Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Speaker, the committee was formed in 2012. It had representatives from the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Social Services, MACA. They were formed to implement a strategy to strengthen our community based ambulance and highway rescue services. The strategy actually resulted in $1.63 million being provided to community governments to support their community based ground ambulance and highway rescue services, including upgrades, major repairs, or enhancements to existing mobile equipment or the purchase of new mobile equipment. Training which we found was going to be one of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the GNWT, there is no single department that has legislative responsibility to provide ground ambulance service for residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Member makes a good point, and I will check with the department and see if there are opportunities. We'll explore options and see if there are opportunities for us to offer these courses before the elections actually take place, so those that are considering running for council will know exactly what they're getting into and what they're responsible for. I'll follow up on that and I will get back to the Member.

I'm not quite sure an SAO has been hired. I think they were going through the advertising and maybe the interview process, but I will follow up on that. Also, I think there was a commitment at the time that we were going to have elections again. That is still the plan, to have elections in December and have the new council take office January 2017.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we need to look at all of our options. If that is one of the options then maybe they can give us a million dollars to implement 911. It doesn't hurt to ask. But again, this is an issue that I would like to see resolved. It started 10 years ago, and my answer at the time or when I first got to the MACA ministry was that because of technology and the lack of cell phones across the Northwest Territories, technology has improved. That's all been taken care of. There is no reason, I think, other than financial, why we shouldn't look at implementing 911 on a...

Mr. Speaker, I will commit to the Member that I will follow up on that and see if it could be redirected to the department. The Member is correct. 911 is an issue that's been in the Assembly, I think, for the last ten years. We are starting to hear more and more about it, and we had done some work on it, but I will go back to my commitment to the Member that we will look and see what we can do to try and forward them to the proper numbers.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things we could do to move forward on this. One thing I would like to see is we hear from the communities that it's costing them money and use of their equipment and that to get people out on the highway to rescue those that are in need, and one thing we know about the North is nobody is going to say no to anyone that is in need, so they will go there. What I would like to see is justification for the money that they say that they are spending going out, and then also, we need to work as a Legislative Assembly to try and meet some of our fiscal challenges so...

The department… We provide annual funding for community public infrastructure based on which community governments may use to procure equipment to support highway rescue and ground ambulance services beyond their municipal boundaries. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Through the School of Community Government, we do offer courses to elected officials after municipal elections, and we will do so in this case. It’s actually a very good course and it tells them of their responsibilities, what they can do, what they can't do. Through the accountability framework that we have implemented now, I think it's going to allow us to nip these problems before they get to be to the stage where they were at in Fort McPherson. That's going to be one of the benefits of the accountability framework, is it will protect the community from getting into a financial situation...

I will just clarify it's 100,000 people, not dollars, and the federal portion cannot exceed 75 per cent. Thank you.