Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document, entitled Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 19-17(3), Child Tax Benefit Clawback.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I just want to say, in listening to the movers’ comments, that it’s unfair to say that this government does not care and this government is not standing up for the people of the Northwest Territories. While it makes for good theatre, it’s not exactly what this government does. I think we’ve proven that we look after the interests of the people of the Northwest Territories and to say otherwise, to me, is untrue.

I would like to say that some of the comments that were made were very good comments. Ms. Bisaro’s comments about it’s mostly a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our plan is to try to get into the community as soon as possible. We recently announced the plans to replace the Joe Greenland Centre. We want to try and get in there as soon as possible. We still have about a month of winter road. I’m assuming staff from the department in Inuvik will be heading over to Aklavik to start the planning of the new Joe Greenland Centre.

Because the Member asked, I’ll say yes, we will. As part of our announcement last week, we did announce that we were building four new seniors facilities. One of them was in Fort McPherson, the other one was in Fort Good Hope, we have one in Fort Liard, and the other one in Whati. The planning for that is in the early stages right now. We do plan to construct these in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.

It would be some of the issues. I mean, they’d cover all the bases as far as trying to help the communities implement this. We do know some communities have expressed an interest in purchasing some highway and ground ambulance type vehicles. We had one community that had purchased it, realized that they didn’t have trained people for it, and I believe they sold the equipment. We’re looking at, through the School of Community Government and MACA, offering some type of training to all residents or all communities across the Northwest Territories so we’d have qualified first responders in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We continue to work with the communities. We had the ground ambulance and highway rescue money that some communities had taken us up on. As I stated the other day, once they realized that there was a liability because they weren’t qualified as first responders, then many of them quit taking us up on the money. We’ve kind of re-profiled and are hoping to use that money for more training for people in the communities. That way they would be qualified as first responders and then the community would be able to probably get some emergency vehicles and do these types of...

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. It was even before this incident that we were looking at how we can improve our ambulance, especially between the communities, and with more and more of the communities being linked by ice roads or highways, it was an important issue. Unfortunately, some of these incidents that happen highlight more and more the importance of the issue. I can assure the Member, and all Members, that through our internal working committee we are trying to find ways that we can find something that works for all communities in the Northwest Territories, especially those that are on the...

We have an internal deputy ministers committee. Ourselves along with I believe it’s Transportation, Justice and Health and Social Services are looking at this particular issue. They’re looking at cost and many other things that might come into play on this. The last we heard, I think, to implement a territorial-wide highway and ground ambulance rescue would be in the neighbourhood of $6 million. They’re continuing to do their work and we’re looking forward to some of the recommendations that they might bring forward to the Ministers and we will share that with committee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize my constituency assistant, Ms. Leah Ipana, who is here chaperoning a couple of young ladies from Inuvik who are working as Pages, Ms. Chantal Grey and Ms. Lauren Cockney. I want to thank them and all the other Pages for the work that they do on our behalf.

Mr. Speaker, there was a program a few years ago. However, I think when it was determined that we were going to have government service officers in each community, part of their role was going to be exactly that, advising people of all the program deadlines and that with all government programs, including the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. However, I can inform the Member that, as a corporation, we are looking at roles and responsibilities of our LHOs so we can better serve a lot of these smaller communities. We are developing proposals that we’re hoping to bring forward to...