Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You’ll notice we have a group of young people in the gallery today. I’m very pleased to welcome the Grade 6 social studies class from William McDonald School. Ecole William McDonald School, pardon me. I’m going to ask them to stand when I read their names so you can be recognized. Your name will go into our Hansard, which is a recording of our proceedings for the day, so you’re going to be forever marked in our register. My apologies if I get your name wrong, but I’m trying very hard to follow the rules in front of me. Chasity Atigikyoak, Kameron Burt, Dustin Caisse, Cameron Chambers, Brayden Christofferson, Logan Doyle, A.J. Lawrence, Siad Mohamud, Kenny Neyelle, Drayton Pagonis-Friesen, Mason Saunders, Cerynn True-Jewell, Kathy Truong, and accompanying them are teacher Paul McDonald and student-teacher Paige McDonald, long-time residents of Yellowknife. Welcome to them. I would also like to say welcome to Frame Lake resident Mr. Byrne Richards who is here watching us.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, wish to welcome Byrne Richards, certainly a community advocate and very well known to all of us. I want to also use the occasion to recognize Paul McDonald. I used to be a neighbour of his, and a little known talent of his was he was a clown, so all the students there with him here today… No clowning around. He was a professional clown. He may have been both. I’ll leave it with the students to see if they can get some gags and tricks out of him, but he’s quite the gentleman.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Mr. Byrne Richards and all the work that he has done in the mental health and addictions field and his consideration for people with addictions. Welcome to the House.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. I’d like to welcome everybody here in the public gallery. It’s so good to see our youth in the House today. Thank you for coming and taking interest in our proceedings here today to all.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate our elder Mr. Edward Oudzi from Norman Wells on being selected as the territorial recipient of the 2014 NWT Outstanding Volunteer Award for the Elder Category.
Mr. Oudzi is a well-respected elder and is especially known for his traditional knowledge, spirituality and his tireless volunteering in the town of Norman Wells.
On behalf of the Sahtu region, I pass on good wishes to Mr. Oudzi for his outstanding volunteer efforts, and all the best to him, his family and his community. Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of ITI… I talked about the activity of the Sahtu people who still continue to use the land through different methods, different avenues we have today. I know that I did ask a question at one time, I’m not too sure if it was to Mr. Ramsay, on the support that’s given to people who want to continue to strengthen and pursue their traditional way of life in the year 2014.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a number of supports through the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment that help people get out on the land through the CHAP funding, also the Take a Kid Trapping Program that we have. We’ve also got some other programs that we’ve got up and running – Take a Kid Gardening Program, that’s run by the regions around the territory – we’ll also encourage people to get out on the land and pursue traditional-type activities. Thank you.
Thank you. In the Sahtu region, there is a high rate of families that are not working today that are looking for work. A lot of these families would love to pursue a lifestyle on the land.
I ask the Minister, has he had any type of discussion yet as to what type of activities or programs could be looked at to support young families who are not working, who want to go on the land? Is there any type of family harvesting assistance program for these young people?
Thank you. I talked of some earlier and the issue the Member brings up, of course, runs across the numerous departments with the Government of the Northwest Territories, Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment, certainly ITI. We have initiatives, the Healthy Lifestyle Initiative, that encourages people to pursue activities and certainly that’s a discussion that we have to continue to have on how to get people out on the land pursuing their traditional activities.
As we mentioned, we have programs and I’d be more than happy to talk to the Member and the other Regular Members about opportunities to enhance how we can get more people out pursing traditional activities on the land. Thank you.
Thank you. This spring, people in Deline, Colville Lake, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells and Tulita certainly took advantage of the geese coming over into the Sahtu region and one of the advantages of our communities that show a lot of people going out on the land was because of their agreements with the helicopter companies that they have. The helicopters today are being used by community members to get people on the land. I want to ask the Minister in regard to supporting the families and the communities in regard to some traditional programs, I guess we could look at where we can do some economical activities when they’re in their areas where they’re hunting.
We do have funding that gets down to the regional level and the community level that folks can access at the community level to help them get out on the land hunting or trapping, and certainly that’s something we will continue to support. As far as providing assistance for helicopters to take folks out, that’s something we would have to continue to discuss with the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I know the communities have done a great job with the helicopter companies and have somehow made arrangements for that benefit to happen every spring, and certainly in talking to the helicopter pilot, there were a lot of hours flying into the communities bringing people out to the spring hunt and locations where they were going to spend some time. I just want to continue to support that avenue.
Is there any type of programs in ITI that will look at a youth program that will specifically teach the youth about the traditional way of life given by some of our community professors who know how to live off the land?
We do have the Take a Kid Trapping Program, Take a Kid Harvesting Program. It’s $125,000 a year. We also have the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program at $600,000 a year. We also have the Western Harvesters Assistance Program, or WHAP, that’s $15 million a year. We also support local wildlife committees. We also look at the Community Harvesters Assistance Program, that’s another $1 million that we put out there. We do also have a Harvesters Disaster Compensation Program that we run through the Department of ITI, all there to assist people as they pursue traditional lifestyles on the land. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. At the moment, we are in the process of writing off debts to BDIC.
