Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Speaker, I will communicate to the assistant fire marshal in the Inuvik region the member’s desire to have him go into his communities. I’m sure that he will be well aware, after our discussion today, that he is needed in Nunakput. But I will communicate to him the Member’s desire and we’ll make sure that he gets up and works with the communities in identifying their firefighting equipment. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the allocation of money, we give all our money to the communities now and the communities will then do their capital plan and do their priority list. We’re having more and more communities now identifying some firefighting equipment, and their fire halls, they’re identifying those as part of their capital plans. So the Member’s communities up in Nunakput, I’m sure, once they work with the assistant fire marshal and realize what their priorities are and what equipment they need, I’m sure that they’ll take it upon themselves to identify those and start putting some money towards...

Mr. Speaker, I have had some discussions with the assistant fire marshal and he’s aware of some of the community demands. He’s more than willing to meet with the communities, identifying some of their equipment, their priorities, what needs to be improved. They’re also planning on having regional workshops, where they bring the firefighters in from the communities and have a regional workshop in Inuvik. I think that’s a great idea instead of sending them a long way. I think we’d be able to accommodate more people by having it in the region. These are initiatives that he’s got on the go and I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have an assistant fire marshal in the Inuvik region that would be more than willing to go and visit the communities and work with them to do an inventory of the type of equipment they have and some of the training that they need. He’d be willing to do that and that would help the community identify some of their priorities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had a lot of things that I wanted to say on this particular motion, but listening to all the Members talk, I think most of the things that I wanted to say are pretty well covered.

I had heard some comments about survival of our people and destroying a way of life, and talk about a traditional way of life, which is all true. I talked with some of the old-timers and they say we know nothing about the traditional way of life and how they had to go and harvest and how they had to go to look after the caribou. I always remember, in 1998, I was driving the Dempster Highway...

We’re always developing plans on how we’re going to deliver houses into the community. I think part of that plan is the process that we’re going through right now with the budget process. The Housing Corporation’s infrastructure is still a part of this particular budget, so once we review that, we’ll be able to see some of the investments that we’re making into the communities and which communities they are going into. As well, we have a table of all the money that we have through federal money that is going to the communities through major MNIs and improving the public housing stock. We have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re always looking for ways to improve the delivery of houses and especially in the communities, because that is where the greatest demand is that we’ve seen from the needs survey that was just completed on some of the demands in some of the communities. We’re always working to meet the need there. We also have concerns, as the Member has pointed out, with the number of units that are built and left vacant. We’re taking steps to address that. We are working with the communities, who are coming up with some good solutions as to how best we can use those units. We’re...

Mr. Speaker, first of all, the folks of Alberta and B.C. are covered under CMHC. The number of people that they capture is in the hundreds of thousands and we are a very small jurisdiction. It would be quite an expensive process to enact legislation to bring it forward. Do we have the resources to do that right now? There is obviously a demand for the resources, so we would have to seriously consider that before we proceed to go ahead for such a small jurisdiction. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome to the gallery my new constituency assistant, Ms. Leah Ipana, Welcome.

The Housing Corporation goes a long way into assisting homeownership clients through repairs and trying to get people into homes. We have some challenges that we face. There is a gap of people that we’re looking to try and capture. I’ve given instructions to the corporation to see if we can start capturing a lot of those people who are quite capable of looking after homes, but for one reason or another are not qualifying at the moment. There are a lot of programs designed for the seniors through the preventative maintenance, where they go in every fall to do the maintenance in their units...