Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was paying attention. I was just looking for it on my iPad.

---Laughter

And I found it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to introduce Bill 13, An Act to Repeal the Curfew Act. The Curfew Act is old legislation and is no longer required. Municipal governments have the authority to pass bylaws to establish curfews.

With respect to designated authorities, the Curfew Act provides that the Commissioner may establish a community as a curfew district upon receiving a petition signed by two-thirds of the parents of the community. No designated authority has shown...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe we’ve downloaded the responsibility on to the communities. I think communities have embraced the new responsibility they have. In many of my meetings with the communities and meetings with the NWT Association of Communities, they have pointed out the fact that they do like the New Deal, it was called at the time, where a lot of the responsibilities were devolved on to the communities. They weren’t downloaded. I just wanted to make that point again.

It’s a tough question to answer, because when we’re talking about the infrastructure, I’ve been saying it here for the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government, we have a lot of programs that are designed specifically for our youth. Unfortunately, the capital part of it is not a part of the support that we give to our youth. We have a number of programs, and I think the Member pointed them out before, Youth Ambassadors and all the programs we have. If there is a desire by the youth in the community to have a piece of infrastructure, I would advise them to go speak to their local government, who have the authority to distribute the funds in the community.

I have to say that in many of the communities I have...

The community has an allocation from this government for their infrastructure and they will determine on their own what they want to use that money for. If it goes towards an arena, again, that would be their decision, and our role in it is to support the community and help them find other sources of funding or secure bank financing if the need arises. But we will work with the community and explain to them what some of their options are.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left I have Mr. Kevin Brezinski. He is the director of public safety. To my right I have Mr. Thomas Druyan, who is the legislative counsel. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the opportunity to introduce Bill 14, An Act to Repeal the Pawnbrokers and Second-hand Dealers Act. There are currently no businesses in the Northwest Territories licensed as pawnbrokers or second-hand dealers under the Pawnbrokers and Second-hand Dealers Act. Furthermore, the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has not issued a pawnbroker or second-hand dealer’s licence within corporate memory.

Many jurisdictions in Canada, such as Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, have repealed similar legislation, leaving the regulation of...

I would, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I said that I will check and see if… I doubt that there is any infrastructure money in our youth programming dollars that we allocate through this Legislative Assembly. If it’s one that Members on the other side, when we do the debate during the O and M budget, if it’s something that they feel strongly about, then it’s their prerogative to raise it.

Again – I keep harping on this and I will continue to keep harping on this – the communities have the responsibility to determine what some of their priorities are. When you see one community respond to the youth of that community and...

I have been explaining for a number of years now, since I got the MACA portfolio, that since the New Deal, a lot of the responsibility has gone to the communities as far as infrastructure goes. We debated the Municipal and Community Affairs infrastructure budget yesterday, $28 million. Unfortunately, none of that money is in MACA’s coffers. All the money is distributed to communities because the communities have the ability to determine what some of their priorities are. Not only do they have the ability, they also now have the financing to do it. If it’s a community rink in any one of the...

I’m sorry. I apologize. I was so concentrating on the first point the Member made, I forgot about the second.

We are monitoring the one unit that we have up in Inuvik. We are able to monitor the use there as far as utilities go. I am committing to providing data to all the Members on some of the savings that we are seeing because of using a few more energy-efficient systems plus the work that we have done on the units themselves.

Right now it is fairly early in the game. We do have a new system where we are able to monitor the utility costs for pretty well every unit in the NWT Housing...