Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I must revisit a service need that this government has been ignoring for too long. The NWT needs 911 phone service.

In a 2009 City of Yellowknife feasibility study, a study in which the GNWT was a full participating member, the recommendation was that 911 service should be established in seven of our 33 communities to start and that it be expanded to the other 26 communities as soon as possible. Now, more than three years later, there’s been no action on this issue and it is crucial that this government recognize and accept our duty to assist the City of Yellowknife in...

Mr. Chair, just one last question here. The Minister talked about moving on to e-waste I think in this next fiscal year. Of this $1.3 million that we have to play with, so to speak, is it currently specifically intended for e-waste or have we not yet decided what we’re going to do with this $1.3 million? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just have one question here with regard to the surplus under the Environment Fund. It’s down quite a bit from the revised estimates figure for 2012-13, but it’s equal to pretty much the mains from ‘12-13, but it’s down quite a bit from the actuals in ‘11-12. I wondered if I can get an explanation on that as to the why. My other question has to do with what do we do with this money? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that comprehensive answer. I didn’t really hear whether or not the number of our protected areas sites has gone up or down over the last little while. I gather that if there’s a review happening, we’re not adding any more protected areas sites. Is that correct?

Thanks to the Minister for that response and for correcting me. Thank you. I recognize they are guidelines, but they seem to be… The impression I get is, yes, they are guidelines, but you’d better adhere to them. I’m glad to hear that this is a concern across the country. I think particularly for some of our smaller communities and some of our more northern communities, it’s going to be a lot harder for them to adhere to these guidelines.

Does the government have any policy in terms of assisting communities to improve their systems or wastewater systems to match the guidelines the government is...

I thank the Minister for the explanation, and I guess I would encourage Members who feel they have a community that wants a child and family service committee to get in touch with their community leadership and have them, with the Member perhaps, get in touch with the Minister, because I know there are at least one or two communities where I have heard that Members want to get a child and family service committee started.

A lot of the recommendations that are in the report require money, and that was accepted in the 16th Assembly by the committee, that there was a need to put money into budgets...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I want to ask the Minister a few questions in and around the Child and Family Services Act review that was done by the Standing Committee on Social Programs in the 16th Assembly. It was a great deal of work. The Minister is well aware because he was chair of the committee at the time that we did that work.

This is the report that was tabled in the House. It has many recommendations, 73 to be exact. It was tabled on October of 2010. I have to say that I feel, at this point, that we haven’t...

I appreciate the work that you’re doing and I think it’s really valuable work. I’m sure the communities appreciate it as well.

If there is a community that feels that they need to get some assistance from ENR, if they feel that they aren’t quite sure what they need to do, or they have a particular plan that they want to put in place, is it conceivable that they can go to ENR and ask for that assistance and presumably get it in fairly short order? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that information. That’s good to hear.

My other question has to do with communities and what I think the department calls wild land fire risks. My recollection is that there were assessments of wild land fire risks around communities that were being done. I guess I would like to know two things. Have all the communities been assessed in terms of wildlife fire risk? I’ll start with that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple of questions here with regard to two things. Two questions, two things. The first one has to do with forest resource inventories and with the development of a potential wood pellet business in the South Slave. I know the department has done some work, I believe, on forest resources and doing inventories of our forest resources. I gather that it was done in the South Slave. But I believe there was also plans for the department to try and do forest resource inventories throughout the NWT.

Could I get an update on what percentage of the territory we’ve...