Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Minister. I welcome the delegation to the House today on negotiation with Municipal and Community Affairs. We will open up our floor to general comments. Again, committee, by protocol, we have just been doing general comments and then having the Minister respond as one aggregate. I will open up the floor to general comments. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Yellowknife office or commercial market had approximately 20,000 square feet of vacancy or around 1.6 percent prior to June of this year.

Just recently the new federal government consolidated the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development into a new building, which then pushed our Yellowknife office vacancy rate up to 80,000 square feet or 6.4 percent vacancy.

We know that a recent RFP has closed for a new GNWT 60,000 square foot building to house devolution of Aboriginal Affairs from the federal government to the territorial government, knowing...

Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Anderson.

Thanks to the Minister for the response. My last question really is about benchmarks and what does the Minister and the department have as a benchmark to really evaluate the efficiencies of legal aid accessibility. Are they using caseload backlog? Are they using time of waiting for cases? What is the criteria that the department is using to justify so that when we’re going to the next budget, we don’t need to bring that up again? We know what the criteria are from our side of the House.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. Welcome back, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Anderson, to the House. We are on general comments for the NWT Housing Corporation. Next up for general comments I have from Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. McLeod.

Does committee agree?

Page 5-50, NWT Housing Corporation, information item, finance and infrastructure services. Mr. Bromley.

I agree with the Minister. Talking to the number of lawyers that I have, we don’t have enough lawyers even to serve the needs of the residents who don’t use legal aid in the Northwest Territories. That could open up another set of questions as to do we need to rethink where you’re indicating that there’s going to be new update to the act. That’s just framework. We still need bodies. Are we going to have to look at opening up the doors to changing drastically enough so that we can actually have more government payrolled lawyers? I’ll start with that.