Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs actually works quite closely with the municipal governments to access the funding, the infrastructure funding that is provided by the federal government, so we work one-on-one. We help them do their capital planning throughout the year; we identify areas that they might need to build more infrastructure on, and then we actually will sit and help them fill out the applications as needed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories made a commitment in its mandate to support and participate in the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls in collaboration with families, Aboriginal governments, the federal government, and other organizations. I would like to update Members today on the work our government is doing to fulfill that commitment.

The National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was formally launched by the Government of Canada on September 1, 2016. Since my last update on this initiative, the national...

I will bring the issue up to Cabinet and bring it to their attention. I can do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have gone through on my last answer a number of areas where we promote volunteers and where we support organizations with doing that. Any organization that is interested in either accessing more volunteers or training their volunteers, we are willing to work with them individually, as well.

This topic of increasing volunteerism is not new to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs. We have been realizing that the numbers of volunteers have been going down over the years. There may be a variety of reasons for that, including the need for twoparent families to be working now.

We are actually doing a number of things. We are looking at increasing our advertising to get more nominations out there. We are also going to be putting it forward to the stakeholders, the five regional stakeholders that we will be meeting with, because I am guessing that they are also realizing that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a constituent in my riding, someone who I consider a close friend, and more important, a woman who is really interested in preserving her culture by writing children's books. She just came out with her first one, called Wild Eggs. Suzie Napayok-Short is our translator today. I am honoured to have her here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I stated before, I don't have the authority to tell all government departments what to do. I do believe in promoting water. I have committed to bringing it forward to Cabinet. Cabinet is sitting here. I will promote that we should be drinking water from a glass.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Personally, I do not believe in drinking bottled water. I think that we have excellent-quality water in the Northwest Territories. As MACA, my job is to promote community governments. I work with them in building and monitoring their water treatment plants. I am not responsible for all of the government buildings, though, so I will voice my opinions but I cannot make authorization on someone else's department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

So although I recognize that volunteers are really critical, really important, very valuable in our communities, they often don't do that for recognition. However, it is important to recognize our volunteers, and so we do a number of things to promote volunteerism.

We have a Volunteer Organization Development Contribution program that gives training support funding. We have a Volunteer Recognition Program, that we have $30,000 that we provide funding for community governments to run volunteer recognition events. They can apply up to $1,000 per event. That program is still taking applications...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through the 2016 nomination period, actually 23 nominations in total were received for the four awards: 10 were from elders; 11 were individuals; one group applicant; and one youth. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.