Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Where is it within MACA? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. That’s unfortunate because on February 6th the Minister said to Mr. Dolynny that the final report is expected this winter. Now I just heard the Minister say that we’re not going to get it within this Assembly, so that’s disturbing. It’s more than two years that we’ve been waiting for this pharmaceutical strategy. I can appreciate the difficulties with getting expertise to deal with it, but that seems like a very long time.

The Program Review Office has been involved somehow in developing this strategy and assisting the department. I’d like to know from the Minister what...

Thanks to the Minister. I will provide that info. I am struggling to understand why MACA would have responsibility for municipal lands. I thought all Commissioner’s lands had been turned over to the Lands department. Does this mean that our communities are applying for lands in two places? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering why the decrease in the contribution to A Brilliant North. This is increasing the capacity in our community staffings and it’s gone down $100,000, which is not a heck of a lot of money, but I’m sure, over a number of communities, would have a very large impact. We went up quite a bit in ’14-15 but now we’ve gone down $100,000. Can I get a reason? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister: I guess I have to say that I’m asking specifically about Yellowknife. This is my constituency; it’s my community. So, I’ve been blacklisted by the Housing Corp. I’ve been blacklisted by Northern Properties. There’s absolutely no place that I can get into except to go to a motel.

Why is it that it’s okay for income support clients to get assistance from the YWCA, which is transition housing, but it’s not okay for me to get assistance when I go to a motel because that’s the absolute only place where I can live? Thank you.

So where would that responsibility lie? Which department? Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. That was my recollection that it was for training and for equipment. Has the department encountered situations where a community does not go onto the highway to provide ground ambulance and/or rescue services because they’ve determined that it’s costing them money, it’s outside their municipal boundaries, there’s no reimbursement from the territorial government for the expense that they are incurring? Is this something that the department has seen and/or heard about? Because I can foresee that the time is going to come when a municipality is going to say we can’t afford...

Thanks to the Minister. I didn’t hear a definition in there so I guess I have to assume that the department does not have a definition of transition housing.

I’d like to know from the Minister, if they don’t have a definition of transition housing, is there a written policy that they use when they are determining whether or not somebody is in transition housing or not? Certainly, there are people who, in the city of Yellowknife, for instance, because of the almost monopoly that Northern Properties has on housing, if they’ve been banned from Northern Properties, if they have a family they can’t...

I guess that tells me that you haven’t heard from the local Aboriginal government, but the intention, and I guess the policy is that this land withdrawal will stay in place until there’s a land claim agreement. Is that correct?