Statements in Debates
I’m not going to make a commitment to delay anything right now. However, I have assured the Member and Members of this House that we will have a very good product once we release it, and if that product includes the density study… I do recall seeing some maps with all the density of the lakes in question and the lake in Inuvik, and I can assure the Members that I will, as Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, ensure that our department has a very good product before we release it and it’s one that is fairly acceptable to everyone. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The steps going forward, we have released a discussion paper, as the Member had noted in her Member’s statement. We had to get something on the table for the public to latch on to. The next steps are to consult with all affected stakeholders and use all the information we gather to do the final framework. Again, this is just a discussion paper; it is not the final product. We will be working on getting the final product out by June 30th of this year. Thank you.
As far as I know, we’ve had no groups come forward or approach the NWT Housing Corporation; however, I could be wrong. I would have to confirm that and relay that on to the Member. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I have a return to oral question asked by Mr. Dolynny on February 8, 2012, regarding policy on carbon monoxide detectors.
The Member enquired as to government policy on the installation of carbon monoxide detectors and their usage in public housing in the NWT.
I can advise the Assembly that the 2008 National Building Code requires that all buildings heated by a fuel-fired appliance have a carbon monoxide detector hardwired into the electrical system. This is not a requirement for houses built prior to 2008.
All public housing units built subsequent to 1995 have carbon monoxide...
We don’t go out and solicit these groups and see if they need our assistance. In many cases the groups will come and initiate the conversation with the Housing Corporation. Then again we would be willing to listen. This would be one that’s driven by the particular groups in the community. If they drive it, then it has a chance for success, rather than having Housing drive it where the chance of success is a little lesser. Groups like this that drive these initiatives in the community, that’s when it starts to work.
Obviously, I’m not going to make that commitment here on the floor, but I can assure the Member that I’ll have discussions with the officials, see where Jean Marie River is at, see what challenges they’re facing and if there’s any possibility of delaying. I’ll work with the Member and the officials to ensure that Jean Marie is in a good position to succeed once everything’s signed over to them.
Obviously, we’ll do our best to make sure that we don’t leave Jean Marie River on their own as far as the maintenance goes. We’ll work with the community to try to come up with – they usually work with our departments very closely – a maintenance plan, capital plan, and so forth.
Again, we need to make sure that our communities benefit from the transfer, if it means training opportunities for their local residents. There are some cases with some of the communities that have inherited the New Deal where they’ve kind of bundled together and hired maintenance people to make a tour of their...
Thank you. The Member is absolutely correct that when devolution does happen, it is something that we will inherit and we have to make sure that we’re best positioned to deal with all of the federal squatters on Crown lands. So we need to position ourselves to deal with that.
I will again commit to the Members that I will update them on any correspondence I have with DIAND as to our concerns with what we may be inheriting. Again, rest assured to Members that we will do our best to ensure that when we do take this over from the federal government, we will be in a position to be able to do the...
Mr. Speaker, I’ll try and stay away from lame answers and give the Member the answers that he wants to hear.
As far as I know, we didn’t GPS track the worker that was supposedly glued to his desk and not on site. So I’m not aware of that. I will follow up and find out how many site visits we actually have done. According to the Member we’ve done none but again, without a GPS strapped to our employee, we’re not sure if he’s gone out or not. So I will follow up on that for the Member. Thank you.
Thank you. Obviously, these are very important questions and ones that we need to address. Part of the consultation between now and when we get the final draft framework done, we need to make sure that we have all these questions answered, the ownership issues taken care of so as we go to implement the framework there’s not a lot of confusion. So we hope to clear up a lot of confusion before we actually get into implementation. Thank you.