Debates of March 5, 2013 (day 18)

What is its present composition of staff?

I believe the actual positions are in the budget document a few more pages over. I’m not sure if the Member wants to wait until we get to 6-19 before I answer that question or should I just answer it now and say we’ve got six.

The problem with page 6-19 is it doesn’t break it out in detail so you just see it as headquarter positions without that…(inaudible). What community or public activities do the emergency management folks take on about public engagement and planning, so that the public know and understand what they do, as well as public relationship of the preparation and planning for emergency measures? I suspect that this is a high intensity area where you spend a lot of time developing policy and relationships with community, community organizations, peoples, partners, et cetera.

Our folks go in there and they support the communities, because the communities are taking the initiative to put their emergency plans together, so we go in and we support them and we work with them. We do have some expertise, so we share that with them.

I wasn’t expecting such a detailed answer such as they go in there. Can the Minister maybe elaborate just a little further by explaining what type of partners and relationship they have with the public?

They go in and they work with the local emergency personnel, and the local emergency personnel would share that information with the folks in their communities such as their town council, but the community is quite informed as to the work that the emergency folks are doing. It’s a great partnership and we’ll continue to grow that partnership.

Under emergency management, I’m curious as to how many communities in the Northwest Territories have emergency response plans and does the territorial government fund them at the community level and support the development of them.

We have 16 communities that have updated emergency plans and 15 that need some updating. We have two that don’t have updated plans and we continue to encourage them to come forth with an emergency plan. But communities have done a great job in responding to emergencies and now that we’re getting the plans in place, I think they’re going to be better equipped in the future to respond to any particular type of emergency in the community.

What type of funding or expertise support do we provide? Do we provide any resources? Do we help write them? Do we help draft them? How complicated are these particular plans? I’m just curious as to why two don’t; 15 need updating, and 16 sound like they’re on track.

We have funding within our budget to help train these folks and we also help them write up their emergency plans. But again, the communities have done a great job taking the initiative to come forth with their emergency plans and we support them any way we can. We provide any type of expertise that we’re able to provide, so I think it’s a good partnership and one that’s just going to continue to grow.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Mr. Hawkins, your time is up. Moving on with questions on this page I have Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few questions here. I’ll start with the emergency preparedness. The Minister heard a number of people, in their general comments, talk about emergency preparedness and our need to have capacity for communities and the government as well, but communities and the government to be able to deal with things that happen, either major items within the community but also on our highways which, unfortunately, we had evidence of in the last little while.

My first question has to do with staff, and we did have a larger complement of staff in the emergency preparedness section of MACA, and it was reduced. I can’t quite remember how many years ago, but certainly sometime in the 16th. Am I correct? We have one staff person there now, and does the Minister see a need, if that’s the case, no matter how many staff we have there, for us to increase the number of staff and to bring our focus on emergency preparedness back up to where it was a number of years ago?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There was a reorg a few years ago and I think we had a new public safety division, and I believe we’re staffed with four members in that division now. The Member asked if I feel that it’s important that we try to get more resources and more staff members, but I think she was asking on the assumption that we had one staff member there. We do have four and they’re doing a pretty good job working with communities and trying to get their emergency plans and everything all up to date. The Member is absolutely correct. We’ve been hearing it here in the last four or five weeks, the importance of emergency plans. We take that to heart and we want to make sure that all our communities are able to have good, up-to-date emergency plans.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

Thanks to the Minister. I’m glad to hear there is more than just one poor soul trying to deal with emergency preparedness. I’d like to encourage the department, in conjunction with the rest of government, to look beyond just communities in terms of emergency preparedness. I know quite a few communities have their own emergency plans, but when we have an emergency that occurs outside of a community, I think it’s been pointed out by a number of Members that we don’t have any policy, we don’t have any framework that people can rely on and that they can act upon. There are jurisdictional issues, all that stuff. I would like to simply encourage the Minister to talk to his officials within his department but also talk to other departments and seriously consider whether or not we should be looking at emergency, I hate to say the word policy, but something that will deal with emergencies that occur outside of a municipality – the elections office calls them hinterland – so when stuff happens in the hinterlands, we do have something that we can use to deal with those actions.

