Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the Minister making it quite clear there is no, sort of, immediate safety concern for the kids, and I wasn’t trying to portray it in that light, but the fact is, these are the types of upgrades that the school system feels is a priority. Mr. Speaker, the GNWT has a deferred maintenance policy program and I’d like to know where these two schools sit in the territorial Deferred Maintenance Program, how much is booked against them for the two schools and where does that put the balance of the deferred maintenance of these types of projects against our budget on that regard. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, part of the plan is to have a review of the Yellowknife schools and bring forward the review at the conclusion in the spring, then identify those two schools if there’s a priority to renovate those schools. One of them has been renovated already. Mr. Speaker, those are the types of important discussions we need to have for this fall capital planning. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I spoke of the need for environment officers in Tu Nedhe. I’d like to ask the Minister of ENR questions. Could the Minister tell me if there are any regulatory impediments to hiring environment officers in non-settled areas? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe there are any regulatory impediments. The big impediment would be just access to sufficient resources. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, could the Minister advise me if the GNWT takes any environmental responsibility on land and water? Thank you.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, we’ve exerted our political and moral authority for sure on the water. We’ve spent a significant amount of money with the Water Strategy. We are looking at a land use framework. We are very concerned with environmental protection on an ongoing basis as it comes to contaminated sites and in those types of areas. So we have a very clear and vested interest in those areas. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, would the Minister agree to discuss immediate environmental needs for the Tu Nedhe insofar as resource development and exploration goes? Thank you.
We’d be pleased to sit down with the Member and any of the leaders from his constituency, from the communities, to talk about some of the pressing issues that may be out there. We recognize there are resource development initiatives throughout the area and we’d be happy to come to a table to have that discussion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, assuming that the communities are still looking to have some environment officers in their communities, would the Minister agree to place these important positions in the next business plan process? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we’d be happy to have the initial discussions and we’d be more than willing to look to map out exactly the role of these positions and what they would do and the impact and the possible need in other parts of the Territory with an eye towards seeing what could be possible by the next business planning process. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources as the lead Minister on the Joint Review Panel review of the MGP and it follows up on some of my questions I asked a couple or three weeks ago. The process established by the National Energy Board for public comment is peculiar, not only in that the final public hearings will apparently be held before the federal and territorial governments have responded to the report. The process also contains no mandatory requirement to make public the positions that the two governments take to the JRP around the end of May, I believe, or early June, sometime in June. As lead Minister for the JRP, can the Minister commit to make this government’s response to that report public at the time it is provided in May or June by posting the GNWT’s correspondence to the NEB website so the public can be aware and respond with any concerns? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was a fairly lengthy commitment that the Member requested, so I’ll take that question as notice. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation in regard to the recent report on the housing survey. I want to ask the Minister, in terms of his research that’s starting with the report with discussions with the staff, I want to ask the Minister, has the Corporation found out any reasons why the increase in terms of the survey in terms of the adequacy, the suitability or the affordability in terms of these numbers. It’s very disturbing in terms of the numbers that are increasing. They should actually be decreasing. Has the Minister had any type of an indication as to why the increase?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is right; there are some factors that are taken into account when determining the needs survey. You can put houses on the ground but there is still some existing stock that needs to be taken care of: the suitability factor, there’s the adequacy factor and affordability. These are all taken into consideration. With the investments, as I stated earlier, that are being made now, we’re quite confident that all these numbers will go down when we do the next survey. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, with the existing stock on the ground and because of the existing stock on the ground, it means that we have some real major problems in terms of major repairs. In the report it says out of 33 communities, 25 communities need major repairs. The Housing Minister has indicated that now with the investment now coming into the Housing Corporation, hopefully in five years, that we’ll see a decrease in these numbers here. However, Mr. Speaker, in the last three or four years we did receive some major dollars in terms of federal government and now we’re going to be running out of the money. So I want to ask the Minister how we are going to see a decrease in these numbers with the funding cutbacks from the federal government.
Mr. Speaker, because the investments made by the federal government and matched by the GNWT over the last couple of years we’re expecting that these numbers should go down. The Member is correct; we have approximately $19 million going towards major M and I’s this year. Then there’s the home repair program where a lot of money will be going to. We’re not adding so much new public housing into the stock. A lot of what we’re doing now is replacement of older public housing units. So all these are taken into consideration, but we’re quite confident that when the last of this major investment lapses in two years then we will see a decline in the numbers in the needs survey. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, in one of my communities there are lots of vacant homes. Some people want to see if they can get into these vacant homes. However, because they were built in the ‘70s or late ‘70s, it makes it quite hard for them to get them to upgrade the units in there. Is there something that we can do in terms of having people come into these old units through the government programs they have now to see if they could make it suitable, make it adequate for them and affordable for them to be a proud homeowner?
