Madam Speaker, the Not Us! campaign has been very successful. The department is undergoing an evaluation of the program. We’ve got money out to a variety of communities all across the Northwest Territories.
Getting back to the bootlegging question, a lot of times communities want to focus on the drugs with the Not Us! campaign. But certainly, if the community wants to work with us, we can tailor a Not Us! program to bootlegging, as well, and incorporate that into the Not Us! program. We’re interested in hearing from communities if that’s what they want to see in a program.
In our estimation – and again, we’re doing an evaluation – we believe the program has been hugely successful in a community like Hay River and in other communities around the Northwest Territories, and we look to be doing more of that type of work at the grassroots levels, to try to root out bootlegging and drug dealing in our territory. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to use today’s opportunity to ask certain questions regarding the consumer affairs division. Sorry, I’m going to change topic for Cabinet and I’m sure they’re disappointed.
On March 6, 2013, the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs committed to me in the House several items, but perhaps the issue really boils down to simply this: I was concerned, and many people in the public are concerned, that the consumer affairs division is anonymous, just like those 571 jobs as a matter of fact. Incidentally, I should say. But that said, I asked the Minister what he would do to promote to profile this office and certainly to access that, and as such, he provided several commitments to the House which are basically to say that they’ll make sure information gets out there, they’ll publicize it, they’ll do outreach and it goes on and on and on.
I guess my question to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs is: They’ve had almost a year – because that’s from Hansard of March 6, 2013 – what have they done to promote this idea when consumers are tired and exhausted, whether it’s gas prices, cell phone prices, other areas of complaint that they legitimately need to bring to an office to complain about to research and get something done for consumer protection? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Our consumer affairs office is actually all of two people. As far as communicating to the public, if there’s a slippage there, that’s on my part. I’ll wear that. But I will see what kind of information we have out there and relay it on to the Member. Thank you.
Madam Speaker, a commitment was made in the House about developing a communications plan to get out there, we want to promote phone numbers and access points. In my view, the consumer affairs division may not need a singular street window type of office where people can walk up to, but the fact is, it needs to be publicized in a way that people know where to bring their concerns.
Does the Minister see this as important, or should it be nestled away in some area of government that it’s kept anonymous, as it seems to be? Thank you.
Madam Speaker, our consumer affairs office is not nestled away. If there’s a slippage in promoting it – and I did make the commitment and I will follow up with the department as soon as we’re done here – but it’s not nestled away. We don’t receive many complaints at the moment, but again, that’s still no excuse for not communicating as well as we should that the office exists and what the numbers are. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker, perhaps they don’t get any complaints because no one knows they exist. That could be part of the issue.
I guess my question would be: When would the Minister be able to address this problem? He says he’s going to go back to the department. I heard that; that wasn’t lost upon me. But he did say almost a year ago that they would get on this, so I would like to know if he could have an action plan sent to my office before the end of next week as to how they will address these issues.
The action plan doesn’t mean they’ve done it. What the action plan clearly states is these are the issues we see as a problem the Member has been raising and we’re going to tackle them in this type of approach, and that could at least get me through to at least next week and we can leave it at that. Thank you.
As I stated before, I will follow up with the department and I will ask for an action plan and have to it to the Member by the end of March.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Perhaps my calendar is different than the Minister’s, although he’s laughing and I think he did it as a joke and I’ll accept it in the way it was delivered with some humour. But let’s just be clear. Let’s work off the February 21st date, if that’s agreeable.
Again, I’m looking for an action plan on direction. I’m not looking for a 20-page report, I’m just looking for a couple pages that say this is how we’re strategizing and we will work toward achievables. Thank you.
I’m glad the Member took it for the way it was intended, and we were all laughing with him. I’ll have some information for the Member by the end of next week. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Before Christmas I asked the Minister of Environment a written question on the cost-effectiveness of the various initiatives his department is funding as part of the Greenhouse Gas Strategy. At the time, I got the impression that the Minister was surprised by the question, which was not my intent. So I wanted to check, was the Minister surprised to be asked about the cost-effectiveness of his department’s greenhouse gas reduction initiatives? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll let Minister Miltenberger answer the question. Technically speaking, you’re asking the Minister not about the content of what’s in the purview of his department but you’re asking about his feeling about something, his opinion. It’s a little bit close to the edge, but I’ll let Minister Miltenberger go ahead. Please, Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. After the number of years we’ve been in the House together, nothing the Member asks surprises me any further. Thank you.
