Mr. Chairman, we have budgeted $300,000 for fire emergency training and that is what we intend to use the money for, because we realize the importance of getting out there. We probably have quite a few places that we would have to work with. As I was saying in response to an earlier question, some communities have identified firefighting equipment in their capital plans. We would continue to work with the community, do an assessment with them and have the communities take up the responsibility of bringing in the needed fire equipment with their infrastructure dollars. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, this is in regards to that. It is pretty tough to fight a fire when you don’t have the proper gear in the communities that are one of the smaller communities. In Sachs Harbour, all their bunker gear was soaked in sewage. They tried to wash it out. They can’t get the stink out. I think if the fire marshal’s office would go into the community, the fire truck is still, I think, in the cold storage. Just people’s safety, like Mr. Krutko said. There are fires in the communities that we have trouble fighting fires. You are on the defence if you can’t go in the offensive stages of a fire. I think we could look at reallocating some of that funding, just a little bit of it, just to make sure that bunker gear and Scott Air Packs are available to the communities. Thank you. More of a comment.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. No question, but I will go to the Minister for a response anyway.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We respect the work that the volunteer firefighters have to do, it is why we have asked for $300,000, to make sure that they are properly trained and we also respect the fact that the communities realize the importance of providing the gear, which should be a well-trained volunteer fire department. Some communities have identified it. Our plan is to use all the $300,000 towards training and make sure all the volunteer firefighters are trained up properly. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. We’re on page 6-17, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know this question was raised earlier on this page, but in regard to emergency management and response for territorial and community emergency management and planning, including search and rescue, again, I think a lot of communities who have had situations using Aklavik, for instance, with their floods and whatnot, every time there’s a flood they pull together and they respond to emergency measures. There’s recommendations made so that you can learn from those experiences, but more importantly, that you find ways to not only prepare for those types of situations but that you enact an emergency plan when you have an emergency. Again, that takes resources, that takes money, and I think that we have to do a better job of not only ensuring that those plans are drafted in such a way but also having the capacity to implement those plans and ensuring that they have the resources and the ability to carry out those emergency plans and implement them.
I’d like to know exactly what are we doing to ensure that the emergency management plans are not only prepared, but do we have the capacity to implement those plans when we have a fire or have a major flood in a community so that we’re not in a situation that we’re being reactive, but ensuring that we’re proactive and we’re able to respond to these things and prepare for them ahead of time knowing that we will follow the plans when they’re here. I know in the case of Aklavik, we’ve gone through few floods over the years, but we have learned from a lot of that. Again, there have been a lot of recommendations that have come out of that after the fact in regards to implementing measures so that there’s a way that we can prevent.
One of the things that they’re doing in the community of Aklavik is in regard to drainage systems, looking at the right drainage and more importantly protecting government assets at airports and community facilities. That takes money and that takes planning. You’ve got to build that into your community plans.
So what are we doing to ensure that we’ve not only developed these plans, but implement them at the same time?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chair, part of the $300,000 would be to work with the communities, as we were saying before, in their training. The Member used Aklavik as an example and it’s actually a very good example, because having been in Aklavik for a few of the floods that happened there, I got to see firsthand the local emergency planning group in action. They get together, they have a plan and when emergencies such as this happen, they put the plan into action. They do it with whatever folks they have in the community, they do it with their own resources and a lot of it volunteer. It’s a working committee that has housing a part of it, the hamlet is a part of it, the band could be part of it. So we see firsthand the response to some of the communities and we see our role in it with the $300,000 is to help with the training for fire and emergency.
I kept referring to fire before, but it’s fire and emergency training and we’d be able to do some training with them, but knowing a lot of the communities across the Northwest Territories and their ability to respond to crisis and a lot of them have their own little emergency preparedness committees and they’re very well aware of the situations that they face in their particular community and we see our role in supporting them in some of the mitigating measure they have to take. I think we’ve seen that with the drainage system, as the Member pointed out, and after the last flood there was the whole redoing of all the roads, which should help and I think the drainage will help a lot. We will never be able to predict the floods, especially in a community like Aklavik where it’s very unpredictable. It doesn’t matter with all the measures you take to try to prevent it, the fact is, Aklavik floods regularly, almost 10 years to the day and it’s an historical fact.
So I think we see our role as supporting the community and the community takes the initiative and they do a very good job at it. Thank you.
