Certainly the residents of my riding were quite excited to have this project completed this year. However, we’re patient people and we’re glad to see that chipseal is coming, Mr. Speaker. I’d just like to know the department’s plans of any further work on chipsealing Highway No. 1 towards Fort Simpson beyond this in the new fiscal year 2010. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we’ve got a fairly aggressive plan to work on Highway No. 1 and other projects in the Member’s riding, including Highway No. 7. We certainly have heard the comments he made in his Member’s statement on a number of occasions and we’ve put together a budget over the next four years where we’ll be targeting roughly $30 million to...All the portions that require reconstruction, that Highway No. 1, needs to be widened from the border to Enterprise. We’re also looking at doing some reconstruction from the junction of Highway No. 3 towards Simpson and, of course, Highway No. 7 needs fairly significant investment in terms of upgrades. The road has been really deteriorating and it’s an aging piece of infrastructure with very poor soil conditions. We’re going to try to get that all fixed up as soon as we can. Thank you.
I’m pleased that certainly the department is making great strides and hopefully we can accomplish a lot of this work in 2010. In terms of Highway No. 7, Fort Liard residents have seen the B.C. side. They actually chipsealed their road up to the B.C. border, and they’re asking me continuously when are we going to re-chipseal the road from Fort Liard back to the B.C. border once again. They’re also looking to see the completion of the reconstruction that’s occurring there. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, that’s a difficult question to answer at this point. We are still doing a lot of work on the Highway No. 7 section, including an engineering assessment and functional design. We’re also doing some of the necessary material preparation, crushing of the kilometre 3 and doing some of the upgrades that are required.
As to doing some actual chipseal, maybe. It’s not something that we’ve decided as of yet. It’s something that we’d like to do. Chipseal, of course, is something that really is dependent on the base and we’d have to be convinced that the road is going to hold up. It will be a decision that we will consider, but it’s not a decision we have made as of today. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Is the Minister of Transportation prepared to see that the chipseal will return to the residents of Fort Liard as they travel to B.C.? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it’s our goal to see chipseal applied to most of our roads, if not all of them, for the long term. As of yet, we haven’t been able to really prove that it will stay in sandy conditions such as the Fort Liard area. We know some work was done on the B.C. side. We’re going to take a look at that and see if we can do some test areas over the next while. We’d also like to do chipsealing on Highway No. 8 and other highways, for example. We think it’s going to solve some of our safety issues and reduce some of the maintenance required, but we still have to ensure that it’s going to work and we have to make sure we have our technology all figured out before we do that. But that’s our goal.
We’re also, Mr. Speaker, trying out different products that we think may be more durable than chipseal. Of course, any time you start moving that area, the costs go up. There’s still a lot of work and a lot of research that we need to do, but that’s our intentions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. 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 thank the Minister for his statement about the NWT Public Service Strategic Plan and I would like to follow up with a couple of questions.
I note that the Minister talked about goal two under this plan: Engage: Magnetic Attraction. I’d like to know what’s in this particular plan relative to an evaluation of the GNWT’s Affirmative Action Policy, specifically in light of the priority lists as outlined not in the Affirmative Action Policy but in our Human Resource Manual. We have two lists, one for non-management jobs and one for management jobs, and they’re not the same. I’d like to know from the Minister what kind of an evaluation of the AA Policy is being contemplated specifically in terms of priority lists. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have our Aboriginal Affirmative Action Committee that is helping us in reviewing the affirmative action plan and certainly we are also reviewing it with regard to the other categories that are provided for under that plan. Thank you.
I’m not quite sure; the Minister said an affirmative action plan. I don’t know if he meant plan or policy, but if there is a review going on, how encompassing is this review, what are the terms of reference of this review and when might we expect it? Thank you.
We are having the committee work with each of the regions and we are expecting that they will come forward with some recommendations in approximately six months or so.
Six months? I guess that’s great. I’m still not sure whether or not that encompasses looking at the priority lists in the resource manual, but I’ll leave it at that.
In the Minister’s statement, he referenced persons with disabilities at one point. I know that a working group was established in June of 2008 to deal with persons with disabilities to try to make things a little easier for them and to further their employment. I’d like to ask the Minister what work that working group did some 16, 18 months ago and how is that relevant to the review that he was referencing that will be done in six months’ time. Thank you.
We’ve been doing a number of things. First of all, we’ve looked at different jurisdictions that have been doing some groundbreaking work in this area. We invited the Yukon to come and describe what process they took to work in increasing the representation of people with disabilities in the workforce. We had a workshop. We have had our committees working together. We have put in place sensitivity training for senior managers. So we are looking at the process of establishing an area that would focus entirely on increasing the representation of disabled people in the workforce. As we speak, we are hiring more people. But as the Member knows, it’s a question of people self-identifying themselves and you can only self-identify yourself once. So right now we’re starting to see an increase and we’re continuing to do work in this area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I could do a Member’s statement to the Minister’s reference to self-identification, so I guess I don’t have time for that right now.
I’d like to know from the Minister, though, I don’t think I heard in any of his answers that there will be any valuation of the priority list, that there will be a look at those two priority lists to, one, bring them together so that they actually match and people are listed in the same priority for each of them and to possibly change the priorities of various people within the Affirmative Action Policy. Is that possible? Thank you.