---Laughter
Thanks for the Minister’s response. I appreciate that and I also appreciate being close to the edge. That means I’m doing my job.
Madam Speaker, the Minister may or may not have been surprised, but I’m fairly sure I have not seen an analysis like this before. While the response left out an analysis of the rebate program that was requested, some programs are clearly more cost-effective than others.
Why, after running greenhouse gas reduction programs for over a decade, has the Minister never presented us with an evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of these various greenhouse gas reduction programs? Mahsi.
Madam Speaker, there is work underway to in fact produce such a document. Thank you.
I don’t know whether it’s in your purview to direct a Minister to answer a question, but that certainly did not answer the question.
The Diavik Diamond Mine has done some great work in reducing their emissions by installing wind turbines up at their mine site and they deserve full credit for this. Yet, in his response, the Minister claims the emission reductions from the Diavik wind program go to GNWT.
Did the Minister get permission from Diavik to claim credits – and these are very valuable credits – for their actions? Mahsi.
Madam Speaker, we are collating all the greenhouse gas savings that we can across the territory. Absolutely, Diavik deserves full credit. If the Member says they are valuable credits, if it’s political credit, absolutely. If they’re using them for some type of carbon trading credit, that’s totally their purview, but when we look at the success in the Northwest Territories, we can’t just look at government. We have a very significant private sector and industry, the diamond mines, and Diavik has, in fact, invested money. It’s saving millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases and it’s something that as a territory we constantly point to with great pride. Not only the GNWT but private industry, as well, stepped up to the plate.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thanks to the Minister. If I had wanted the private emissions reductions cost efficiency, which I suspect would be a lot higher than GNWT, then I would have asked of that, but in fact, I asked for the government data.
I want to be sure that I do not surprise any other Ministers when I ask about the cost-effectiveness of their greenhouse gas reducing initiatives. We need to be sure that we are getting the best bang for the rare dollar that is allocated to this programming.
Will the Minister commit to working with his colleagues in ITI, Public Works and Services, NTPC and the Housing Corporation to ensure that the cost-effectiveness of greenhouse gas emissions initiatives is included in future programs, evaluations and updates? Just a note, I do appreciate that there will be a report coming forward and I’ll very much look forward to that.
We will incorporate the issue of cost-effectiveness of greenhouse gases as we look at doing things like LNG, like hydro, like biomass, solar, wind. We will look at those and make sure we include that in our calculations.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Health and Social Services. It’s my understanding that the new wellness centre in Norman Wells is going to be started soon, having a territorial long-term care facility there, and the construction is supposed to start sometime this summer and completed by 2016. More importantly, the facility will be staffed with trained health care professionals, and I’m hoping that the Minister can enlighten the House and constituents in the Sahtu on what type of plans are there and put in place to start training these workers and what type of opportunities would the schools, colleges and other institutions have to bring up their grade marks or their required courses to take part in some form of training that’s going to be needed in the health centre and the long-term care facility.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. The health centre and long-term care facility in Norman Wells are scheduled to begin operations in 2016. We know that there are a significant number of positions that will come along with that facility, and the types of positions include registered nurses, licenced practical nurses, resident care aides, activity coordinators, physiotherapists, dietitians, cooks, cooks helpers, housecleaning, laundry, as well as some admin support, so there are a variety of types of jobs that may be there.
With respect to one of the areas, we know that we need to train some local people on the personal support workers, which basically prepares individuals to be resident care aides or home support workers. We are working closely with authority staff to plan training for the new long-term care facility as well as the health centre ensuring that personal support workers can receive the training appropriate for the work that we need them to do when these new facilities open. The authority has met with a number of representatives from Aurora College in Norman Wells and they have all agreed that for this year what we need to focus on is preparing potential candidates to meet the qualifications for accessing the personal support worker. That work is going on now, and that includes working with Aurora College, community learning centres and the Sahtu Secretariat to encourage potential candidates for the Personal Support Worker program to enrol, and adult education courses so that they’re ready to take the Personal Support Worker program when it is delivered.