Mr. Speaker, we have identified vacant units or older units in some of the communities that we would like to remove from our stock. However, we have to be careful that we don’t just hand them over, because then there will be a requirement or they will come back asking for money to repair these units. So we have to make sure that it is something that is feasible for the corporation and something that the potential homeowners realize that they can take on. We are making quite an investment in the homeownership part of the delivery. So there is $14 million, I think, this year alone into the Homeownership Program. Next year we have additional money going towards homeownership. We are taking steps to address this. We have been having discussions. There have been a couple of communities that are quite interested in taking over some of our older units and then they would do the work and then they would then use them as housing for staff or professionals that are coming in. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Could I ask the Minister if he could also look at the communities in the Sahtu? Because the Sahtu has the highest adequacy percentage in the Northwest Territories with 41 percent. Could he look at it in terms of bringing down this number in terms of the adequacy means no bathroom, running water, no hot water, plumbing and electrical issues? Could he look at that in terms of bringing those numbers down in terms of a commitment that he made earlier to the MLA for Nahendeh?
Mr. Speaker, I will make a commitment to all 11 Members that we will be doing what we can to bring the housing needs down. There is an adequacy issue, obviously. A lot of this is homeowners that have received home packages from the Housing Corporation that are looking to make some repairs to them. We are doing what we can to assist them, Mr. Speaker. I have made a commitment that once we are through this two-year cycle of the major investment that we have had, I am very confident that we will see a decline in the needs numbers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to address my questions to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I was struck by a comment that the Minister made last week from Thursday, actually, when he was responding to a question from Mr. Beaulieu. I quote from unedited Hansard, a portion where Minister Lafferty stated, “Mr. Speaker, just for the Member’s awareness that we are looking at moving early childhood education into schools since enrolment is down in the Northwest Territories.”
I would like to ask the Minister if he could expand on that statement a little bit. It is not an idea which I had any awareness of. I wonder if this is something that he could elaborate on for my benefit. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. We are exploring all options as we can to deal with enrolment challenges that are at our doorstep when it comes to all schools. As you know, throughout the Northwest Territories, enrolment is down. This is just a preliminary discussion that we are having on possibly having the early childhood as part of the school programming to increase the enrolment issues at the schools.
Mr. Speaker, I can certainly provide detailed information once it is available to us. All I can say now is, I guess, a preliminary discussion that we are initiating and discussing. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that it is preliminary and that it is probably in discussion stages, but if I can get a little bit more information. Early childhood can span a fairly large number of years. Is the Minister talking about early childhood such as pre-kindergarten or are we talking about early childhood such as from zero to five years of age? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, those are discussions that we need to have with experts at the school board level and also with our department. Those are the types of options that we may have to deal with whether it be zero to five or pre-kindergarten. Mr. Speaker, again, this is all too preliminary. We just threw out an idea so people can grasp of sharing some ideas or suggestions on how we can improve enrolment issues throughout the Northwest Territories. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the Minister talk about getting some information and some involvement from school boards and so on. I think they would be extremely interested in providing some input to the department on this particular issue. I think also that exploring this issue is going to have an impact on businesses who operate daycare centres. I wonder if the Minister can talk about if there is any consideration at this point on how businesses which operate as daycare centres or early child care centres, how they are going to be considered if they are brought in under the GNWT. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we currently provide funding to these facilities and establishments. That would be the daycare, the home care and so forth, other areas that we sponsor through our early childhood programming. Mr. Speaker, those will definitely be taken into consideration. We definitely don’t want to have an impact whether they be in businesses. We want to come up with a solution to deal with enrolment issues. Mr. Speaker, yes, those types of discussions need to happen now so we can resolve this issue and come up with a solution. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am frowning because I don’t really understand how bringing early childhood children into the schools is going to deal with the enrolment issue, but that is another issue. I just would like to have the Minister confirm for me, he mentioned that he wants to hear from various school board authorities and I presume also operators of daycares and child cares. Does that mean that he is open at this point to comments from these particular groups, agencies and individuals? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, yes, we are always open to ideas and suggestions from various groups from the community members on how to improve our educational system, whether it be enrolment issues, the space issues. We are challenged for the space issue in Yellowknife, for example. Mr. Speaker, that is why part of the educational overall plan is to highlight the key areas. Mr. Speaker, yes, we are open to any ideas or suggestions from the general public-at-large. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few more questions for the Minister of Transportation pertaining to the Deh Cho Bridge. I listened to the Minister when I was talking about the design earlier. The government has always said that the design was essentially completed. It has been essentially complete for six years now. According to the Minister, most of the components of the redesign and the design work are concluded but not all of the components are concluded. I am wondering if the Minister could elaborate a little bit more. Are we setting ourselves up for more cost overruns on this project because we do not have all the components on that design work concluded? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is a question I asked our own staff and our project management team. We believe all the components are concluded sufficiently that we can make the next steps in terms of entering into a contract and start the construction process. Thank you.
The next question I have for the Minister, and we’ve talked about March 1st being an important date, I want to get back to some of the earlier questions I had on why the superstructure didn’t go to tender. People I’ve talked to in the industry and other companies that are out there in western Canada that could have bid on this work tell me that they could have had numbers into this government inside of 30 days.
I’d like to ask the Minister again, how come the project, the superstructure, the second half of this project did not go to a tender?
