Mr. Speaker, I’d like to use this opportunity to acknowledge and recognize the two pages from Inuvik Twin Lakes, Tamara Voudrach and Paulina Burns. I think they’ve done a great job this week.
Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize a few guests in the gallery. We have a group visiting from Lacombe, Red Deer, Alberta, visiting family and friends. Their names are Ken Morton, Norma Camman, Ben and Marg Linkletter, Everett and Marion Joselyn. As well, in the gallery, we have Ed and Joan King from Lloydminster. Welcome to the Northwest Territories.
Mr. Speaker, I too would like to recognize my two pages here: Denise Robert over there, and also Darcie Stewart. I’d like to thank them for coming down for the week to serve as pages in this House. Hopefully, they enjoyed themselves. Have a safe trip home. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize a page from Hay River who is a grade 8 student at Diamond Jenness Secondary School and thank him for serving us in the Assembly this week — Zachary Pangborn.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. If we’ve missed anyone in the gallery today, welcome to the House. Hope you’re enjoying the proceedings. It’s always nice to have an audience in here.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to follow up with some oral questions regarding autism. This goes back to my Member’s statement yesterday; I talked about the concerns for children.
Now, in all fairness, while I had my Member’s statement yesterday, a letter was finally delivered to my office, so I want to make special acknowledgement because the Minister wants to be acknowledged when good work is done. The answer has finally arrived, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, reading the letter, I noticed that it talks about there being few choices for parents to access things like speech and OT, except there are some limited services here in Yellowknife that are private.
Yellowknife Health and Social Services provides money for parents with children with disabilities such as autism to access funding for aids. I’m wondering if this Minister would also allow them to access funding so they could get the extra support out there that’s provided in the private industry for the speech and OT therapy for their children.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services, in cooperation with educational services that we provide, do assist families and children with varying types of disabilities, including autism. Those services are made available on a case-by-case basis.
Case by case is pretty thin, to be honest. A parent who has a child with autism can only receive a few hours a week for OT therapy as well as speech therapy. The problem is that the amount of time a week they receive for therapy here in the Northwest Territories is what is provided in Alberta for one single day.
My question once again is: would the Minister be able to look into the situation and develop a framework so these parents accessing money through Yellowknife Health and Social Services can use some of that money to access more — and private — speech and OT therapy that’s available?
Mr. Speaker, the department is working on a framework to address various issues of disabilities — not particular to autism, but obviously the autism segment will be included in that.
The difficulties with providing all the services we need to for our children has to do with the fact that we have limited professionals available who can provide that service. For those children in need, we do what we can to provide them.
If the Member wants to talk about specific situations of a specific client, I’d be happy to work with the Member to see what we can make available to them.
I appreciate that gracious offer about trying to work for a specific constituent or parent or family, but I’m speaking broadly about all constituents and all people of the Northwest Territories accessing this.
I’m glad the Minister mentioned the limited professionals. As I’ve been made aware about the territorial services we provide in the area of speech and OT therapy, quite often parents miss out on the opportunity to put their kids into those things because those staff are busy in Nunavut providing speech and OT therapy to their citizens.
Do you have a question, Mr. Hawkins?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to be clear: are the professionals employed by the Northwest Territories government putting our citizens first or the private contract that they’re providing to Nunavut?
All of our health care professionals employed by the GNWT or funded by the GNWT have to put their priority to the NWT residents.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A parent told me they had to miss a number of these appointments because our services were being provided…. Our technical experts were in Nunavut, in the Kitikmeot region, fulfilling the contract they have with them.
So, Mr. Speaker, I’m not clear, because this answer seems to be evading us. Who is on the list of priorities: the Northwest Territories’ citizens for speech and OT therapy, or the Nunavut contract? Who’s the priority?
That is the first time I have heard that our professionals would in any way limit services available to NWT residents in favour of Nunavut residents. I’m glad the Member brought this to my attention for the first time here. I’d be happy to look into that.
What we do have challenges with is the fact that while we have positions available for rehab services and speech therapists and lots of other services our children need, we do have challenges in filling them, and we have to continue to work on those.
We will continue to work on expanding services for children, especially for children with disabilities of all kinds, not just autism. We don’t have a practice of separating different conditions, but we do have to step up to have more services available, not just in Yellowknife but in all of the communities where we are facing incredible shortages of professionals who could provide the service.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Premier, and it’s related to my Member’s statement on the voluntary sector. I’m curious: who is responsible for the review of the sector financing? And how will whoever is responsible for that review ensure that participation of this sector is included?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, there are a number of departments involved in different areas. The specific area of sector financing is being undertaken by the Financial Management Board Secretariat.
To the second part of that question, can we get commitment from the Premier that FMBS will include representatives from the sector in the review of sector financing?
Mr. Speaker, a lot of the work — for example, the third-party accountability framework — has been done, and we’re doing a review of it as well as going forward. A number of areas are going to be looked at further to get input from the sector and the NGO sector as well as the volunteer sector.
I’ll get back to the Member and provide information as to how this will be undertaken, and the timing of it as well.
If I can get the Premier to give me a bit of a sense of the timing of the review and when they expect that to be done. Specifically, I’m curious about whether there will be any additional supports or any sort of framework around supports that are going to be provided to the sector during the ’09–10 fiscal year.
Mr. Speaker, I’m hoping that as we get on with work now after the session’s over, we’ll be able to put the energy into getting some of the package together.