The Minister outlined various numbers of positions and requirements to get into these types of health careers.
I want to ask the Minister, is he working closely with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and any other institutions to get the awareness, the presentations in the high schools? Because the construction will be completed in 2016, preparing our young people, like I said, the potential number of candidates that are going to graduate this year. There are a number of students who are now in post-secondary institutions. This is a facility that’s going to be completed in two years.
Is the Minister working to see if we have almost like a career fair in our schools that the students can now start preparing to take the required courses to get into the program?
The majority of the work, as I indicated previously, has been between the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and the Aurora College, and they have been working with individuals in the community to encourage students to develop the qualifications they need to enrol in the Personal Support Worker program. But I hear the Member, and I hear the Member indicating that we need to do a little bit more, because it’s not just personal support worker positions in the community. There will be nursing positions as well as other positions.
What I will commit to now is having somebody from the department talk to Education, Culture and Employment and see what we can do in the school to help the young people recognize the types of jobs that will be coming and how these jobs can offer long-term, meaningful employment in their communities. Some of them are statutory so they obviously require some secondary education, so I will certainly have the department talk with Education, Culture and Employment and work with the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and Aurora College.
Given the level of, say, for example, personal support care workers, is there a location that this training possibly could take place given the location in Norman Wells is… I know there’s some complexity about bringing that training to the region. Are there locations that we are looking at so that students then can be prepared potentially, you know, that if they want this type of training these are the locations we’re looking at right now? Nothing yet has been determined.
I don’t believe any agreements have been made necessarily at this point between Aurora College and the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority where our personal support worker training is going to occur. I do know over the many years that the Personal Support Worker program has been delivered in a number of different communities. I believe at one point it was delivered in Fort Res in cooperation with Yellowknife. I know last year there was a large graduating class out of Yellowknife. I will certainly have those conversations to see if there are any opportunities to deliver it in the region where the work is going to occur.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you. I would also ask the Minister if he would possibly look at the possibility of bringing some of the training to the Sahtu region. I don’t know if that’s to be split. I don’t know if it’s cost-effective, but also we would like see some of the training being done in the Sahtu region on some of these positions that are going to be created with the long-term care facility.
I think that’s what I just said. I think I just said that I would talk to the college to see if there are any opportunities to bring programs like the Personal Support Worker to the region where the work is going to occur. I will need to have those conversations with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and the Department of Health.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Further to my statement earlier today, I’d like to ask the honourable Premier a few questions.
First, what is our government doing to protect the waters of the Peel River in case of development in the Yukon?
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Premier McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. This government was very futuristic when we negotiated a transboundary water agreement with Yukon approximately 15 years ago. We have been making overtures to the Yukon government to modernize it and we are continuing to do so because we recognize the Peel River Watershed is a very important body of water not only for the Yukon but also for the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I would also like to ask our Premier, what input did our government provide to the Yukon Peel Land Use Planning Commission in order to protect the Peel waters in the NWT and Yukon? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
The consultation process for the Peel River Watershed occurred in the previous… It’s taken the Yukon government seven years to come to this conclusion and the consultation period was the first part of the seven years. The previous Premier had written to the Government of the Yukon indicating that they supported 80 percent protection that the Gwich’in had requested through the consultation process. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I realize the Yukon is a party system, but I’d like to ask the Premier, what options does our government have to persuade the Yukon to protect more of the Peel Watershed upstream from our border? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
The portion of the Peel that’s in the Northwest Territories is approximately 11 percent.
In September of 2010, at the request of the Gwich’in Tribal Council leadership, I wrote to the Premier of the Yukon indicating that we supported the call of the Gwich’in. I believe there are a number of options. Obviously we want to re-negotiate the Peel River Watershed and the Yukon/Northwest Territories Transboundary Water Agreement to modernize that agreement. There is a court case that has been filed and, as a government, we will be looking at that to see what kind of a role we should play in that court case. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Is the Premier willing to work with the Gwich’in Tribal Council to set up monitoring systems along the Peel River for future data? Thank you, Madam Speaker.
When we review the court case, we will look at our options and decide if we will take any action, if any. Obviously with devolution, we are looking at where the best locations for monitoring sites would be and I would expect we would look very closely at putting in monitoring sites in that area. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
