Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize the mayor of Inuvik, Denny Rodgers, and Chief Jim Antoine, who both have been strong role models for leaders across the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just saw her a few minutes ago; I think she’s still up there. I’d like to recognize Sandra Taylor. She’s the president of the Yellowknife Seniors’ Society. I, too, at this time, would like to recognize the wise elder Jim Antoine.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Pastor Emmanuel Adam. He’s not my constituent, he’s yours, but I appreciate the good work he does in Tuktoyaktuk. Often when my husband has visited up there, he’s stopped in at the church and I do not think we can underestimate the good spiritual leadership provided by our pastors here in the North.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. I, too, would like to welcome Pastor Emmanuel Adam from Tuk. Thank you for coming down and taking part in our opening day today here in the House. Mayor of Inuvik Denny Rodgers, a good friend too. Welcome to the House. Everybody that’s here, welcome to the Legislative Assembly’s proceedings.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to acknowledge all those ladies who were recognized with regional Wise Women awards this year. This is a very prestigious group of women who in their regions deserve to be recognized at a territorial level. It is my pleasure to acknowledge our selections this year.
Mrs. Ethel Blondin-Andrew has been chosen for many reasons, and for many reasons I will not list them here, only to say it was a wise choice. I want to say thank you to Ethel, and continue to lead where no man dares to lead.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In following up on my Member’s statement, my questions are for the Minister of Transportation. I want to note that the development of the Giant Mine never delivered economic benefits to the people of the Drygeese territory. It crippled the subsistence wealth of their traditional lands and left a legacy of poisons to deal with. If Giant were a new mine being developed today, an economic benefits agreement would certainly be in place as a first order.
Suppose that this mine were being developed today, based on his experience over the last 12 years of diamond and other mining developments in the territory, what economic benefits would the Minister see as the basic opportunities made available for the YKDFN economic participation?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. David Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In answering the Member’s question, I think the Northwest Territories has come a long way when it comes to developing mines in our territory. We have resources like the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, and certainly back in the 1930s, a property like Giant, the Aboriginal community at the time wouldn’t have access to impact benefit agreements. There was no such thing as a socio-economic agreement with the government of the day.
Nowadays, when we develop new mines in this territory, there are such items like IBAs and socio-economic agreements where Aboriginal governments and companies can avail themselves of opportunities from resource development in our territory. That includes business opportunities, education, training and employment opportunities. Certainly, with the advance of diamond mining in our territory, many of our communities, especially in the North Slave region of our territory, have benefited tremendously from the development of our resources here. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments. As I’ve noted, some critics of this negotiated contract underway right now claim that we already have a full, competitive complement capable of this project. I don’t disagree with them on that point. Yet, as I said, YKDFN’s Det’on Cho Corporation is taking root today because that First Nations’ participation was never promoted when the mine was developed.
I’m wondering what are the Minister’s views on ensuring that Det’on Cho is enabled to join the ranks of our successful First Nations and other development corporations and finally get an opportunity to join the competitive capacity of industry on their own traditional lands. Thank you.
Certainly, through the Detah access road program that Det’on Cho was involved in, they have proven themselves. I believe this will just benefit Det’on Cho and the Yellowknives Dene tremendously, in that it will give their members more opportunities for employment, for education and for training their own people and advancing their capacity.
As I mentioned, with Giant Mine being on the very doorstep of Chief Drygeese territory, I think having the Giant Mine Liability Fund fund the work of the realignment of Highway No. 4, it’s the very least this government could do to help the Yellowknives Dene on Chief Drygeese territory.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments again. The Detah road, as the Minister mentioned, is actually an unfinished project because of lack of government funds, and I’m hoping we can find some. But it’s a prime example of the good work being done by Det’on Cho. I’m wondering if the Minister can outline some of the local and territorial economic benefits resulting from this negotiated contract, assuming that there’s some monitoring of those benefits.
Certainly, I talked about the employment opportunities that came as a result of the $6 million negotiated contract between the government and Det’on Cho on the Detah access road. We have to identify further funds to allow that project to continue, and we will be continuing to look for further funding opportunities to continue the work on the Detah access road.
