Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, too, have questions for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod. Recently the towns of Norman Wells and Behchoko narrowly escaped disasters with their town losing gas supply and power, respectively. I do applaud the hard work of all those who came to the table to restore these services in these communities. As is also known to Members of the House here, I have actually spoken many times about our community emergency action plans as well as our emergency preparedness for our communities.
With this in mind, I would like to ask my first question to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. What was the formal synopsis or recap with the efficiencies and effectiveness of these two emergency action plans for both Norman Wells and Behchoko?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have to commend the leadership of Norman Wells. They acted very swiftly when the situation arose there. I have to commend them for that. They had a plan in place. I believe they were probably a couple of hours from evacuation, but they mobilized very quickly with the help of the municipal government and our folks on the ground there. That situation was handled very well. They had an emergency plan. They implemented it and it went very well. It went a long ways to preventing further disaster there. As far as the Behchoko situation goes, I think the lesson that came out of that situation was we need better work to do with the folks in Behchoko. I think there was a bit of miscommunication not knowing who the contact person was in charge. I think we learned a valuable lesson from that, and it’s a lesson that we plan on taking forward and preventing something like this from happening again.
I, too, want to earmark the fact that a lot of people were involved with the communities and they should be commended for getting these communities back on line here. The Minister mentioned opportunities and that’s where I want to focus the remainder of some of my questions here. What did we learn from these opportunities? The Minister indicated communication. Maybe the Minister could elaborate a little bit more with respect to communication. Was there a proper communication plan for the Behchoko situation and, if so, what did we learn from that or what opportunities did we learn from that?
I think we learned a very valuable lesson in the Behchoko situation. First of all, there should be a central contact number, central contact point. There was a bit of confusion there. That’s one of the reasons that we encourage our communities to come up with an emergency action plan. Most of our communities, I have to admit, have an emergency plan and a lot of them, from past experience, have learned some lessons and made some changes. This is one, again, that we will take some valuable information away from and to ensure that hopefully doesn’t happen. But if another situation like this arises, they are well prepared to deal with it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I want to definitely say the Minister was very forthright during at least the Norman Wells situation. He did actually come to the Members’ offices to share information, which I do applaud and appreciate those actions. However, throughout the course of the day, communication was probably scarce at best, and I did have to rely a lot on news and social networking, the tweeting that was going on. One CBC reporter was doing an incredible job.
Are there opportunities within these communication plans to help improve the communication of these types of disasters with the general community as well as elected leadership. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker, in situations like this with the situation in Norman Wells, we informed the appropriate Member from that constituency. If communication skills like we need to get information to all committee members, maybe it’s something we’ll have to do in the future. As far as the Behchoko situation, the protocol, we contacted the appropriate Member for that riding and informed him as to the situation there. Again, there are opportunities that we could share the information with all Members. I’d have to find out exactly what the protocol is, if we share the information with all Members or if it would be the appropriate Member’s responsibility to share with all Members. I’ll find that out and I will communicate that to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. Again, I do appreciate the genuine offer from the Minister and I will definitely take him up on that offer.
Very simply, I know I’ve brought up in the House, a number of times, the number of communities that are prepared in the event of an emergency, what our plans are. Can the Minister maybe give us a brief update as to which communities may still be not on the list of having a proper plan in place or a number that may be still out there for opportunity so we can get all our communities in a safe environment? Thank you, Madam Chair.
I know we do work with a number of the communities to update their emergency plans. For the actual number and which communities, I don’t have that information right now. However, I will commit to the Members that I’ll compile a list of communities that don’t have emergency plans, but I don’t think there are very many. I think they all understand the importance of having emergency plans, and they’re working on those and updating ones that haven’t been updated for a while. But I’ll get the numbers and I will share them with the Members. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Thank you, Minister McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. Mr. Moses.
