Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Madam Chair. If I can direct the question to the Minister of Health and Social Services on the current regulations. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Absolutely. This is not about how do you like the new hospital, or how do you like the contractor providing food services. This is about how do we keep you and how do we get new people? If you are doing a good survey, you have both closed questions that are very, this is what I want to know, how much time do you want to work sort of thing, and open questions that say: what are some ideas that you would give me? We have to be open to both. This survey will incorporate both some closed questions and some open questions so that we can get all the feedback as appropriate. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Two things: one, like I said earlier, we can't do this alone, so we are open to partnerships. If something like the Arnica Inn came and they were offering something or an Indigenous government, we would be open to partner with that, so we might do it. The other thing to manage alcohol is kind of on its own. It kind of combines, and yet it is on its own. I am going to try to be politically correct because I respect the people that I spent 20 years working with, is that there are people, Madam Chair, that the level of addiction and the damage that has happened is so...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the comments. The Member is absolutely correct. A lot of the harvesting happens in the smaller communities, fishing, hunting, et cetera, but we also have a market in the regional centres as well, for example, our community gardens. I recognize that it is totally different, so this mandate will go across all regions and all small communities.

We talked about how one of our mandates, as well, is regional decision-making, but it is bigger than that. It is about really looking, when we allocate positions, where they are best situated. Thank you, Madam Chair. We...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Those are ideas that we are searching for, ideas of putting scholarships, so when we do our recruitment plan, those are the kind of things that we are looking for suggestions from. We will be gathering that feedback. Is there a link with the polytech? I would like to say "absolutely" right now. However, we made a commitment with the polytech that we would be going out in the fall to do a survey, find out from people what we should specialize in. In that regard, it would be inappropriate for us to make a commitment until we have done that work. The Minister of Education...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, measuring success is really an objective kind of philosophy. For a young child, perhaps coming from a family of parents who drink frequently, success was one day sober. For other people, it might be longer. What we have done, the number of individuals requiring a return to treatment is reduced, and the length of time between treatment is increased are the ways that we will measure. I do want to qualify that success may not mean that less people, more time before rehab treatment. Again, those things might not be the success. I think it is an individual family...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that we are in the assessment, the research portion of that. I will transfer it over to the Minister of Infrastructure to see if she has any more information other than what we have at the moment. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just trying to remember back; I'm getting old, so things blend. Back in the day, before we had tourists in Yellowknife, we never had tourism operators. People would just come up here. I mean, we didn't even have paved streets, back in the day. We slowly got more and more advanced, and then tourists started coming. We weren't ready for it, and then the tourism operators started, but it's free enterprise, Madam Chair, and so it's important that we get the word out to northern businesses that there are opportunities here.

That is a job that we can take on, bringing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Some of the difficulty with this is that actually putting the broadband is not a GNWT project on its own. In fact, we do not have the capacity to do that. We need the federal government at the table, but we also need private enterprise at the table. Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, it's on the books already. The other ones might not be, and so it's a matter of developing those partnerships and those relationships with our Internet provider, as well. It would be inappropriate to put actions in a mandate when we do not have firm commitments on things that are outside of our control...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just a bit confused with where this is going. The government is in the business of trying to get communities off of diesel, in partnership with the federal government, and in partnership with any governments or any individuals that want to take part in that, so we have been actively seeking partnerships all along. Thank you, Madam Chair.