But specific to opportunities, I know Det’on Cho provided a great deal of training in partnership with Flemming College, and also with the Mine Training Society here in the NWT. The quarry was used for field training, drilling and blasting, and it resulted in numerous employment opportunities for First Nation members of the Yellowknives Dene on that project.
Thank you, Minister Ramsay. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to just follow that up by stating that I am aware that there are a number of local and regional corporations who have expressed an interest in participating with the Det’on Cho on this project. As part of the negotiations for establishing the contract, what steps is the department taking to ensure a full complement of local subcontractors are included in the Det’on Cho Giant bypass work?
Mr. Speaker, the negotiations will be concluded here shortly, but certainly the Det’on Cho proposal will include a wide variety of local and northern businesses that will help Det’on Cho as they work to construct the realignment of Highway No. 4. They also will need some support in the areas of administration and management and other areas, and we look forward to seeing a finalized negotiation with Det’on Cho that will include that wide array of northern businesses that will help Det’on Cho achieve the work that’s there.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As most people in this House know, Hay River is an entrepreneurial, resilient little town that has bounced back from many losses; thinking back not so far to the loss of Pine Point as our neighbours, and we have continued to hold our own. But it’s time, although we try to stay very positive, it is time to sound the alarm. I feel the pain of my colleagues from Inuvik, as well, with what they’re facing. The Mackenzie Gas Project is being deferred, it would appear. Electricity rates are going up. There are lots of things pressing in upon us, and we now look to the government and say what can the government do to help us get through this difficult time. Of course, in the backdrop are the ever looming global economy issues which we see on the news.
I’d like to ask the Premier if the government has a position or a stance at this time on the significance and the issue of decentralization in the interest of fairness. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can tell the Member that she can count on us. We are supportive of decentralization and we are beginning plans to take that under consideration. Thank you.
I’d like to ask the Premier, is he prepared to, I guess, issue a decree as the leader here in the North to his Cabinet colleagues and to the people in the bureaucracy that this is something we are serious about. Not to do things that are insensible, but to seriously analyze opportunities to do things in the regions, in communities outside of Yellowknife wherever possible. Is he prepared to put that message out in a way that we can recognize it and see it? Thank you.
At the start of the 17th Assembly, one of the priorities that was identified by this Caucus or all the Members was decentralization. We are starting work in that direction. We are looking at doing inventories on what’s available in the communities. We are looking at it from a deputy minister level, to identify those programs and positions and divisions that could be considered for decentralization.
I want to say that Hay River has capacity. We have affordable homes. We have space available. We have schools that need more children in there to populate our schools. We have capacity. There’s nothing infrastructure-wise that we need to add to be able to absorb some of the government.
One of the biggest decisions that came out of the program review office was to build another $40 million office building in Yellowknife. Maybe it’s time to re-profile the program review office to analyzing department or government-wide opportunities for decentralization. Perhaps we should change their mandate. Is that something the Premier could support?
One of the commitments we have made to committee is that we will work with them as we deal with decentralization, and I’m quite prepared to look at the program review office, if that will assist us in dealing with this initiative of this government.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. Your final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that there are a lot of skills contained in that office and certainly we don’t want to make rash moves without sufficient analysis before we would make moves in the area of decentralization, but I just want to say that I do appreciate the Premier’s public commitment here today and his willingness to look at this. I thank him very much. Thank you.
In looking at other successful initiatives on decentralization, generally it works best when you make fast decisions and move quickly on it, so we are working very closely with the committees on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Human Resources. I would like to follow up on some of the thoughts in my Member’s statement. I spoke about the diversity within our territory and the need for our service providers to have an understanding of the diversity that exists, of the different languages and the different cultures that exist within our territory. I feel that we as a government have to change our mindset and we also have to change our mindset as workers. What programs exist now that go to training our service providers to be culturally aware so that they can provide culturally relevant service to our clients? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To date there is no standardized GNWT training available to staff to make sure that they are aware of the different cultures and are prepared to deal with those situations here in the Northwest Territories. But in our strategic plan, 20/20, building a public service, we are committed to actually pursue that training and put that training into place.