As I stated earlier, I’ll work with the Member to provide information as to the timing and the structure. We’ll look at getting the information. I don’t have that with me at this point, but I commit to get that to the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. It’s in regard to his Minister’s statement, where he mentioned the signing of an agreement for $185 million with the federal government in regard to the Building Canada Fund.
Again, I see that they did mention the access road to the Tuktoyaktuk gravel source, but one thing I noticed is missing is the access road in Aklavik.
I’d like to ask the Minister: exactly what do we have to do to access this funding, by way of the Building Canada Fund, so we also can develop the access road to the Aklavik gravel source?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was very excited to be able to have the document in the plan for the funding agreement on the Building Canada Fund signed off before the end of our time here in the session. A number of projects are waiting to be brought forward. At this point the agreement consists of the funding criteria, and it describes what will be accepted.
As to what projects will be brought forward, so far there’s only been agreement on one project. We have had discussions on how we would flow money to the municipalities. We haven’t finalized that, but that is the next stage. The next stage will be to bring projects forward.
As to the Member’s question about how does he get projects into the Building Canada plan, that is something he would have to work out with the Department of Transportation, as they are responsible for bringing forward infrastructure projects that relate to transportation issues.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, we do have $185 million now. There is a pot that we can access. Knowing that Tuk was able to develop their proposal, I believe they did receive some seed money from this government. I’d like to ask the Minister: is seed money available to communities to develop their proposals and bring that forward so we can also get on the list for the Building Canada Fund?
Mr. Speaker, the community of Tuk had put together a small team to work toward developing a proposal and the general guidelines of how they would move forward. They did receive some money through our government — I believe it was around $50,000 — and I think we’ve already responded, through the Premier, that there would be a commitment to provide support in that area.
I’m sure the Department of Transportation has been listening very keenly.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, time flies around here pretty quickly, and we are looking at getting into our business plans early this fall. In order to get anywhere with next year’s budget, we do have to have something in place by then.
I’d like to ask the Minister: is he willing to commit resources by way of manpower — either from his Department, Municipal and Community Affairs, or Transportation — to work with the community to develop this plan over the next couple of months so we can have something ready for this fall’s business plans review, so we can get something in it?
Again, it’s a question of urgency, so I’ll ask the Minister if he can commit to human resources along with a $50,000 contribution.
Mr. Speaker, it’s difficult for me as the MACA Minister to commit any money on behalf of my colleague for Transportation. However, I certainly expect that he’s listening and he would take it as notice.
Mr. Speaker, I think, first of all, we need to see a request from the community with a small indication of how they want to move forward. I think there’s been some discussion already in terms of what we need to have done to bring this project more into focus. We need to see some firmer plans, we need to see some price tags, and we need to see some more legwork done.
I will follow up on the Member’s question. However, as the MACA Minister, I can’t commit for another department. The money for Municipal and Community Affairs is already committed to go to community government, so I don’t have any room in that area.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my questions on this matter over the last number of days and weeks, I did request that the Minister of Transportation make an attempt to go into Aklavik along with me and meet with the community and the general public on exactly where we can go next on this matter.
I’d like to put out a formal invitation to the Minister of MACA; he can also tag along with us. I’d just like to know, with your busy schedule, if we can maybe look at a date to go into Aklavik in the next couple of weeks — hopefully, sooner rather than later. I’d just like to formally ask the Minister here, to formally invite you, to the community of Aklavik and also to set a date when we can meet with the community on this matter.
I didn’t realize I was tagging along with the Minister of Transportation, but I’d be pleased to go into the community. In fact, we’ve had other invitations from community leaders in Aklavik.
We plan — or at least I plan — to be in Inuvik for some of the ceremony for the 50th anniversary.
Hear, hear!
The Minister of Transportation indicates he’s going to tag along with me for that.
Laughter.
So at that time, while we’re in the area, I would be very pleased to come into the community to have discussions about gravel, infrastructure, water plants, sewer lagoons, dumps — whatever the community wishes to discuss with us, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Premier. We’re about to head out, here, for a while, and we’ve heard the Premier talk about a potential project to build a highway down the Mackenzie Valley. There have been proponents out there who have suggested this should be done on the basis of a P3 project. I’d just like to ask the Premier if he’ll assign any contracts for a highway down the Mackenzie Valley before we get back in September.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.
Interjections.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we could just have a contract put on our desk, we would look at it.
Realistically, though, we know much work needs to be done on the Mackenzie Valley Highway process. I’ve had discussions with my Cabinet colleagues, as well as shared some of the vision of that with the Prime Minister at the Western Premiers’ Conference, and we’ll continue to build on that.
Hand in hand with that concept, I think the Deh Cho Bridge project gave us clear evidence that we need something more solid in our policy about P3 projects than references in the Financial Administration Act, which would also cover the leasing of photocopiers. I’d like to ask the Premier: where are we at in developing a policy that would allow us to enter into P3 projects on a more solid footing?
Mr. Speaker, we need to pay attention to that file. In fact, we need to renew it. I guess that is a way of putting it. At one point the Government of the Northwest Territories did venture into the P3 area. That first movement wasn’t very satisfactory, so we’ve agreed that FMBS would take charge in that area, as it relates to financial matters. Hopefully, as we come back together in the fall, we can show Members the work that’s being done on it and provide an update at that time.
Mr. Speaker, again, as we learned through the Deh Cho Bridge project, when you have a proponent that is a private corporation, transparency becomes an issue, as does our government’s ability to control some matters like procurement.
I would like to ask the Premier if any policy developed by this government that is related to public–private partnerships would include an element that would speak to the issue of northern participation.
