Wendy Bisaro

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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I agree that the Healthy Families program is a good program, but I would suggest to the Minister that the lack of focused money in the ‘13-14 budget, apart from that one program, is not going to the recommendations from this report.

Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate the information. I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. It’s an area that is fraught with possible large dollars having to be spent, so I’m really glad to hear that there is an opportunity for us to go back and talk to the feds again if we discover some sites.

I apologize if I missed it, but I do have a concern with fracturing and it’s been talked about, not necessarily today but other times. I didn’t hear the Minister talk about it in his reply so I apologize if it’s been dealt with already. From the perspective of ENR and looking after the environment, what steps is this department taking to ensure that if we do...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I was really pleased to hear that e-waste is next on the recycling list. I am glad that’s what the department is looking at next. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.

I wanted to ask a question with regard to waste sites in the NWT. I know it’s being dealt with through devolution negotiations, but I’d like to know from the Minister whether or not he feels comfortable, his department feels comfortable, that we are cataloguing all the waste sites we have in our territory in advance of devolution. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m a little concerned to hear the Minister say that Yellowknife is over-allocated. He also referenced other communities. I guess I need to know from the Minister what that term means.

We have a great need for public housing here in Yellowknife. There’s a need for public housing in every community, I think, but I think Yellowknife, as the capital, although it’s a different situation here, we do need more public housing.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he could please explain to me what the term “over-allocated” means. Thank you.