What is the exact expected date of completion of the new floor, Mr. Speaker? Thank you very much.
Mr. Speaker, I’ve been assured by officials that we’ll have the floor in place as soon as possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister if he can come with me to Nahanni Butte to look at the project and, hopefully, if he does find an appropriate date, that the floor is complete. Thank you very much.
I appreciate the invitation and certainly will commit to travel to the Member’s communities in the next little while. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the question on safety standards for community arenas. I’m not too sure who I should be asking, which Minister. I want to ask the Ministers, in terms of the safety standards, in terms of the defibrillators in the arenas. I know of some instances in my region where there was some medical attention and there were no defibrillators. I want to ask the Minister if there are defibrillators in the community arenas.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am aware that there are defibrillators in every community and there are staff allocated and trained to use that piece of equipment. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, are there other people who work in the arenas who have advanced First Aid or basic First Aid other than the staff at the health centres?
My understanding is that this equipment is very advanced but simple to use and that there are people allocated in each community to use that machine, but I will undertake to get more details on where these defibrillators are located in each community and who are authorized to use them and how they are trained to do so. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, when the Minister does do the checking, in terms of the defibrillators in the community arenas for community functions, can she also check to see if people other than her staff under the Department of Health and Social Services are trained, such as recreation facilitators or people, also, who just recently got hired on from the hamlet, if they can get trained if they haven’t yet been trained in terms of First Aid or on how to use these defibrillators?
Yes, I will undertake to get that information to the Member.
Thank you. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’ve got a few questions for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I wanted to ask him a little bit about mine training in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, the concern has been brought to me by constituents about the lack of available mine training for P2s. Now, we certainly have the Mine Training Society and opportunities for P1s to get access to training for jobs that are producing diamond mines, but, Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a lack of any available training for P2s, long-term residents of the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask the Minister how his department and the government are working towards shoring up that hole in our services that we provide our residents. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Training of Northerners for meaningful employment in the Northwest Territories is a huge priority for our government and we’ve been working very closely with the diamond mines in this region in order to not only increase the number of trained Northerners that are employed, but also to fulfill the objective that people that work in the North should live in the North. So we’ve signed an MOU with the three diamond mines and we’re also working with the Mine Training Society and through Aurora College and the NWT school system through the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it only makes sense to me that if there are any residents here in the Northwest Territories that require training, the requisite training to be employed at a producing diamond mine, that they get the training here in the Northwest Territories and are employed here in the Northwest Territories. There’s much more likelihood that they would continue to live in the Northwest Territories while working at the mine. I’m just wondering if the Minister could just elaborate a little bit on how exactly the government is going to work, his department and other government departments and agencies are going to work, again, to correct this and to provide opportunities for all residents of the Northwest Territories when it comes to mine training. Thank you.
Through the MOU on mining that the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment and myself have signed with the three diamond mine companies, we’ve been focusing on three areas, one of them has been training. So through that process we are examining ways to train more people, more Northerners to go through programs that are designed specifically for employment in the three mines and other mines as they become open and processing. One of the things that we’re doing is identifying barriers that prevent any sector from being able to access training. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m wondering if the Minister could let potential residents of the Northwest Territories, those that are P2 -- they’re not aboriginal -- long-term residents of the Northwest Territories that want to have access to mine training today, where do they go and who do they look to for the training that’s required to get a job at one of our mines. Thank you.
Thank you. Most of the training that is provided for mining is through the Mine Training Society, and the funding for that comes through the federal department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and the training money is for what we call P1s or aboriginal Northerners. For those that are classified as P2, we are working with Aurora College. There are training programs, but it becomes a question of access to funding. There are student financial assistance programs that are available for P2s to access. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From discussions I’ve had with constituents, there’s no training currently for P2s in the Northwest Territories when it comes to mine training. They have to leave the Territory and go to Ontario or other jurisdictions to receive the training. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask the Minister, would the government be looking at creating a mine training school or something to that effect here in the Northwest Territories in the near future? Thank you.
Thank you. We are in fact having those discussions between Aurora College and the diamond mine management through our MOU process, and this is an area that we have identified as a barrier and this is something that we’ll be working very hard to resolve. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
QUESTION 50-16(5):
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Minister of Municipal and Community affairs and it’s in regard to the new water treatment plant that’s being installed in Aklavik. There is a problem with the contracting and contractors in regard to payments that have been outstanding to subcontractors and also even the community Hamlet of Aklavik who has provided a lot of gravel to this source, yet there seems to be a problem with payment. I’d like to ask the Minister in regard to what, if any, holdbacks have been in place and does he know if the contractors and the Hamlet of Aklavik have been paid out in full in regard to the outstanding balances for the water treatment plant in Aklavik.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have withheld some funds from the general contractor because there was an issue with the subs. We had an opportunity to speak to the subs a little while ago. We haven’t heard from them for a while, so I can follow up and then find out if the issue was resolved. But as a department, we did withhold some funds from the general contractor until this issue was resolved. Thank you.
Thank you. Also, I believe the Hamlet of Aklavik has used up a lot of their gravel sources in which they were committed to do a bunch of drainage work again this summer, which is out of the Building Canada Fund, but they need those dollars to replenish their gravel source. Without that they won’t be able to do the work this summer. So I think there has to be some urgency to this. So I’d like to ask the Minister, also, can he check to ensure that the hamlet is able to get the resource in time so that they can do a gravel haul this spring to get the gravel into the community.
