Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the Minister. So, do communities apply or is this a fixed percentage of forced growth that goes to every community across the board? Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Family violence in the NWT is recognized as a problem, but do we really do enough to address it? Violence against women in the NWT is nine times greater than the national average. Several years ago the local YWCA developed and ran a project to look at ways to develop approaches and programs for addressing violence against women. It was a three-year project “to develop and pilot safety options for women fleeing violence in NWT communities without a local RCMP detachment.” That project proved very successful and it provided great insight into the environment in the NWT...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member has no comment. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. That is what I was going to suggest, is that I don’t think there’s much point in leaving this money here and having it lapse every year. So I have a suggestion for the Minister and I think it probably would apply under public safety, but I think that this $168,000, or maybe at least part of it, should be available to communities to assist them in buying defibrillators for their public buildings. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks to Mr. Schauerte for that. I’m very glad that this is finally maybe coming to some kind of fruition. It’s an issue that the Information and Privacy Commissioner has raised for, I think, at least eight years. So it’s about time that the government actually took some action. So, no more questions. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thanks to the DM. I guess just in terms of the philosophy, I’m having great difficulty understanding if this is something that can be applied by each individual community, should they want to do it, why does the disagreement of a hotel operator in a community outside of Yellowknife, impact on the possibility of Yellowknife applying that levy? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, thanks to the deputy minister. I kind of went, hmm, I guess we will have to just wait see how it works. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here and it has to do with the work that is being done to investigate whether or not communities can, or will be able to, assess a hotel levy. I’m asking particularly for the municipality of Yellowknife. I know there was some work being done. It’s been a very long time that this work was being done. Can I get an update on where things are at? Thank you.

Thanks to the deputy minister. My last comment in this area is that I hope, as the water and sewer funding formula is being revisited, that Yellowknife will get a little more than what it has gotten the last number of years, which has been zero.

My last question is on page 6-41, Children and Youth Resiliency Program. This is new money. I can see that and I appreciate that, but I wondered if I could get a bit of an idea or a few examples as to what sorts of programs this is intended for.