To that end, a request proposal for Aboriginal cultural awareness training has just been concluded. We are about to award that contract and develop appropriate culturally relevant training here in the Northwest Territories for GNWT staff so that they can be aware of the different cultures here in the North, just like the Member is suggesting.
Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we may not have anything at this point and he is going to work towards something, but in the interim we have nothing. We put people into a job where they are required to deal with clients, particularly in Yellowknife where they are dealing with an extremely diverse group of clients. In the interim, until we get this training that we are going to do, what does the Department of Human Resources do to help our client service providers?
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, we have done an RFP and we are concluding that right now. We will have training. We are planning to roll out a pilot in the fall of 2012 that will be available to employees in the Northwest Territories of the GNWT so that they are aware of the different cultures and aware of the realities that they have to deal with here in the Northwest Territories.
As far as other departments, other departments have different programs, depending on the types of programs they are responsible for. The Department of Justice does have cultural sensitivity training as part of their corrections officer training in the facilities. So different departments have different types of training, but the Department of Human Resources doesn’t have, as I indicated, a territorial-wide program and that is what we are working on now.
Thanks to the Minister. Everything I have heard is in the future. I’m looking for something that is going to happen a little sooner than the fall of this year, although I’m glad to hear that there will be something even though it is a small thing and it’s a pilot.
The people who come to our service providers are very often in pain, they are struggling, they are at wits’ end. If they are not adequately understood, we see the horrendous ramifications that we have experienced in the last several months, particularly here in Yellowknife. I feel that the Department of Human Resources should be taking the lead on training for all of the government. They certainly provide training in many other areas. Does the Minister recognize that this is an area – and I would hope he would say yes, because he is going to develop a territorial-wide policy – but can we not do something now that will assist our client service providers, even though it’s not a fully developed training program? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, obviously we agree. Obviously this is something that is important and needs to be done, but it does take time to develop appropriate training. We can’t snap our fingers and have this done overnight. We need to engage the Aboriginal groups. We need to look at the different Aboriginal groups throughout the territory and make sure the training is specific to all the different regions in the Northwest Territories and then we have to put it into place. We have committed to have something in place. We pilot it in the fall. I stand by that commitment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. Again, everything is in the future. I would hope that the Minister would recognize that the need is now, and yes, we can plan and develop and put frameworks in place, but again I would ask the Minister if he would commit to try to develop something for our service providers before they start the pilot in the fall. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we will have a program in place in the fall to be piloted. I can’t create something with a snap of my fingers. It takes time. We have to consult with the different Aboriginal groups. We have to make sure we have proper input. We have to make sure that the program is going to work. We can put something in place overnight, but I can pretty much guarantee that it’s going to be a failure.
Give us a bit of time to get this done right. The fall is not that far away. It’s May. Summer is here. We will have something ready in the fall. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to have a question for the Minister of Health today. In our Caucus priorities, we mentioned enhancing addiction treatment programs using existing infrastructure. Last year during the Forging the Future Youth Conference, they recognized as the number one recommendation was regional treatment centres, with the end goal of creating a full treatment centre for people of the Northwest Territories.
On March 26th I read an editorial that says, the Minister of Health says that a new addiction treatment centre might not be the best option. It raised a little bit of concern for me and a few other constituents that I have. We are not looking at creating a new treatment centre. We want to provide a service, using what we have right now in the Northwest Territories for the people that need it.
What is the Minister’s plan in looking at creating these treatment centres in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was responding to a piece of infrastructure that possibly could be used for the treatment of youth. What we have discovered is that a youth treatment facility is youth going into a treatment facility may not necessarily work the best. Most youth that enter treatment are forced into a treatment facility. That is why most of the youth that go to a residential treatment facility end up going to the South. But I was suggesting that maybe there is something that can be developed that is community and culturally specific so that the youth can attend treatment closer to home. Thank you.
