Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question for Mr. Roland. You continue to say that the minimum code requirements will get you two to four years more out of the building. Now, is that set in stone? I mean, do the renovations, are they not going to be code in two or three years? Is it possible that the life of the building could be extended a little longer? Because I thought when you brought something up to code, you got longer use out of the building. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe we have seven bylaw officers in the various communities across the Northwest Territories. We just did an evaluation on the situation, whether they have been making a difference or are they being effective in terms of community protection, and most of the communities have responded very favourably. We are at the same time, through our New Deal initiative, doing an evaluation of our O and M money, the operations and maintenance money that’s provided to the communities for community governance. We’re also reviewing the water and sewer subsidy, along...

Now, the thing that I'm having difficulty with, it says Inuvik. That's the only thing.

---Laughter

---Interjection

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today about several ground search and rescue initiatives implemented by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

The department recently produced new ground search and rescue training standards, which will be used to train community representatives in ground search and rescue techniques. Community representatives will then use the standards to train their individual ground search and rescue teams.

Training standards will ensure all participants are trained to the same level and individuals who volunteer are safely employed during any search operation...

Mr. Chairman, we did incorporate a cost recovery program for the initial capital cost for this project for the expansion of the passenger terminal building. We did receive money for the capital cost from CATSA. The fees we did increase were the landing fees and general terminal fees. That is not something we have looked at in this case. We are looking at an increase through a supp to accommodate the extra costs. I guess if there is no desire to move forward with this, we would either have to take it from within, from another project. I am not sure where we would take it from, but we would...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to support the motion because, like some of my colleagues were saying, it seems to be wanting to grow and grow and grow. I like the five technical officers in the district. If I had my way, the lands officers would not be in here at all. I would make a motion to put them as technical officers who can do some land work. The technical officers, the ones I know, can do a bit of everything. To have lands officers going into the district office, I would just as soon they be technical officers. That would give us 10 in the districts and I would be wiling to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am concerned, too, with the amount of projects that have lapsed and having to come back in an appropriation. I want to ask the Minister if one of the reasons a lot of these projects are lapsing is because I see the word consultant a lot and I have seen that delay a few projects. I am also wondering if the fact that the government enters into negotiations for contracts with some groups, if that has bearing on the amount of programs that have lapsed because they couldn’t come to agreement. Thank you.

Madam Chair, this year we had unusually warm weather and it really caused a lot of problems in the area of building the roads in the North Slave region, especially to the communities of Wekweeti and Gameti that required us to do some extras in the actual construction of the roads. It required lighter equipment because of the very thin ice. We had to get lighter equipment that was not in the contract and we also had to…In a number of cases, the rivers or the creeks started flowing so we had to go back and reconstruct some of those roads, or in some cases provide detours. This was all over...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I’ll thank the Minister for that response. He mentioned a full-blown review hadn’t been done since 2000. Would the Minister commit to doing a review and finding out how much it’s costing nowadays? Like, the tuition and that, the government does a good job, as far as I’m concerned, in helping with the tuition and the books and everything. My question is regarding the allowance that these students get. So would the Minister commit to doing another review of the assistance plan? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I did not state that the communities were…the funding was insufficient. I stated that several communities have raised that issue. We are looking at reviewing the operation and maintenance funding for the communities, governance funding, and we can’t commit that we will identify bylaw officers as a specific initiative that needs to be funded outside of the block funding. We are moving towards more of a block funding, more giving the community more autonomy and letting them make their own decisions. If it does result in additional funding, that may allow more...