Caroline Cochrane

As stated earlier, there are a couple of reasons that we're looking at the change. We are looking to be able to utilize the skills and the strengths within our employees in a better fashion so that we can share services. We're also looking to promote a greater range of candidates so that they can apply for positions. We were looking at things such as education, barriers that actually impact people within the Northwest Territories. We're looking at trying to get youth involved in these programs, to promote people within the Northwest Territories to have access to these competitions, to these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The status of youth positions within the Northwest Territories: currently we only have three vacant positions. All the other positions are filled. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I, too, care about elders within our communities, and I also want to get as many replies to the survey as possible; however, for us to hire someone specifically to go door-to-door in communities to solicit the survey answers would be a financially huge cost and, in all honesty, I'd rather put that money that I have with housing towards homes for people versus collecting the data. So I will put a more concentrated effort into the radio campaign. I will let people know that it doesn't only have to be the survey. They can send me an email, they can write a letter, whatever way they can get...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As of late last week, we had 1,017 surveys received, which is quite a significant number; however, early in the week we had realized that, when I asked for a breakdown of all of the communities and the amounts of surveys, I realized that some communities still hadn’t received a significant number of surveys. We had agreed, and this will be the first time I'm announcing it, that we actually will be extending the survey for one more month because it is more important to try to get the idea, the solutions, from community people than it is for me to meet a deadline of...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Northwest Territories Housing Corporation Annual Report 2015-2016."

Unfortunately, the mayor for the City of Yellowknife was not at the meeting last night. We are still committed to working with the City of Yellowknife; however, we have an obligation whenever we make any legislative changes that we actually consult with all of the concerned parties, all of the municipal governments concerns. So we will abide by that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last evening, ironically, I just met with the NWT Association of Communities and they also had some concerns regarding the recommendations from the City of Yellowknife, so I have agreed to also work with them. So at this moment we are just in the process of pulling together a meeting so that all communities' municipal governments have a say in where we're going with the recommendations from the City of Yellowknife. Thank you.

The department actually reviewed and considered all of the recommendations contained within the report. At the moment, we are working on the implementation of the most critical ones, so right now we're looking at establishing in our legislation a special fund for the lottery operations. We are also in the process of calling together our five partnering sports organizations. The purpose of that will be to review the sectorialwide policy, and, also, we will be looking at all of the recommendations within the report, to obtain their feedback on where we should be moving forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs selected the contractor for this project through the standard request for proposal process, so that means we put out a call for proposals that was publicly distributed. The Sutcliffe Group was the only respondent to this request for proposals, but their bid matched the criteria that we were looking for in the request for proposals. Therefore, we awarded the contract to this group. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do recognize that the Members have issues that they want to ensure that I push through during this Legislative Assembly, but the Members have also asked for transparency and accountability. So within that, in trying to honour the wishes around transparency and accountability, we need to do due diligence, and that does mean consulting with all stakeholders when any major legislative changes are to be made.