Frieda Martselos

Mr. Speaker, I know this current NTPC Minister was not the Minister when the decision was made to appoint deputy ministers to the board of directors; however, can the Minister tell us if Cabinet or NTPC has anticipated that it would be seven years and counting for the NTPC board of directors to be solely deputy ministers? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for my statement today I am going to join my colleagues in talking about the various aspects of energy in the NWT. First, I want to mention an issue that has been brought up by several Members throughout this Assembly, including myself, and that issue is about the board of directors at the NTPC Power Corp.

Mr. Speaker, in May of 2016, the Minister at the time for NTPC had decided to dissolve NTPC's board of directors and replace the sixperson board with deputy ministers from various NWT departments. The rationale for that decision was to cut costs at NTPC...

Okay. I like the term that was used by the Minister when he was referring to the rental office, "administrative fairness." That's a really incredible term. Administrative fairness is with the rental office it's mostly private people that are being told that they have to keep people in their homes over a certain period of time even though it's their home or their rental facility but yet we, as a government, don't follow that whole situation when it comes to NWT Housing. If someone is going to be thrown out, it's thrown out that day, close all the windows and put them on the street and they don...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The integrated case management so you have $830,000. How many clients is that? How many clients are included in that that is being seen for that amount of money.

Madam Chair, I don't know if this is the place to bring it up, but there's also got to be an opportunity to wipe off some of these records. Some people are sitting with a minor offence that happened, like, 30 years ago and it's still on their record. There has to be a mechanism within justice to ensure that people have clean records after that many years. You know, people make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes in life. Not everybody has to go before the justice system. There has to be a mechanism within justice, especially for offenders that are just minor offence and happened like 30 years...

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I want to say that in the 14 years as chief of Salt River First Nation, these two items were used constantly, and the office in Fort Smith is running well. The people that work there care about everybody that goes through that door. I've had to access this office many times as chief because it's always our people that are put up before a system that is impossible to defeat. And there is always someone there to assist the client and assist Salt River to ensure that the best outcome always came. And I want to commend you for that. I don't like that the...

Mr. Speaker, it was stated in 2016, by the NTPC Minister of the day, that appointing deputy ministers to the board of directors was a cost saving measure that would save $1 million per year.

Can the Minister confirm if that turned out to be true and provide some dollar figures for how much money this decision has saved NTPC over the last seven years? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we all know in this House that the current makeup of NTPC's board of directors consists solely of deputy ministers from our government, and it has remained that way for seven years.

Does the Minister have any timeline for when a new group of board of directors will be appointed at NTPC? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One last comment. My last comment is I want to thank the deputy minister visiting Fort Smith. All the leaders that she approached and went to visit were very, very pleased with her visit. Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, Madam Chair, Conibear Park used to have a visitor information centre and it was burnt down. It caught fire and was burned. It was during the winter. And since that happened, there's not been any centralized visitor information centre in that park. That park was donated by a family to the town of Fort Smith, and it had a kind of a log structure. And I just want to mention to the Minister, Madam Chair, that I'd like to see an erection of a visitor information centre within that park, along with a stage that they used to have many years ago. Since that left, we haven't had that in the...