I wanted to also ask a question here with regard to 911. I wasn’t quite sure where it would go, but I presume it’s under public safety, and it’s basically to… I guess my question to the Minister is: Does the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs see that they are the focal point for assistance with any community or even if it’s the government that’s going to implement 911? Is MACA the focal point or does the Minister see that this would happen in another department?

The highway rescue, I mean, it’s something that’s really come to light lately, and we have an interdepartmental working group, I think ourselves with Health and Social Services, Justice and Transportation, and so they’re doing some work there as to the next steps we can take. The Member is correct, though, in saying that if you have an accident out on the highway, we need to have some kind of protocol as to who is going to respond first or who should respond first. Obviously, you always have your Good Samaritans that will act quickly. I think we need to do some work in trying to establish a good, solid protocol so we know who’s going to respond to what. We are continuing to work on that with our interdepartmental group. I commit to keeping the Members updated on the work that we are doing.

As far as the 911, the Member asked if I see us as the focal point for the service or another department. Can I use this as an opportunity to pass it to another department? No. We see that we are contributing greatly to potential 911 with money that we’re giving to the communities. I know the Members heard that for the last five years. There is some work that needs to be done, I admit. I won’t go as far as saying that we will fund it completely, but I think we have to start exploring all options now, especially with the telecommunications improving throughout the Northwest Territories, because there was a time where I think even 20 kilometres outside the capital you couldn’t get cell phone coverage.

The point to having 911 is to respond to things within the communities or just outside the communities. I think with the improved telecommunication capability, I think we are going to sit back and have a look at this, maybe work with the communities, work with the NWTAC, but again, I go back to my standard line that I have used on Member Bisaro for the last five years. I see us contributing, as far as capital into the community, as a good contribution towards establishing the service at this time. I do admit we need to do some work on this. I will commit to the Member that I will do that. Thank you.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

Mr. Chair, thanks to the Minister for finally acquiescing and agreeing that we complain to him. I’m not proposing that the government implement a service, but I think the government has a bit of a responsibility to assist the community or communities that do want to try and put the service into place. I appreciate the Minister’s position here. As long as some support is provided, I think that’s fair.

The Minister mentioned ground ambulance. I was going to wait for the next page, but I will mention it here. It’s kind of all part of the same thing. I wanted to just point out that the Minister has heard, in the last week or two, quite a few Members talk about the need for a number of things relative to ground ambulance. One is equipment. Particularly Mr. Nadli has mentioned Fort Providence, who is quite concerned about the responsibility that the community has, relative to the highway on either side of them. We have equipment. We have training of first responders which is required. Then there is the cost just to kind of run an operation, whether it is just emergency response or whether it is fire and rescue.

The $200,000 that’s in this budget is peanuts, really. I know it has changed a bit. With pressure from Members over the last year or two, that it still is being used for training, but even if the department recognizes that communities, for instance like the City of Yellowknife, do incur costs when they go outside their city boundaries in order to… Whether it is ambulance or whether it is fire, and if reimbursement could be done based on actual invoices or something like that, there really needs to be a look at what it’s costing communities, but there also needs to be a recognition that communities on the highway are taking their responsibility to assist people in trouble. They are paying for it. I hate to use the word downloading because it is not being downloaded, but the government is basically kind of turning a blind eye and saying, you guys are taking care of it, that’s all well and good.

I think we need to provide more support, because communities fall in your basket. I just would like to exhort the Minister to seriously try to expand what we have in this current budget, maybe not for this year but for 2014-15 budget year. If we can resurrect that joint working group that was looking at ground ambulance a number of years ago, I know that what came up was hugely expensive, but maybe modify that and find something that’s halfway in the middle that we can maybe afford. I think a number of communities would be happy if we could get there. More a comment than a question. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Ms. Bisaro. Will the Minister want to reply?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member raises a number of fairly good points. I do want to assure the Member that through the departmental working group, we are looking at a number of things that she actually spoke to. She talked about equipment and that’s one thing they’re looking at, maintenance, administration, training, planning, budgeting and operations. I take the Member’s point very seriously, though, that we do have some folks that are responding to accidents outside their boundaries and they are actually paying for it. So the Member’s point is well taken and I can assure the Member that as part of the departmental working group, there are a number of different options they are looking at at present. Thank you.

Moving on with questions I have Mr. Moses.

Alfred Moses

Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Report of Committee of the Whole

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, Mr. Dolynny.