Bob McLeod

We have been doing some research on a number of these initiatives. I was around when the hotel tax was proposed and was introduced, and so we have the research completed on the hotel levy. We are very close to finalizing research on energy retrofits, and we will be moving forward with consultations with other communities. As a matter of fact, MACA officials met with the city on September 29th and they agreed on a work plan. We expect that, in early 2017, we will able to move forward. We also need to work with other departments, Ministers, MACA, Justice and Finance, because some of the...

We have said in the last Assembly, I believe, and also that we would work with Members to find the commitment. I'll go back through Hansard for the Member and see where the discussions on 911 took place.

We always work with the Members on the other side; we are looking at 911.

I believe I mentioned that we are looking to be able to move forward in early 2017 with some parts of the requests in the letter.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We received the letter yesterday from the mayor of the City of Yellowknife, and also the Member has been a city councillor for nine years, so he doesn't seem to appreciate the good working relationship that this government and the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs has with the NWT Association of Communities. However, having said that, we will take the letter; we will break it out into different pieces; even though we are working on many, many legislative priorities, we will work with the city to make sure that these proposals are dealt with in a timely...

I know that, as a government, we review our vacant positions, or positions that have been vacant for a long time, to try to identify the reasons for those positions to be vacant. A large part of them are professional, very technical positions, and in those cases we have to look at if it's a required service or a critical service, then we have to look at other ways to have those services provided. Where we have some flexibility, we would be prepared to look at that. I think that, historically, if I recall properly where we've taken professional jobs and filled them with people who don't have...

We do this on a regular basis, and certainly we will continue to look at ways to fund these jobs so that we can hire people in the smaller communities. We recognize the significance of those jobs, and certainly through a traditional economy, where the government invests about $2.5 million a year in trapping programs, certainly we work with industry to try to get more people hired from the communities. As a government, we are constantly looking at this approach.

We have had a program exactly as the Member described in the past and we'd be prepared to look at that again.

I should point out that the hiring of summer students is an ongoing operational function that we continue to do on an annual basis, and, as a government, the work that summer students are hired to carry out is based on operational needs so they need to cover summer vacancies or work on special projects, and these operational needs vary between departments and change over time, so they cannot be reliably forecasted. We do work closely every year to maximize the number of summer students that we hire on an annual basis.

Our Ministers work closely together. I'll redirect the question to the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.