Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister for Municipal and Community Affairs in light of the earlier conversation -- or the earlier questions I asked the Premier. The Minister tabled a document, Tabled Document 103-18(2) which was in response to the question on funding 911, which stated: "In light of the Government of the Northwest Territories' current fiscal environment, 911 is not included in MACA's 2017-2018 business plan," and yet the Premier announces that through the business planning process we're making progress on that. Can the Minister confirm if 911 is included in the 2017-2018 business plan? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Currently, the implementation is not in the business plan.
Can the Minister then explain why we're hearing two different versions of the story on 911? I appreciate that the Premier might not know as much as the Minister, so I'm hoping we get to the bottom of it with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Currently, the complete implementation of 911 is currently not in the new business plan; however, we have been working with the MLAs and the Minister responsible for Finance has promised that if we can get reductions during this business year that we will be looking at spending money on new initiatives. 911 is one of the new initiatives that we are looking at pushing forward if we can save money currently and use that money for later implementation.
Thank you for the clarification from the Minister. The Minister talked about finding reductions to pay for the new initiative. The government has already indicated it is constantly in the process of finding savings. So I'll defer to the Minister and ask if she's ready to find savings to pay for this program for the 2017-2018 business plan?
We have made proposals to committee and we're currently awaiting feedback from the committee on the acceptance of our proposals.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, the work of the standing committee is important in this process, however, it seems earlier comments pre-empted that work. So again, if the standing committee says go on this initiative, will the Minister commit to do it? Thank you.
As stated before, we have put forward a proposal to the standing committee; we are hoping that they will be reasonable and in recognizing that 911 is one of the initiatives that we are looking at if we can get the reductions that we need to be able to put money into new initiatives.