One of the things we’re seeing more and more with fire departments and volunteer firefighters is that they’re taking on more responsibilities such as highway rescue and search and rescue, with people going through the ice. We’re finding that we’re seeing more of those types of incidents happening where people are having to do search and rescue. Again, it’s usually the volunteer fire department that has to end up doing a lot of these things, because either the resource people aren’t doing it or we have to depend on someone else to do it for us. But what we’re finding is that it’s usually the volunteer firefighters that are having to respond to emergencies on the highway, having to go out there with a fire truck, or in most cases having to deal with these accidents and disasters on our highway systems because they’re the closest community. Yet again they’re doing stuff that they’re really not trained for and don’t have the equipment to deal with highway rescue. Simply because they have a fire truck, they’re responding to it, because they’re the closest community to these accidents.
It’s the same thing when people go through the ice. We’ve had a couple of situations in Fort McPherson where a few people lost their lives just within the municipal boundary, people going through the ice and people are trying to do search and rescue on ice, which again they don’t have the equipment to be doing that type of rescue on thin ice in the fall time when the ice is moving. Again, there are two types of situations where we’re putting community volunteer firefighters who are trying to do stuff where technically they’re in a situation where they have no choice. They have to respond to these accidents on the highway, these situations where people have lost their lives from going through the ice because of the time of year and whatnot.
Again, that’s the type of stuff from a community perspective we are having to deal with. Is it fair to those people that are putting their lives on the line and not ensuring that we’re not only providing the training in regard to those types of rescues, whether it’s a highway accident rescue or a water rescue? So what do we do in that case and what resources are there for the communities to get the training required to take on those types of responsibilities where other agencies aren’t accessible or close enough to respond?
Right now we have ambulance services. I know we’re coming to that, but the only ambulance service we have in the Inuvik region is funded out of Inuvik. But in the fall time when the ferries are out, it’s the community volunteer firefighters who are stuck in the situation of responding to it. So what do we do in those types of situations in regard to search and rescue such as highway rescue and water searches that have to be conducted when people have either lost their lives or have drowned in the community boundaries?
I see that is where this $300,000 could be used for all the proper training. We recognize the fact that we have a lot of people in our small communities that do this type of work, and they volunteered to do this type of work and we want to do our part to ensure that a lot of these folks are adequately trained to take on a lot of this work. I mean, I think the Member and I have both seen firsthand a number of cases where folks have gone through the ice, and even when they do call off the official search, it’s always the local people that have the knowledge and the ability to continue searching and we continue to see that.
But we see our role in the $300,000 is to ensure that those that volunteer in the communities are adequately trained so that it’s safe for them and they’re able to do, I wouldn’t say a better job because they all do a very good job now, but they’ll be able to do a job knowing that they have some training. We see that as where we could be very beneficial to a lot of the volunteers in the community. Thank you.
Again, we have some 33 communities, every one of them unique, every one of them with challenges, but $300,000 is money but it’s not enough. I’d like to know what we’re doing to try to access federal program dollars for the emergency resources that may be under federal funding, whether it’s through the Coast Guard funding or funding for emergency responses. I’d like to know if there’s anything we can do as the government or working with federal agencies to access federal dollars to assist communities in these application-based situations. That’s the problem, is that some communities have the capacity to get these applications in and have a good case, but for $300,000 we have 33 communities to assist. What are we doing to access federal funding?
The Member points out that we have a number of communities and fortunately we have some of the larger communities that are able to access training for their volunteer and local fire departments as well as emergency training. We see this $300,000 as a start. It’s $300,000 that we’ve never had a line item for before. We see this as a start. Hopefully we can build on it from there.
I’ll ask Mr. Aumond to touch on the federal part of it.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to accessing federal programs, as we discussed earlier, when we look at the revenue summary of the department, the federal government has done an across-the-board reduction in terms of the JEPP program across the country. There’s less money actually available from the feds. Public Safety Canada is operating a college that community staff or volunteers can access. The cost of the training, once you’re there, is free. The community will have to pay for the transportation and lodging, but the training component of that is free. That has been accessed by GNWT and community people in the past and we do continue to promote that.
We do also promote communities to try and take advantage of JEP, as limited as that might be. We do put forth any submissions we do get from the communities for the JEPP funding as well.
I guess I would leave it at that, but the amount of federal money that is available for this type of activity is limited. We try to take advantage of it when we can.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Next on my list… Actually, there is nobody left on my list. Page 6-17, Municipal and Community Affairs, activity summary, public safety, operations expenditure summary, $1.527 million.
Agreed.