We are looking at the priority lists, because affirmative action covers a number of different areas which deem to be priorities in the hiring of this government. Certainly it includes not only affirmative action employees, but also women in the workforce, all hard-to-hire areas and people with disabilities, and they’re broken up into different categories and we are looking at it to see if there are ways to make it more effective in our hiring practices. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. Earlier today, during my Member’s statement, I mentioned the declining enrolments in Yellowknife. I was wondering if the Minister could please outline for us the enrolment levels for all of the Yellowknife schools for 2008-2009 school year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Specifically for Yellowknife district, first of all, J.H. Sissons is at 57 percent utilization; Mildred Hall is at 56 percent; N.J. Macpherson is at 57 percent; Range Lake North is at 68 percent; Sir John Franklin is at 98 percent; William MacDonald is at 43 percent, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I forgot a couple more schools. Ecole St. Joe’s is at 80 percent; St. Pat’s, 111 percent; and Weledeh at 82 percent. Mahsi.
Thank you. Those are the 2008-2009 numbers, I believe. Are the numbers fairly consistent for the 2009-10 fiscal year and do we have some sort of projections on where enrolments are going to be going over the next, say, four or five years? Thank you.
Mahsi. With the projection of the enrolments, as the Member alluded to earlier, the enrolments are going down and we do have our department working on a five-year plan. Not only that, but we do have a consultant that’s working on the 10-year education facility plan for Yellowknife, all schools. So those are areas that we’re very concerned about, the enrolment and how we can deal with those issues and come out with solutions. So those are the areas of focus that we have with our department.
Thanks to the Minister for that response. The Minister made reference to a 10-year plan. I’m wondering if the Minister could go into a bit more detail about what the intent of that review and that plan is for us.
This particular piece of work will deal with enrolment, the data that will be collected the past years and also on a going forward basis, the past four years and also future direction for space planning. So those are the areas that will be focused with the group. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks once again to the Minister for that. I was wondering if the Minister could please tell us, when he refers to group, who does he mean, who is in that group, and if he could give us a bit of a timeline as to when we might see some results from that review come forward to this Legislature. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When I refer to group, it’s the team that’s in my department with the school boards that we’re working with, because we have to gather information and data from them and the consultant that collects all the information. So that is the team that we’re working with, and that information we’re hoping to be completed by the end of the fiscal year. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today in my Member’s statement I was talking about the housing situation that we’re having up in my riding in Nunakput. In addition to all Regular MLAs passing a motion urging the government to review its current conditions, because clearly it’s not working, will this government participate in an intergovernmental regional discussion to review all concerns identified in the petition? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The review is being done as we speak and we’re looking to see the results of this review. Of course, we are listening to the concerns of all the people out there with some of the issues they’re having with the transfer responsibilities. So the review is done. Once we see the review, we’ll have a look at it and plan a course of action from there. Thank you.
That’s almost as quick as Jane getting responses from the Minister of Transportation. Mr. Speaker, given that local governments know their communities and issues best, the best ways to administer programs, making sure that we consider given the housing conditions and the program implementation, especially for small remote communities has been in a crisis situation for quite some time given the recent changes, I’m just making sure that the Minister and his departments, in the smaller communities, they actually go to the communities and meet with the government and local leadership. Thank you.
I’d be more than pleased and I do intend on visiting some of the smaller communities to hear a lot of their housing concerns and some of the challenges that they’ve been faced with, with the implementation of the assessment being moved over to ECE. But it is my intent in the next little while here, to meet with a lot of the smaller communities. Having worked in a smaller community in housing for 23 years, I’m well aware of some of the challenges that they face. Thank you.
I’d like to invite the Minister to my riding of Nunakput, once he is planning to go there to do a community tour. Thank you.
Thank you. I’d be pleased to join the Member and other Members from smaller communities in touring some of their operations and getting a feel for how the Housing Corp is running in their community and what best we can do to improve the services we provide to the clients. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my statement earlier today where I was recognizing people working hard on the issue of climate change. I know they appreciated the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources and my colleague for Great Slave participating in the Climate Justice march this Saturday, but the public is wondering what is this government’s position on climate change and the need for greenhouse gas reductions, recognizing it in context with the science that tells us we need at least 25 percent reductions by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Michael Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government and this Legislature recognize climate change as one of the most important issues facing us. It has an impact on everything we’re trying to do as a government almost everywhere we look, whether it be with wildlife, with our communities, with transportation, with permafrost issues. Not only are we committed to reducing greenhouse gases, we are, in fact, spending tens of millions of dollars to put in infrastructure to actually reduce our greenhouse gases, as we speak, with biomass. We’re going to invest in wind, we’re going to invest in mini-hydro and all those different areas. Thank you.
Thank you for those comments. I’m sure that this government recognizes that our current Greenhouse Gas Strategy is out of date and needs a tune-up, and I think we’re acting within that context. I’d like to ask the Minister, Mr. Speaker, are we urging the federal government to meet these science-based targets that have been so well demonstrated? Mahsi.
We’re taking the approach of making sure in our own area and our own bailiwick that we are being as responsive and responsible as possible to try to deal with this issue, investing, as I indicated, the money that we are, trying to change how we do business, how we’re delivering hydro and energy, generating energy. We have had discussions with the federal government. We’ve indicated what we’re doing, as opposed to what they’re doing. The federal government will be, at the end of the day as they want to do, making up their own mind. Thank you.
Unfortunately it is clear, and I do believe in the power of example, as the Minister obviously does, but it is clear that it’s not working with this federal government, it hasn’t worked to date and we are running out of time. I think that’s well acknowledged now. So I’m wondering what role -- assuming that this government is participating in the negotiations in Copenhagen, and I’m sure we are -- can this government plan to try and move forward this science-based target adoption by Canada as our citizens are demanding during those negotiations. Thank you.
We will continue to, we think, be the voice of reason, speak to the examples, point to the urgency in the Arctic, not only in the Northwest Territories but in all the circumpolar countries and, like many of our circumpolar neighbours, we will be making the case that we are paying the biggest price, we’re feeling the most and greatest impact and that we have to take the steps necessary. We will continue to state those points of view. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