Can the Minister and his department write off the deficit for the Hamlet of Fort McPherson? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we can’t, but we will work with the community of McPherson. There has been some work done already to have a deficit recovery plan. We will work with the community to see what their options might be as far as recovering some of the deficit that they are currently running. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Why did the department not step in sooner to fix this problem?
We gave our community government funding and we are confident in their ability to administer that funding. However, in some cases, we come into situations like this and it’s unfortunate that the residents of the communities normally end up paying for it. With the new Accountability Framework, we will be able to track the community’s finances a lot better, and if we see potential red flags, we can step in a lot sooner.
As far as the Member’s community goes, we have appointed a municipal supervisor to help with the deficit recovery plan, so we are working with the community right now and will continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Can the Minister and his department move to a five- to 10-year plan to pay back the deficit to ease the cost of living in Fort McPherson? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We will have to examine our options. I am willing to meet with the council and the residents of Fort McPherson to fill them in on the deficit and some of the work that’s being done. There are other options that we may have at our disposal. We may have to look at possibly dissolving council and appointing a public administrator in the community. Again, these are options that we need to explore and I am going to meet with the leadership and the citizens of Fort McPherson, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That leads me to my fourth question. Will the Minister and his officials come to Fort McPherson and work with the community on a better recovery plan? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We would be pleased to come to the community and meet with them again. We want to make sure that they have all the tools at their disposal to try to deal with the deficit. So, we’ll be glad to work closely with the community to come up with a recovery plan. With the new Accountability Framework, we’ll be able to monitor our communities a lot closer and if there are any potential issues in the community, we will be able to identify those quicker and step in a lot quicker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on a topic that Ms. Bisaro introduced in her statement today with questions to the Premier. There are serious systemic issues that create barriers to women running for political office.
Would the Premier be able to list some of the top barriers that women face and explain how a mock women’s parliament could significantly reduce those barriers? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has made it very simple, suggesting that there’s a silver bullet that would resolve this complex issue. Suggesting a mock parliament, we were raising the issue to raise dialogue and debate and to help identify the barriers that women face in getting involved in politics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks for that simplistic answer. The lack of women here is a reflection of women’s lack of political power in our society in general. We need to enable women to represent their various perspectives in our day-to-day functioning of society. We need to support women’s organizations that represent their views and environmental assessments, economic decision-making and so on. We offer similar support to Aboriginal organizations and this is a good thing.
Rather than just funding the Premier’s handpicked Status of Women Council for a narrow selection of topics, will the Premier commit to providing similar levels of funding and political access to women’s organizations to enable their meaningful participation in a broad range of topics on the road to fair political representation that would benefit us all? Mahsi.
We should be welcoming any opportunity to focus on women’s participation in politics in a very direct and high profile manner. We’re not trying to shut it down. We need to come together as a society and have a constructive discussion on this issue and what we can do to solve it together, not just trying to score political points, Mr. Speaker.
I don’t recall at all making any comments about shutting anything down. I’m not sure where the Premier is coming from on that.
One practical barrier I’ve heard is that our meeting schedules are very demanding. We compress a year’s worth of meetings and diverse, very intense activity from morning to night, that’s probably especially true for the Premier. It has been shown in other jurisdictions that reasonable meeting schedules are more family friendly and, therefore, encourage more participation by people with families, both women and men.
Would the Premier commit to studying this issue and reporting back on the possibility of a more family-friendly schedule in this Legislature? Mahsi.
That’s something we should all aspire to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure it’s worth it, but I’ll stand up and speak anyway. I personally was enabled to go into politics by participating in workshops arranged by the non-profit sector on how to run for office. I suppose that may be grounds for the Premier to deny my following suggestion; however, these were very helpful to me.
Would the Premier commit to funding similar workshops across the NWT, aimed at encouraging more people to run for political office, not just enjoying hearing me speak? Thank you.
Thank you. It’s good to know that Mr. Bromley has all the answers on this issue.
We want to encourage women to run for politics. We’ve been trying to work through the Status of Women Council. I don’t think it’s only the purview of the Status of Women Council. I think this Legislative Assembly could do more in that regard. I think other groups in society could do more. To put the tail on the donkey and blame it just on an organization that is doing its best to further the advances of women, I think, is not very helpful. I think we will do whatever we can to do, as we have in the past, to put on campaign schools for women. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Colleagues, before we go on today, I’d like to welcome to the House our Languages Commissioner, Ms. Snookie Catholique, and her assistant, Eleanor Klengenberg. Welcome to the House.
Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I talked about the hundreds of volunteers that are working in Hay River, and some of those volunteers are GNWT employees, so I have questions for the Minister of Human Resources about what leave is available to GNWT employees for volunteering for community events.
Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