Page 6-18. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions here. I’m trying to determine where things are at with this ground ambulance and highway rescue contributions to communities. When we did business plans, some of the information that we got indicated that there were fewer communities applying for this funding. At the same time, I believe that there is a limit that any one community can get in terms of this funding. I think it’s $40,000. I’d like to start with that and get confirmation on two things: are there fewer applications on this funding and is there a limit to what a community can get?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct; there is a $40,000 cap. We’ve had three applications, I think, that we’re looking at right now for this year. We had the one from last year.
Thanks for that confirmation. If there are fewer applications and even if we only have three for this current fiscal year at $40,000, we’re still under the $200,000 that is available. I’m wondering whether or not the department has considered paying actuals to the communities that do encounter expenses beyond their communities. Yellowknife, for instance, does spend money for ground ambulance and highway rescue outside the city boundaries; down on the Ingraham Trail, for instance. I’d like to know whether or not the department has ever considered paying actuals to a maximum sum. I could see actuals could get us well beyond $200,000, but if one community is expending $60,000 and is only getting $40,000, then they’re $20,000 in the hole. That’s my rationale for asking if we would ever pay actuals.
It’s not something that we’ve ever considered, because we have some of the larger centres that use their actuals in some cases may be more than $200,000 and that won’t leave very much, if any, for some of the smaller communities that are hoping to access this funding.
So I guess the next question would be if there are applications and the money at that $40,000 cap each is going to be less than the $200,000, would the department consider expending the remaining money in the $200,000 fund to a cap of actual? If people are applying for more money than the $40,000 that they’re going to get back, would we consider expending the full amount of the $200,000 so that they at least get more of their actual expenses?
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have not yet given that any type of consideration. There is no hard deadline as to when the community may apply, so in theory we could get applications all the way up to March 30th, March 31st. If we were to expend the money before then, we wouldn’t have any money left over for those who applied later.
Thank you, Mr. Aumond. I guess that I would ask that the department consider that. You could certainly hold applications until a certain date and then process them after a certain date so people would have an opportunity to make sure that they got their application in. I am somewhat concerned that there are communities, and not only Yellowknife, that are spending money on ground ambulance and highway rescue beyond what the department is giving them back, and they are doing that ground ambulance and highway rescue outside of their community boundaries.
I wondered whether or not the department is looking at this particular program. I know there was a committee that investigated it and it was determined -- I think it was a co-departmental committee -- that we should not enact legislation relative to ground ambulance and highway rescue. Somewhere in the documentation that I read recently, there was a consideration or statement made to perhaps expand this program to winter roads. I wondered if that is something the department is considering or is that now off the table.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to the winter road, no, we’re not contemplating expanding this program to deal with winter roads nor are we contemplating expanding this program other than in its current form. The Minister did speak to this issue at the NWTAC AGM in Hay River, where the committee concluded its work and we sort of notified communities that, I guess, to enhance the services and provide for legislation of this type of service would run in the area of several million dollars a year that we just don’t have the resources for. The $200,000 is what we have to date and, really, that’s what’s on our radar screen going forward.
That’s all I have. Mr. Aumond answered my next question.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Next on my list is Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just with the grants and contributions for ground ambulance and highway rescue, the Village of Fort Simpson has been asking about this line item for some time now and of course the concern is that if there is an incident on the highway system, then the fire department has to leave the community with the only fire truck that is available, leaving the community at risk for a little while there. That’s a concern. I think the Minister is on the working group for the ground ambulance and highway rescue and did indicate it would be in the millions of dollars. However, like I mentioned earlier in my opening remarks, there was an opportunity working with another northern community of utilizing their highway rescue vehicle which didn’t suit the needs in their community and they’re willing to discuss an option with the Village of Fort Simpson. They did come up with one unique solution there that they are eligible for the $40,000 on an annual basis under this line item and we did ask the question, if they did get a good deal on that truck -- it would be about $160,000 -- could they use that contribution amount, take it to the bank and say we want to buy this vehicle today and because we’re getting a transfer of $40,000 for the next four years... That’s the kind of nice unique solution that would answer highway public safety concerns, community concerns about coverage, about the ambulance remaining in the village.
That is a real concern, is what happens if there is a double incident. What happens if they refuse to go out to an accident site with their fire truck? It’s kind of like a conundrum. They are obligated to go because they are getting contributions, and probably refusing to go on the highway is probably contrary to an oath they take as firefighters, as first aiders, et cetera. At the same time, they did come up with a unique solution that was offered to the Minister’s office and I’d like to raise it once again.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Aumond.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department is aware of the issue that the Member is raising. I know the Minister and ourselves did try to work with the Village to come up with a way for them to purchase the vehicle in question. The $40,000 under the Ground Ambulance and Highway Rescue Program is for small equipment, manuals, training, and those types of expenses. It’s not meant to be a capital expense. The purchase of the vehicle in question would be. So we tried to find a way in the current capital plan of the Village to work that in and we just weren’t able to make it happen at that time. It’s not like we weren’t trying to be helpful, but it is a capital item and unfortunately we couldn’t find a solution for the Member or the Village at that time. If things have changed, we’d be more than happy to sit down with the Village and see what we can work out again.
