Statements in Debates
Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I guess this is just a comment for Finance and Infrastructure. I believe the last time I asked about our deferred maintenance deficit, it was about $462 million of deferred maintenance to get our assets up to par. I just don't understand when we have such a massive deficit, and the Department of Infrastructure has consistently, you know, stated that they need more money for deferred maintenance and if we're going to get our assets up, we need to be maintaining them. I fully support that. I just it becomes harder to navigate the Financial Management Board and...
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Friday, June 4th, 2021, I will move the following motion: I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River North, and notwithstanding Rule 4 that when this House adjourns on Friday, June 4th, 2021, it shall be adjourned until Thursday, October 14th, 2021.
And further, at any time prior to October 14th, 2021, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that this House shall meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, or at a time later than the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I recognize that it can be frustrating for the Minister to, you know, try and answer questions about a federal program, but I think everyone has had frustrations with that CMHC funding. I guess more broadly, there were a number of organizations who applied to the rapid rehousing funding. They put together applications. They hired architects. They went quite far along in the process, and they weren't successful. And I believe a number of those were then moved into the coinvestment fund. Does the Minister have any insight as to whether there is another round of...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess my concern is that the women's society is trying their best to navigate the CMHC process, the Housing Corp process, they trying to get all of its residents on income support and working with HSS funding. But that is a lot of things to get in line in a short amount of time. It's causing a lot of anxiety and uncertainty for that organization. Is there a path forward where we can get some sort of assurance beyond this September 30th date, that they will continue to operate? For example, if the CMHC funding does not come through, can the Minister of Health and...
Thank you, Madam Chair. Glad to hear that, and I'm glad to hear we're gone through the DFO inspection process. I know that was not easy for a couple aspects of this. I guess the last public information I have kind of seen on this is in regards to the entire fishery revitalization plan which sets out some idea for the remote collection stations but based on what the Minister said, there seems to be quite a bit of progress. And I guess I'm just looking for a commitment that we get, you know, some public information about where exactly they're going and how large they are and when we can expect...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Spruce Bough, formerly the Arnica, is currently operating with getting its funding from a number of sources. They're trying to navigate, being passed around through various CMHC funding proposals as well as getting income assistance from their clients as well as COVID emergency funding that has come from Health and Social Services. So I'm just trying to piece together all of the funding sources to make sure that this building and this transitional housing can continue beyond the life of this pandemic.
So my first question for the Minister of Health and Social...
No further questions, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I am happy to see what appears to be the end of the saga of the Norman Wells health centre. We are settling for nearly for $4,750,000. I don't even know where to get with this one. Do we have some lessons learned for the Norman Wells health centre; specifically, what caused the delays? I know there was a bit of a debate about how many change orders the GNWT was responsible for but I'm just trying to figure out how we make sure we don't see settlements in our infrastructure budgets again for $5 million. So there's some lessons to be learned out of the Norman...
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I suspect I would ask the Minister to also look at the capacity. I suspect the Office of the Fire Marshal is overworked. I suspect the GNWT capital budget requires them to review far too many plans and they could probably use some more staff, which I would fully support. And along that, perhaps a staff member could create some bulletins, some guidelines on the code interpretation. Right now, there are only three advisories on how the Office of the Fire Marshal will interpret the code. The last one was in 2016, Mr. Speaker. Despite the fact that the Office of the...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Presently the Office of the Fire Marshal's industry guidelines set out that the Office of the Fire Marshal can't act in the capacity of an engineering or architectural consultant or else the plan review function would be in a conflict. This is a fair rule, but it seems the Office of the Fire Marshal has taken a very strict interpretation of this whereby they won't give anyone any advice on the interpretation they'll take of the building code. The default response seems to be, go hire a code consultant, which is often thousands of dollars, to a southern consulting firm...