Michael Miltenberger

The key focus I think we have to keep our eye on is we are going to invest something in the neighbourhood of $350 million to do a major retrofit, expand the footprint and service capacity of the Stanton Hospital by about 40 percent and modernize it into the 21st Century. It’s a big operation. There is going to be more staff coming on board.

As we move forward with this process, we will continue to inform everybody. The CEO has already met with staff. The process is not finalized. The final agreement, contract, hasn’t been signed. As those issues become clear, we will sort them out.

We are very...

Thank you. No, it does not. Not in this year, not in the next year. It has no impact on the existing capital plan. As we’ve indicated from the start, this project, the Stanton Hospital and the fibre optic line are large, unique projects that are being dealt with outside of the traditional capital plan, which is focused on all the projects that have been on the list that have been reviewed extensively through the committee process. Thank you.

Thank you. The Member is a fine example of the success of our education system. We’re not excluding the fact that it’s a loss. What we have done is started a program, an initiative that we’ve given ourselves a five-year time horizon, because we recognize that these things take time to sort things out, to turn things around, to do the work that’s necessary, to make the changes that are necessary, to do the things with HR, for example, where we want to be able to go south and enable the folks that go south to take interviews and do job offers on the spot so that we can be way more timely in how...

Thank you. We are at work in terms of a review, cleaning up after fire season, doing the final accounting and then doing the critical debrief is underway. Then early in the new year, we’ll have that work done and we expect to be able to go forward with those findings to committee to have a thorough discussion in anticipation of the upcoming fire season. Thank you.

Thank you. The extra funds are covered through borrowing the money. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize one of the members of the union contingent, as well, Ms. Lauraine Armstrong, a family friend and a berry picking and swimming companion of my wife. Thank you.

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Thank you. All the communities could take a page from the work that Kakisa did to take matters into their own hands as the fire smarted their community, and as they were encroached on all sides by fire they recognized the value of that exercise. So I think communities can look at doing public spaces and then the encouragement for all individuals to get out there with their own saws and chainsaws, as I did my property, where you thin out the trees, you clear out the underbrush, you limb your trees as high as you can, move your woodpile away from your house and those type of things. All will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t quantify how widely it happens, but I do agree with the Member and I’ve seen it myself where there’s smoke coming through the snowbanks even on a drive from Fort Smith to Hay River where there’s been fires. So we know it happens and we’ve mapped the burned areas, but I can’t quantify it to the extent the Member is asking.

There are a couple of initiatives that are intertwined here. We are looking at increasing the population of the Northwest Territories. That is one thing we’re trying to do. We are working, as a government, on decentralization to move positions outside of the centre, out to the communities. That work is underway. Phase three is now underway. We are also working to fill the very many vacancies we have, and we have approximately a split between Yellowknife and communities of vacancies anywhere between five to 800 positions that we’re trying to fill in both inside Yellowknife and outside of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not, in effect, losing jobs. What we’re trying to do is find people to fill the jobs that we have that are in many cases going begging. We have met as a government now numerous times.

We have a working committee that’s looking at a whole host of things, very simple things like the issue that has bedeviled many of us in many of the departments from following up with our students has been this issue that ECE had with confidentiality and an inability to share the information on students in school, where they are, what they’re studying, so that we can in fact make sure...