Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier, I have questions for the Minister of MACA regarding highway rescue services. I direct my questions to him because MACA is heading the interdepartmental committee that's looking into this issue. I understand it is a complicated issue. MACA can say it's Health's problem. The department can say it's the authorities’ problem, so I'm not trying to place blame. I just want to get some clarification on these issues so we can figure out how to move forward. My first question is: who actually has the legislative responsibility to provide highway rescue services in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, within the GNWT, there is no single department that has legislative responsibility to provide ground ambulance service for residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I guess this responsibility has been deferred to the communities. I was wondering: what formula does MACA use to determine what funding will be allocated to communities based on the amount of highway they have to service?
The department… We provide annual funding for community public infrastructure based on which community governments may use to procure equipment to support highway rescue and ground ambulance services beyond their municipal boundaries. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It sounds like the general money provided to communities is what they're supposed to use to provide the service. Speaking of the interdepartmental committee, I was wondering if the Minister could sort of elaborate on some of the work that they have done and how far along they are.
Mr. Speaker, the committee was formed in 2012. It had representatives from the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Social Services, MACA. They were formed to implement a strategy to strengthen our community based ambulance and highway rescue services. The strategy actually resulted in $1.63 million being provided to community governments to support their community based ground ambulance and highway rescue services, including upgrades, major repairs, or enhancements to existing mobile equipment or the purchase of new mobile equipment. Training which we found was going to be one of the major challenges for a lot of the communities, and we have taken steps to enhance our training programs to the communities so they can be a little more qualified at being first responders. There is a lot of work that has been done, and I think the next step is to try to identify the funding or find a way where we can provide the service or make it quite clear who is responsible for the service.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It sounds like the committee might be trying to focus on some legislative changes to identify who is actually responsible, which would be a nice movement ten years after those recommendations were made.
My question is: what can I do to help the Minister move this process along? Is there information I can bring back to the town? Is there some way that we can collaborate? Because Hay River does have 800 kilometres… It must have one of the largest stretches of highways, so it does affect the town quite a bit. What can we do moving forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things we could do to move forward on this. One thing I would like to see is we hear from the communities that it's costing them money and use of their equipment and that to get people out on the highway to rescue those that are in need, and one thing we know about the North is nobody is going to say no to anyone that is in need, so they will go there. What I would like to see is justification for the money that they say that they are spending going out, and then also, we need to work as a Legislative Assembly to try and meet some of our fiscal challenges so we can free up more money to put towards initiatives such as this, so there is a number of work we can do, some work we could do, and I will commit to the Member that from my part, I will see how we can move this forward, because the Member is absolutely correct. This has been something that's been on the books for about ten years, and we hear about it every time we attend the NWT Association of Communities annual general meeting. I will do my part to try and move this initiative forward, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Sahtu.
