Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have many comments. It’s hard for me to put them into sort of a cohesive commentary, but I’ll do the best I can. There have been a lot of comments in the last couple of days. We heard from the Premier yesterday in his sessional statement, we heard from the Finance Minister earlier today in his statement, we’ve got the opening remarks from the Finance Minister, we’ve got comments that have been made by members of Cabinet over the last month to two months to three months about expenditures that we will have to endure, I guess, for lack of a better word. I am seriously...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister again. It kind of leads into my last question. Another recommendation from the report was that there needs to be an investment within infrastructure within the communities related to food security and provision of foods, specifically construction of community-identified resources as community centres and/or community freezers. So I’d like to say to the Minister, I’m really glad that we have this $500,000 that is being used.

Is it intended that this $500,000 will be an annual amount, and will it be eligible to be spent on things such as community...

Thanks to Minister Abernethy for that response. I think I and many others are looking forward to seeing the action plan finally come to the public.

I mentioned in my statement about a report from 2013, and there’s a number of recommendations in that report. One of them is that there is a need for a federal northern food security innovation fund, and the intent of that fund is to help jumpstart and sustain community-based, community-led food initiatives across the North. This is something which, I think, definitely needs to be addressed.

I’d like to know whether or not the Minister, when he...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, October 17th, marks International Day to Eradicate Poverty. Across Canada, food banks and anti-poverty advocates are joining together to call for a federal anti-poverty plan. The ask: that the federal government enact systemic change to eradicate poverty and hunger for the thousands of people, some 830,000 in Canada, who use food banks each month and for the millions of others struggling to get by. If food banks, soup kitchens and other front-line agencies across the country were to shut down tomorrow, poverty and hunger would become far more visible.

Food banks...

Thanks to the Premier for that information. Five hundred hits could simply indicate that somebody’s wondering what’s behind that. I’m a little dismayed that there hasn’t been much response, but then responding to complex legislation on a website is not something that’s easily done.

At one point, several times, I think, in our discussions there was a commitment from the government and from the Premier that Regular Members would be involved in consultations with residents around this devolution legislation. I’d like to ask the Premier, what are the future plans for consultation with residents on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too would like to welcome the executive of the Union of Northern Workers who are here for their convention, and I wish them well in their convention in the next couple of days.

I specifically want to recognize two constituents of Frame Lake, Mr. Ivan Landry, who is the regional vice-president Kimberlite; and Ms. Miriam Gordon, who is equity vice-president for the UNW. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wish to report progress.

---Carried

Thanks to the Premier for that informative information, but I have to say, it’s pretty hard to comment on complex legislation in two and a half minutes. Goodness knows, the Premier mentioned 27 pieces of legislation, and I am aware that we’re dealing with 10.

To the Premier, I’d like to know, it sounds as though the only plans that were there was that we were going to take comments from the public. It was then going to come back to Regular Members.

I need to specifically ask the Premier, as he, I thought, committed to Regular Members to do this consultation in concert with us, are there plans...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I would like to ask the Premier a few questions following up on the acceptance of all the devolution legislation that we passed, I guess that we had to accept in the spring. I’d like to, first of all, ask the Premier, in the previous session, and certainly when we were discussing devolution, there was commitment from the Premier that there would be consultation on the devolution legislation that we inherited from the federal government and the three bills that we put forward on our own.

I’d like to ask the Minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleague Mr. Bouchard, today is an opportunity for me to say thank you to all the firefighters who kept us safe this summer, those who kept us safe during one of the worst fire seasons in over 30 years. I join many, many other NWT residents in thanking firefighters, firefighters from the NWT, from across Canada, and from our northern neighbours, Yukon and Alaska, who battled the hundreds of fires that burned in our territory this past summer, especially in the North and South Slave.

Firefighters are on call for us 24/7, ready and willing to do dangerous work if...