Michael McLeod

Thank you. That is a very good question and a difficult one to answer. I guess it would depend on how much consultation is going to be required. Our target, from our committee, is to have a lot of these things come into play next year. We wanted to have some very good discussion with the committee about our recommendations, and we actually had hoped we would have the possibility of agreement to move our capital-approval process —that has been mentioned by the Premier — to the fall, which would allow us to start planning approval of capital projects in our fall session rather than in February...

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t personally spoken to any of the associations. ITI has talked to a couple of organizations. The Premier has also, I believe, had some feedback from organizations and businesses. It was mentioned in the previous address, and it’s something we feel we need to do. We need to visit, at this point, the way we’re conducting business. It’s really providing a lot of challenges. In our infrastructure committee we have provided, I think, 14 recommendations. This one’s getting a lot of attention.

Having said that, we have to recognize that just about 80 per cent of our tenders that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I’m not sure if it’s a perception that’s not quite correct out there, but there seems to be an assumption that we’ve eliminated the BIP. At this point our recommendation to Cabinet has been that we suspend a portion of the BIP and that the BIP policy will stay in place. We are recommending that a portion not apply, and that is the portion that affects the capital projects. ITI will be taking that out for further discussion. We intend to have further discussion on all our recommendations with committee, and there needs to be a further involvement from the...

That responsibility will continue to lie with the community governments. We will provide support through our regional superintendents and our territorial emergency coordinator.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The responsibility for preparing community response plans in emergency situations lies with the community governments, and that will continue.

We’ll continue with business as usual. We monitor the situation now with all the communities in terms of where they are with their emergency planning and support that they require and request. We will continue to do so.

We will continue to provide assistance with community emergency plans. Most communities do them on their own right now. We provide a lot of support through our territorial emergency planning coordinator and will continue to do so.

It’s not very often I get visitors in the gallery, so I’d like to recognize a couple of people from Fort Providence: Loretta Landry, who’s with the Housing Corporation, and Peter Canadien, who works for the hamlet in Fort Providence.

Also, a number of people from Fort Smith. Pam Villeneuve, Marion Napier, Ethel Chalifoux and a former instructor, Paul McAdams, are joining us today. Welcome.

Mr. Speaker, I fully recognize that there have been emergency situations and that fuel is of short supply. Incidents happen across the world. We have not yet encountered that in the Northwest Territories. We’ve had situations where some fuel suppliers were not able to get the supply that they required. They were able to work around it. We provided support and will continue to do that.

We recently met with some of the people that deliver the fuel and talked about looking at new methods and new sources and trying to rectify the situation that happened last year. We are not in a position right now...

Mr. Speaker, I don't know how he got a no out of what I thought was a yes.

All our communities have an adequate supply. We have the ability to make alternate arrangements if there is a situation where there is a need. We've not encountered that. We have new sources of supply that don't lock us into one source. We're flexible, and our fuel provider has indicated to us that there are a number of different areas where they can get the fuel from, so it's not an issue.

An emergency fuel supply at this point I don't think is something we need to do. We have adequate facilities in each community that...