Robert C. McLeod

Thank you. I take full responsibility for that because I’ve been Minister of MACA for going on four years now. So I should have been able to pick that up. But I will commit to the Members that we’ll review this $168,000 and if there’s an opportunity to re-profile it or take it out completely, then we’ll do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the comments from the Members. The comments were all basically the same and I think these are issues that we’ve been working on.

Then there was the water source that Mr. Nadli had raised. We are working closely with the communities of Kakisa and Enterprise to see what options they would have. I made the comment about downloading responsibility on to communities. That is exactly what we have done, we have downloaded responsibility on the communities because the communities have proven that they are quite capable of handling all the new responsibility. We...

I’m sure you’ll notice in MACA’s budget that we have travel in there, and part of our duties as MACA is to get out and visit all the communities and work with the communities as many times as is requested for us to go in and work with the communities. They prefer face to face as far as the public safety division goes. They have to go travel around for helping communities with their emergency plans and helping put together their emergency plans. We get a lot of requests from the communities for our staff to go in and meet with communities. That’s why our travel budgets are the way they are.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the Member is wanting us to enable the communities, if they choose to do so, to put in a hotel levy. I’m correct, I think, in saying that. That would require changes to possibly four pieces of legislation. I think we’ve committed to doing some work on this and I will have discussions with staff and see what this would entail, and looking at costs and stuff like that. If there is an opportunity where we give them the choice, now they can’t do it because of the legislation. I will commit to the Member that I will work closely with the department and we’ll see how...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can commit to working with committee and receiving some input from them. When we go through the next building business planning process, there’s an opportunity. If committee comes forward with some recommendations, then I will commit to the Member that we will look at that and I will work closely with the Minister responsible for Seniors in the NWT to see how we can improve our support for active seniors across the Northwest Territories.

I do, Madam Chair.

I’ve already committed to sitting down with the Member and having a very good, frank discussion on the role that we play in the Arctic Energy Alliance and any other part of MACA department. I’ll be more than happy to sit with the Member and we can have a good discussion.

…(inaudible)…a MACA update every year for community governments to plan their budgets for this upcoming year, so they’re all aware of any changes.

Mr. Chair, was there a question or was that just a comment? I don’t believe I heard a question.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to welcome a former resident of Inuvik, Mr. Dez Loreen. Welcome to the gallery, Dez.