one umbrella structure, has been something that’s been proven to be working quite well. We’re quite satisfied that we’re making some really good progress with the lotteries; we’re making good progress in terms of amalgamating a lot of the administration; we’ve also made some great headway in terms of housing all the organizations in their own building under one roof. There have been a few concerns that have come forward, especially in light of some of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, along with my colleague from Thebacha, I, too, would like to speak to the frustrations that are facing the territorial sport organizations in applying for funding. The Canada Winter Games were recently held in Whitehorse and many NWT athletes that were there held their own against the rest of the country. Many of the coaches and mission staff and those that are directly involved with the athletes are volunteers, Mr. Speaker. It’s these volunteers that allow the athletes to compete. We ask the volunteers to coach and mould our athletes and yet we offer them...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for his answers. I said earlier that volunteers are overworked. I’d like to ask the Minister if this Sport and Recreation Council is going to make any effort to ease the administrative burden on volunteers? Thank you.