Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will commit to the Member that we will have somebody attend and we will make the offer again right away to do the presentation. We were ready some time ago and we’ll go out and contact the Farmers' Association and offer to do a presentation and have a discussion on some of the issues that they have concerns about. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seem to recall that the Member raised it in 2004, 2005 and 2006. It seems that this issue, I agree, has been on the table…The Member has been very vocal about having the PATA reviewed. There have been other organizations and other Members of this House, including community governments, that have asked that we review the act. We have not been able to do so; we haven’t been able to dedicate the resources. So we don’t believe we’ll be able to review the act within the life of this government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the Member is referring to a concern that was brought forward this year as the result of Sport North levying some penalties. I guess it should be clear that Sport North is an independent body; they are registered a society; they have their own administration; these are their own rules; these are the members of their partnerships. There are two types of penalties that are being levied here. There are penalties for late filing of their accounting and their forms and the general accounting practices, and there’s also some penalties that are being levied as a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too, wanted to recognize Sam Gargan from my hometown of Fort Providence, former Speaker and MLA for Deh Cho. Welcome.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That has been an issue for some time at the NWT Sports and Recreation Council’s meetings, and it’s been raised by a number of the organizations, and it’s been brought to our attention, and it’s something that we are really concerned about. As I indicated earlier, we are looking at ways that we can ease the administrative burden on all our organizations by either having better reporting or more user-friendly reporting systems, providing some of the additional dollars through some of our new federal programs that we’re hoping we’ll be receiving to provide some resources...

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.