I’d like to thank Mr. Aumond for that response. I think if there’s a way to work with the Village of Fort Simpson and to work with MACA to go to the bank and say there’s a contribution here that won’t impact their budget too much, I’d certainly like to see that kind of dialogue and I’d certainly like to facilitate that kind of dialogue as well. I’ll take that into consideration. I do have a trip planned to Fort Simpson by the week’s end. I’ll certainly raise it with Mr. Mayor and his council and see if they’ve had any more thinking around this. The other fact is, is that opportunity still available too for that highway rescue vehicle?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member said that he was going to have discussions with the Fort Simpson mayor. As far as the vehicle the Member’s raising, I’m not sure if it’s still in Tulita. I’m not sure where it’s at right now. We’d have to find that out. Once the Member meets with the mayor, I’d appreciate if he could give me an update on what their wishes are in the community.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next on my list, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, it’s an application-based program and certainly Fort Simpson and Fort McPherson have been responding to accidents on the highway. They’ve had situations where people have died on the highway and they’ve had to go up and respond to that. I think that from the experience of those responses that the community has gone to, that we would have to ensure that they’re not equipped but also allow them the training they require to do those types of responses. In some cases they’re pretty gory and I don’t think anybody wants to come upon an accident and realize that there’s loss of life there. I think people respond differently to those situations, but again, it’s something that is with you for a period of time. I think that we have to not only equip those people but also train them for what they’re going to get themselves into.
I’d just like to know, in regard to the $200,000, so you’re saying that it’s up to $40,000. What has been the uptake by the $200,000 previous for this program? Have all the dollars been expended and, if so, where have you expended the $200,000 previous?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister McLeod.
Mr. Chair, as I was saying earlier, we have three applications for this year. I think we had one from last year. In the Member’s community, one of the communities that we thought this would be best geared towards has not ever accessed the money. I would encourage them, because they would qualify for it or they would be eligible for it. I would encourage them to apply.
The uptake is not being where we thought it would be with the communities that we had identified that would have been able to access some of this funding. As I said, we have three this year and we had one last year. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, again, like Mr. Menicoche, I would inform the hamlet that this funding is there and they have had some situations with the SAO and whatnot and having to find an SAO, so they have been without an SAO for some time. But again, I know that Fort McPherson has been able to access federal funding where they were able to purchase Jaws of Life and they purchased an emergency canopy that sits on the back of a vehicle. They were able to access federal funding so that they basically can do some highway rescue. But again, I think it’s something that I think is important that we do work with those communities, especially highway communities, realizing it’s a long ways between Fort McPherson and Dawson City. If you have a situation on a highway and someone has to go out there, again, in most cases it’s the closest community to these incidents and accidents, and as we all know, the worst part of the Dempster Highway is right at the Yukon border where we have seen a lot of loss of life in that area. I think that, if anything, that is the most hazardous part of the road that we do have. I think that we have to, again, ensure we equip those individuals. With that, I’d just like to thank the Minister, and again, I will be talking to the Hamlet of Fort McPherson to apply on this fund. Thank you.
You can inform the hamlet that if they need any assistance with the application funding, to contact the regional office. We have been able to assist them accessing some of the JEPP money that was out there that they were able to utilize. We’d be more than willing to assist the community. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. We’re on page 6-18, Municipal and Community Affairs, activity summary, public safety, grants and contributions, contributions, $200,000.
Agreed.
Moving along to page 6-19, Municipal and Community Affairs, information item, public safety, active positions. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe this fiscal year we approved a special accelerated or extra special program in capacity building. That still remains a big issue in our communities and I’m wondering if we can get some kind of progress report on that. I’d like to ask the Minister if that program continues into this… Sorry, did I jump the page here?
Depends what page you’re on. I’m still on 6-19 waiting for it to be approved. Okay, 6-19, Municipal and Community Affairs, information item, public safety, active positions.
Agreed.
Now we’ll move on to 6-20 and we’ll go to Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m wondering if I can get an update on the extra-special capacity building efforts we had this fiscal year; where we’re at with that and if that’s going to be extended into 2011-12. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister McLeod.