Thank you. I will commit to the Member that I’ll follow up with the hamlet and see if they’ve received payment, and I’ve also committed to following up to see the status of this contract, because my understanding is there were a few issues that needed to be worked out and there were a few people that needed to be paid and that’s why we withheld the money until that got resolved. Thank you.
Thank you. I’d like to ask the Minister if he can tell me exactly when is the new water treatment plant going to be up and operational so the people in Aklavik can get some safe drinking water from the new water treatment plant.
Thank you. I know that the construction is ongoing and they’re very close to completing. I don’t have the exact date, but I’ll find the exact date and I’ll share it with the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Finance and are in relation to the recently released public consultation paper on an NWT Heritage Fund. I want to start by saying it’s really great to see this out. It’s something Members of this House have been pushing for and I’m happy to see it finally happening.
One of the things we’re dealing with is with exceptionally low royalty rates in the Northwest Territories. Our resources are tending to leave faster and faster and our diamond mines are a good example of that. So how can we collect revenue to fill up a Heritage Fund? The Minister in his paper has identified that a resource tax is a possibility, but he goes on to state that this would be considered double taxation of resource development and that’s a bit of a barrier. I wonder if I could get him to explain that to me. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The concern would be that they’re already paying taxes and that if we, in addition to the federal government who controls all the royalty taxation, in addition to that put on another tax, it would possibly be seen to be as the Member characterized. We also have to look at the current economic circumstances.
I think the key goal for us first is to decide the structure and shape and the criteria for a fund, what it’s going to look like, how it’s going to be set up, how tight is it going to be, is it going to be like the Norway model, and then the discussion about what kind of funds we’ll put in there will be the secondary discussion. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the comments from the Minister. I’m simply responding to what’s in here and I’m also of the opinion that those are parallel processes. We could, you know, wait until the cows come home and do things one after the other and take forever to get this going, but I think there’s a desire to get it going quickly and effectively. So I hope we can have that discussion in parallel.
Would the Minister agree that certainly there are corporations that are typically taxed in a number of ways and that in fact a resource tax could be designed to tax the excess profit? So in other words, after all of the expenses, normal taxes and so on, royalties have been paid -- and this is when there are exceptional profits -- my understanding is that resource tax could be applied to excess profits. Would the Minister agree that that’s a possibility for consideration here? Mahsi.
Thank you. I would agree that this is a consultation process and we are open to listen to and engage in discussion on any or all options, the same as we indicated at the revenue round table that we had in the fall. The focus then was to look at tax shifting. As we set up the Heritage Fund, looking forward into the future, a wide-ranging discussion would definitely be helpful as we decide on both the structure and what final decisions would be agreed to in terms of putting money into a Heritage Fund. Thank you.
Thank you again to the Minister for those comments. I think there has been interest, as the Minister has reflected, and my interest here is really how can we start to fill this fund up. So I appreciate his discussion.
The Minister goes on in the report to suggest that there’s possible consideration for the introduction of other taxes. To me, I can think of a capital tax as a possibility there. I’m just wondering if the Minister had any other things in mind or his advisors had provided ideas on what those other taxes might be. Mahsi.
We’re engaged in a number of initiatives that have tax implications. Firstly, coming out of the last October round table we agreed to look at what’s possible in terms of tax shifting. Since then, within existing tax structure, given the fact that we’re still struggling through a recession, to see what may be possible in terms of tax shifting within the existing tax structure. We’ve also since then announced that we’re going to be renewing and coming forward with a plan to have a full discussion on the Greenhouse Gas Strategy, which is going to lead us into the discussion tied into carbon, carbon taxes, standards, targets, all which possibly have tax implications. We also have the Heritage Fund proposal out there for discussion. We recognize as well that there’s going to be a number of suggestions about how we would possibly put money into that that also has tax implications.
We have to look at all those. The Member is aware of some of the issues we were talking about with the Greenhouse Gas Strategy, for example, so we have to be mindful of these processes, parallel processes as the Member referred to them, to make sure that we’re as organized on this and clear as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that response. I didn’t have anything specific in mind. It was a wide open question.
Finally, I know there is a lot of interest in this and I assume that the Minister will have some sort of consultation strategy laid out. Is the Minister meeting with groups or is that an open invitation to meet with groups and what is the best way the public can participate in this discussion?
We’ve distributed the proposal far and wide. It’s on our website. We’re looking for feedback that people may wish to give us. If there are specific requests, then we’ll definitely entertain those. We’re encouraging people to send us e-mails, to write, to talk to your MLA, talk to your mayor, talk to your Association of Communities, whoever they would like to carry the message for them. We’re not planning a major dog and pony show across the North. We will look at responding to specific requests. The timeline is April 30th. We’re looking forward to getting some very valuable feedback.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, I was listening, with some interest, to Mr. Ramsay’s question. I want to ask the Minister of ITI, I have been privileged to attend two briefings with the mining sectors here in the Northwest Territories and I want to ask the Minister about the training for people in the Northwest Territories, specifically P1 candidates in my region and outside of the affected areas around Yellowknife. What is the government doing with the NWT mining society in terms of encouraging the mining society to go into the regions such as the Sahtu, Beaufort-Delta and Mackenzie Delta to entice new workers to come out to the mining workforce as per the NWT mining society’s mandate?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
