Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of MACA. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my Member’s statement, a 911 emergency telephone service has the potential to be an important public safety measure. Such a system would be available for a relatively low initial cost and a relatively low annual operating cost. The risks of not having such a system are clear. During previous Assemblies, the government has engaged key participants in a 911 stakeholders group and engaged a study which concluded that the NWT is well positioned to implement 911. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister, would the government be willing to restart the discussion with Members about this important basic public safety measure? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Mr. Speaker, 911 has been on the radar for the past assemblies and it received a lot of attention. There's a lot of work that's gone into it. We had a working group that was set up to analyze the implementation and how we could work 911 into the system. That work is being done, as the Member correctly stated, but to his question, 911 is not really a part of the NWT mandate, the mandate we just put together, but recognizing that it is an important safety service that's required across the NWT, I will commit to the Member that we will continue to have discussion on 911 service and how we can get the necessary funding to implement this so the discussion will carry on, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply. That appears to be a positive response. Mr. Speaker, would the Minister be willing to engage with other stakeholders to seek support for funding and partnerships to make a 911 service viable?
Mr. Speaker, absolutely, if there is opportunity for us to find other stakeholders or other community governments and that, we can partner up with them and we will explore all options in how we can move this forward. We have done a lot of work across the jurisdiction, across the country to see what their successes have been with the implementation and which systems might work best for up here. I think we have basically come up with a plan. The next step now is to identify finances, to try and implement across the NWT, and it's one of the reasons we go through the exercise that we go through so we can free up some funds that we are able to invest into initiatives like 911.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, will the Minister then commit to revisiting the possibility of establishing a 911 emergency telephone service for the NWT during the life of this Assembly? In other words, what would be the expected timeframe to actually have a service in place?
Mr. Speaker, the Member has already raised it as an issue that continues to be on the radar. We have had a lot of the work done, the research work done, and so we know where we need to go. We know what it's going to cost, so our challenge now is to come up with the funding to try and implement this, see where it's going to work best. But as far as during the life of this Assembly, it would be ideal to… Because this work has been going on, I think, for the last eight, nine years… So if there is an opportunity to do it during the life of this Assembly, we will certainly explore that.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
