Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we had a number of discussions over the last while with the City of Yellowknife. We have also had a number of discussions as recently as this week with the Yellowknives Dene on the issue of land. Land issues are a big issue in the city of Yellowknife. Affordability is one issue and availability is another. There are, right now, discussions with the aboriginal governments on a process of making land available. We have signed an agreement with the Yellowknives Dene to be able to identify some lands that we could identify in terms of making available in...

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware, at this point, if we have developed the process areas or time frames where we would perform an evaluation. We certainly could work on that and develop and build it into our business plan as we work them out in the next while. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our plans for this new sports council coming into operation is April of 2005. We want to have one year or some time for transition to allow for Members to develop some new business plans and budgets and plan for the integration of some of the programs and services. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the implementation plan has been drafted. I did table it in the House. Maybe the Member could take the time to refer to that document. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my first answer, the committee is going to be formulated over this next while. The plans are to have it operational by April of this year. The mandate and business plans are all yet to be developed. The intention of creating this new council was to have the amalgamation of all our sports priorities under one umbrella to create a forum where all communities would have a voice…

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…and be able to reduce some of the overlap in terms of providing programs and services and also have the ability to coordinate some of our services and, at the same time, reduce...

Mr. Speaker, we don’t have an absolute process. We don’t have an agreement signed yet as to how all of this is going to unfold. I have asked both the city and the Akaitcho to try to resolve it in one year. We are trying to set a deadline of one year so that we can have a clear process that everybody will be able to understand and follow. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we have a number of different processes across the NWT for providing additional land to the towns and cities. In the case of Yellowknife, we have not been aware that there has been an application filed for additional land outside of the town boundaries. We have been discussing the issue of some lands reverted back from the mines. We have included the Akaitcho Territory First Nations and the city. We have been having a number of meetings to come to some kind of a long-term plan of how we would arrange for land and also for the First Nations to bring their interests forward and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the Yellowknife area, we, as a department, have to follow a process that is in place, set up, and agreed upon by the Akaitcho Territory and this government through Aboriginal Affairs that spells out an interim measures agreement that we, as MACA, have to follow. In this case, we have had discussions with the Akaitcho First Nations and the city, and we have tentatively agreed that we would work towards developing a process where we wouldn’t run into a roadblock where the city is interested in some lands and the First Nations are also interested, or any...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will certainly take that concern and raise it with the federal government. However, I have to repeat again, CATSA does not share their security implementation plans with us as to what they're going to do with other airports. Right now the focus is on Yellowknife, as far as we know in terms of what they're going to implement for security. As traffic volumes are increased in other communities, certainly I'm sure there would be consideration. Screening devices are based on traffic volumes, so if traffic volumes are on a rise as a result of polar flights or...

Madam Chair, I don’t know if I’m in a position to qualify whether the federal requirements make sense or not. At this point I’m obligated to follow through and implement this whole explosion detection system by the deadline. We have raised this issue regarding our additional funding requirements to the federal government. We have talked to the CATSA officials over a number of months from the time this funding application was submitted in December right until this spring when it was final, and all indicators showed that the government was not going to budge on allowing us any more money to...