Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Premier in relation to our mandate commitments to empower local governments. Earlier today I raised the City of Yellowknife letter that requested a number of territorial government acts be changed. The city has been after our government here for almost a decade to make changes to these pieces of legislation. How will our government respond to the city's request for changes to territorial legislation on making what amounts to housekeeping changes that the city urgently requires to better meet the needs of its citizens? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Merci, Monsieur le President. I served on Yellowknife City Council for nine years and understand the importance of that order of government to our communities and the need for them to have broad powers to manage their own affairs. As in other parts of this country, our local governments are creatures of GNWT, established under territorial laws. We have a duty to ensure local governments have the authority to meet the needs of their citizens.

Usually, this works pretty well, so long as the government responsible for the enabling laws meets its responsibility to keep the substance and detail of...

Merci, Mr. Speaker. First off, I want to thank the mover, the Member for Deh Cho, and the seconder, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, for bringing forward this important public policy matter before the House and before the public. Really, it's about the future of men's healing programs in the Northwest Territories. That's what this is really about.

I recognize that the A New Day program was a pilot, but it's a pilot project that actually works. I think we will all welcome the evaluation report as it's likely to improve whatever the programming is and this program in particular, so that's...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the response and thank the Premier for that. But I'm still a little bit concerned here, more than a little bit concerned, that we're not going to make progress on these legislative changes within the lifetime of the Assembly. So is the Premier prepared to work with Regular MLAs who might bring forward a private Member's Bill to make these legislative changes, which are essentially housekeeping matters, if the other side can't do it in a reasonable period of time? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I'm disappointed that the Premier is going to talk about my track record here in working as a city councillor. I know that when I was on the city council, we always worked well with the Yellowknife MLAs, so I'll try to keep this as a fair set of questions here. But why I raise these questions to the Premier is he is responsible for intergovernmental relations. He's also responsible for mandate commitments, and so I'm just going to ask the Premier for firm commitments when it comes to changing the Cities, Towns and Villages Act to allow for local improvement charges in relation to energy...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'd encourage the department to talk to the diamond mines about their dust suppression activities. I think it is important that we use this opportunity in Committee of the Whole to ask these sort of questions in spite of some resistance perhaps from the other side. But we're here to talk about these capital expenditures and I'll use that opportunity. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Great. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that and I think the city does do good public consultation work, so in collaboration with you folks, you know, I have a lot of confidence that there'll be an opportunity then for the folks in Niven Lake in particular to express their ideas about the design and that, so thank you very much. I appreciate that commitment.

I just want to move on if I can, Mr. Chair, to a different matter. I noticed on page 3 that there's this site runway stabilization using EK35 which is a dust suppressant, so it just made me wonder what sort of dust suppressants do we use on...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to follow up with the Minister on the Highway No. 4 reconstruction, and I appreciate his commitment on behalf of the department to do the work on the stretch of highway near Niven Lake. Half of that's in my riding as well. So just to be clear, that work is scheduled then for 2017-2018 out of the capital budget? Is that where the funding's coming from? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I'll keep this very short; I know we've had a long day here and probably go for a bit longer, but I did want to acknowledge and thank the committee members who worked on this report. We've done a lot of work together. I think we've had more meetings than any of the other standing committees. It's a huge relief to me personally to have this off my desk and a lot of personal satisfaction. So I want to recognize the work of the committee members: the honourable Member for Thebacha, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, the Member for Nahendeh and the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nahendeh that Committee Report 5-18(2) be received and adopted by this Assembly. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.