Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Yellowknife Homelessness Coalition provides a valuable service in Yellowknife. There is also an interdepartmental working group when it comes to the issues within the Government of the Northwest Territories and shared jurisdiction by different departments in dealing with this issue. So to the question from the Member, the answer would be, in my opinion, no.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 24, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, be read for the second time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill makes supplementary appropriations for infrastructure expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2011-12 fiscal year. Thank you.

Ultimately the broad issues, the broad decisions, the review, the voting of the public money comes to the floor of this House. There are MLAs elected, there are committees put together, there’s a government selected, business plans are done based on the initial fundamental direction that comes out of the Legislative Assembly.

As we’ve attempted to do in the 16th Assembly in terms of program reviews, the government, working with the committees and MLAs, has the fundamental task of ensuring that the money is spent, and that the program priorities are the right ones, and that there is value for...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that Bill 24, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is an important planning document. It comes out in five-year increments. It’s one of the core pieces of information that we use as a department and Legislature to look at where do we focus our attention, what’s working, what’s not working, what are some of the alarming trends, as the Member pointed out. We get back to the inevitable return to the issue of prevention and the abuse of alcohol, smoking, improper diet, lack of exercise; fundamental things that we have not yet instilled into the people of the Northwest Territories; personal choice issues that have not...

Thank you. I will extend the commitment that I made to the Member for Nahendeh as well as the Member for Nunakput about discussing this issue with the deputy minister and the board chairs.

I’d like also to point out that we’re spending millions of dollars in electronic health records, medical records, telehealth. We have a very ambitious plan for a fibre optic line down the valley that would provide fibre optic link to all the communities and give them the best cutting-edge communication services so, in fact, their telehealth systems would work at full capacity. Children would be able to go on...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member has been in this Assembly 16 budgets, as have I, and we’ve talked since that time about taxes, resource royalty taxes, mining taxes, ways to raise revenue. We’ve tried hotel taxes and road tolls. We contemplated other taxes, as well, increases to the payroll tax. We’ve lived through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s where we had to be very careful in terms of further negatively impacting the business community at a time when they were suffering significant loss.

The challenge for the 17th Assembly is going to be we are going...

As I indicated to the Member for Nahendeh, I will raise this issue not only with the deputy minister but I’ll be talking to the board chairs about the concern and who, in turn, can talk to the senior staff to deal with the issues and pass on the concern and ensure that every effort is made to provide all the services necessary and that we avoid these types of circumstances. But recognizing, as I said earlier, that over the course of any given day thousands of Northerners successfully go through the doors of health centres. We have to be concerned about those situations that the Member has...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could refer the Member to clause 4, that lays out some of the processes that are going to be available to deal with and interact with the public, get public feedback to provide direction and feedback on performance. The topic of holding public meetings to review investment activities in the performance of the fund. The monitoring of the performance. There will be an opportunity through that process to have public input. Of course, there’s always the opportunity through MLAs and through committees as well.

The issue is not so much, in my opinion, the need for additional resources. It’s to try to fill the positions that are already there to avoid the circumstances, that the Member talked about in his statement, where there’s lack of services. The small communities tend to not get the services that they’re expecting on a regular basis, which is a gap that we try to avoid. Thank you.