Statements in Debates
Mr. Speaker, we’ll look into it right away. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we haven’t had any concerns brought to our attention yet by the consumers, but we do have a consumer affairs person that monitors a lot of the goings-on out there. If this continues to be a practice or something that consumers need information on or just need reassurance that they are protected, then it’s something that, as a government, we have to do. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we’ll continue to work with the communities in identifying their energy needs and where they can make improvements so when the community decides what infrastructure that they’re going to build, then they’ll be able to incorporate a lot of the ideas. That’s why the Arctic Energy Alliance is playing a part in working with some of the communities in coming up with their community energy plans. So this would go a long way, and I’ve spoken to one community in particular that had some concerns about some of the energy costs and how they were doing some new work and they were going to...
MACA held five regional workshops to help community governments with their plans. They brought in SAOs, two elected officials from each community to take part in the workshops. As well, some of the communities have gone to the private sector to help with their sustainability plans. We will continue to track those communities that may be a little behind, but we still anticipate that all communities are going to be completed by the March 31st deadline.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document titled Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission 2009-2011 Corporate Plan. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We try very hard to make sure that all the people are adequately housed. There are 19 tenants across the Northwest Territories out of 2,400 public housing units that are paying maximum rent. That’s a good number. These are the folks we tried to design the Homeownership Program for so that they could graduate from public housing into home ownership. We’re making every attempt to make sure that we work with these people, because we hear the argument that sometimes the rent is too high and it’s a detriment to getting a job. We don’t want to be able to hear those arguments anymore.
Yes, Mr. Chair.
The community would just have to enact the proper bylaws and then they would have authority to set the writs.
Mr. Chairman, we are always interested in helping the communities build up the capacity. We have seen in a lot of the communities where the volunteer firemen or the rangers or just residents in general are usually the ones out in the river looking or searching. If there is an opportunity there for us to enhance their training, give them some training, that is something that we will be looking at over the next while and just working with the communities to identify ways that they can be better trained to do the search and rescue. If it includes a partner on water rescue, then it is usually...
Mr. Chair, I don’t think it’s a question of it being an onerous process. I think a good reason that the uptake is not as high as it should be is because probably the information is not out there that this is available. That’s why I’ll commit to the Members that I’ll get them some information and they can pass that on to their volunteer groups. Thank you.