Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions for the Minister of ITI and, believe it or not it’s actually not on hydraulic fracturing because, well, I think the answers themselves are self-explanatory, but it actually is more on another area of his portfolio, which is about parks and camping and whatnot.
I’ve been contacted by people who have actually visited the Fred Henne Park and they’ve complained about the fact that a lack of enforcement is present in the park. So when we’re trying to encourage tourism, when we’re trying to encourage people to spend good quality time with their families, but at the same time we’re having partiers party way past midnight, 1:30 and later, and they have no one to contact to complain about the drinking and the rowdy and noisy profanity that’s happening next door.
How do people encourage their children, through family-orientated organizations, while they have a fire burning that’s defying the city and territorial ban on fires when they have no one to call? Who is taking care of the parks? Who is ensuring our campers are safe and who is ensuring that people are following the rules? At this point it appears no one is, and the campers don’t even know who to call. They called the Yellowknife Fire Department and nothing happened. What is the Minister doing? Because I know he was one of those guys who drove around in those park trucks. Let’s see what he remembers and let’s see what he’s going to do. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is true; I spent some years as a park officer in the North Slave region. A lot of my time was spent at Fred Henne Park during those years. If the Member has a specific incident that he wants to bring to our attention, I’d be more than happy to address that specific incident. We have had increased park officer presence at Fred Henne Park. I’m surprised to hear of the Member’s complaint. Like I said, we haven’t gotten a formal complaint from the Member. We don’t have specifics on who was involved, what time it was, what day it was and things like that that are very important for us to have an opportunity to look into it. Thank you.
All great answers, but not to the question I asked. Let’s focus in on who is working the grounds in the park. Who can they contact?
We have families going out there spending darn good money and we’re trying to encourage them to get out there and enjoy these treasures that we proclaim are important to us. But when people are rowdy next door – I’ve got an e-mail that’s after 1:30 – they have a full load of kids that are ages five and six years old, we have families trying to deal with these partiers next door and risking their own personal safety, but no one to call and no patrols.
So let’s find out who is on patrol. Is anyone on patrol? Is there anywhere that they can call for help? We can’t have good family people trying to deal with rowdy campers. I mean, we are just subjecting them to serious risk. Thank you.
To the best of my knowledge, the gatehouse at Fred Henne Park is manned 24 hours a day. If there are issues in the park that campers feel unsafe or they feel something is going on that shouldn’t be happening, I would encourage them to get in touch with the gatehouse attendant who is in radio contact with park officers. Perhaps park officers aren’t in the park at the immediate moment, but they certainly could respond to any complaints in a timely way.
Again, I will get some further information from the Member. We will find out what time of day this was, what day it was, who was working and what the circumstances were, and we’ll get a fulsome response for the Member. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, telling them to go to the gatehouse, leave their kids, whatever the case may be, is about the worst answer, well, I shouldn’t say it’s the worst. It’s the second worst answer. Nothing would have been the worst answer, obviously.
Do we have park officers out there doing their job to make sure the people we’re trying to encourage to enjoy park time with their families, do we have them on staff? Do we have them on duty? What a great opportunity to hire more summer students because, frankly, we have no one doing the job if they’re not out there. So, do we have park officers working in the evening to ensure those folks are safe?
I think the Member is taking a lot of liberties with the good, hardworking park officers that we have here in the Northwest Territories, specifically in the North Slave region. As I mentioned to him earlier, get us the specifics, let us look into it. Yes, there are park officers working in the parks, I don’t have the particulars of when this happened, but I will get an answer for the Member.
Just to throw out accusations without any detail, that’s not doing anybody any favours. Again, I did that job for seven years. It’s a hard job, and I want to thank all the park officers that we have out there keeping our parks safe. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m sorry, but the Minister talked about years of doing the job, but I remember him and Minister Abernethy driving around in a brown truck saying that the firewood was empty and they called somebody. I’m not sure how tough those guys really worked. If it was a blue truck – I’m colour blind, my wife says – it doesn’t matter. The fact is I want the Minister to guarantee today in this House, if he has got a little political courage on this one, he’ll guarantee that we’ll have park officers patrolling those parks in the evening and certainly making sure that contact information is available for folks who go out there, bring their families, rent park spaces, enjoy the park that we’re supposed to be trying to encourage them to do and yet we want to make sure at the same time that they’re safe.
So I want him to be very clear that if we don’t have them working 24 hours a day, we will get park officers, we’ll hire more summer students if need be. It’s about delivering a safe and happy environment. That’s what it’s about. Will he commit to that? Thank you.
We don’t have park officers working 24 hours a day, but what we do have is a concentration on the weekend when the parks are the busiest, on Friday evening and Saturday evening. I know park officers work well into the wee hours of the morning. They stay longer. They work overtime if need be, especially on busy weekends.
Again, I encourage the Member to get me the particulars of the incident he’s talking about and we will get him an answer on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
