Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Office of the Auditor General in paragraph 63 of its report said that the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs should take immediate action to reassess whether communities with fire departments meet the requirements under the Safety Act. Can the Minister report on progress under this recommendation? Thank you.
Masi. Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this immediate time, since the Auditor General report was submitted, our Office of the Fire Marshal has been going into communities, working with each community, with their fire departments, to assess their fire departments and their needs to address fires at this time, and will continue right through until every community is done. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate that response. Can the Minister tell us in how many communities this assessment tool has been completed and whether that list includes Norman Wells?
If I had notice that that question would come up today, I would have that figure on how many are done. However, I did not get notice that that question would come up. We have 33 communities. I have a lot of work that we are doing. Right off of the top of my head, I cannot tell you how many are actually done.
What I can tell you, though, is that we have gone into Norman Wells itself. We have worked with them. I want to clarify one thing, as well. The media has stated that we had shut down the fire department, that the community had shut down their fire department there or suspended them. That is not true, actually. It is not true. The fire department has not been suspended in Norman Wells. It is still functioning. We are working with them. We have identified in Norman Wells that they need additional training with their assessment. We are working on providing that support, that training that is needed for their fire department.
One of the actions committed to in the response to the Office of the Auditor General's report was to develop a web-based fire training resource centre. Has that action been completed?
Again, I don't know exactly if that has been completed. We are working on developing web-based training for a lot of our courses within the School of Community Government. We have 80 some courses in total.
I do know, however, that we provide face-to-face training. We provide tabletop exercises. We do have web-based training for some of the courses, and I am not exactly sure if that is one of them, but if it is one in the Auditor General's report, and if it is not done already, I can assure you that it will be. At this time, I do know that we do face-to-face training, and we also do tabletop exercises on a regular basis.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one of the commitments that the department made in its response to the Office of the Auditor General was to update the Fire Protection Act. Could the Minister tell us about the progress on updating that act? Thank you.
At this moment, we are working on updating the Fire Protection Act. We have identified five acts within this time that we will be working on: the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, the 911 Act, the Western Canada Lottery Act, the Fire Emergency Act, the Emergency Protection Act. It is one that we are actually working on at this moment.
Again, I didn't know that this question was going to come up. I do not know right now where we stand exactly with that, but I do know that we are working on it at this moment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
