Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I’ll thank the Minister for that response. He mentioned a full-blown review hadn’t been done since 2000. Would the Minister commit to doing a review and finding out how much it’s costing nowadays? Like, the tuition and that, the government does a good job, as far as I’m concerned, in helping with the tuition and the books and everything. My question is regarding the allowance that these students get. So would the Minister commit to doing another review of the assistance plan? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I did not state that the communities were…the funding was insufficient. I stated that several communities have raised that issue. We are looking at reviewing the operation and maintenance funding for the communities, governance funding, and we can’t commit that we will identify bylaw officers as a specific initiative that needs to be funded outside of the block funding. We are moving towards more of a block funding, more giving the community more autonomy and letting them make their own decisions. If it does result in additional funding, that may allow more...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I find it kind of odd that we’re only going to get two to four years if we do minimum code requirements. You’re in a house and somebody says you have to change your wiring. You change your wiring, now you’re up to code. That’s going to last longer than two to four years. I’m just making a point that I just find it kind of odd that the minimum code would only be good for two to four years and then expires. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member is asking a question that I raised a number of years ago. Mr. Speaker, we are reviewing how the communities are funded. The operations and maintenance for community governance is something that we are reviewing right now that allows communities to hire bylaw officers. I will have to confirm the number of bylaw officers we have out there. However, we are checking to see if this money is currently adequate for the communities and that’s something we won’t have answers on until sometime this fall, as I’ve indicated. I’m not able to confirm that any...

Actually, it's not.

---Laughter

But I really have difficulty with it, Mr. Chair; $320,000, and, like somebody said, you have to go with your gut feeling. I hate to admit it, but my gut feeling just is the word Inuvik. I think it's bad planning. Mr. Chair, I really think it's bad planning and I really have a difficult time, especially when we're trying to scrape a few bucks together for some other I think more worthy programs. Too much money, in my opinion, is going into consultants. Maybe I put too much stock into our 4,300 workers within the Government of the Northwest Territories. Maybe...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, graduation ceremonies are taking place across the NWT. Every region speaks about the high number of graduates they have in their communities, and that’s a good story, Mr. Speaker.

Now comes the next step: going off to college. There, Mr. Speaker, lies a lot of my concerns as a Regular MLA. When many of these students go on to college, they apply for student financial assistance. While we continue to have the best support for post-secondary students in the country, there are still a few bugs that could be ironed out. One of the major concerns, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was originally going to make this motion, but I had to give it some thought here. I mean I know this applies to Inuvik and my problem is not that we don't need an office space in Inuvik, I mean that's something that should have been identified a long time ago and the plan should have gone into the works for that. And $320,000, you know I'm arguing trying to get a couple more bucks for SFA; I'm arguing trying to get a little $1,200 from someone that was travelling on a medical trip to Edmonton, and we toss around $320,000 like nothing and I have a hard time with that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, now that life is starting to get back to normal for the residents of Aklavik and Inuvik in the wake of the flooding and subsequent evacuation of Aklavik, I would like to take this opportunity to commend the many people and organizations who worked so hard to respond positively to this flood and evacuation.

On May 26th, an ice jam on the Mackenzie River resulted in water levels rising in the community of Aklavik so that many sections of the community were under water. Aklavik’s Emergency Response Committee responded quickly and efficiently by organizing the...

Mr. Chairman, the conveyor system is very complicated and requires technical people to operate it. It has 16 independent conveyors which lead to the main conveyor belt. The cost associated with operating has been fairly large. We recognize that. We had anticipated initially to recover a good portion of this from CATSA. The amount of $222,000 is something we have been discussing with CATSA in terms of them compensating a portion of it. Our ask on this was $150,000. They have taken the approach that they will only fund $22,000 of it. This is based on their application of national policy. I...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the Minister for that. Again, I am not a big fan of negotiated contracts. I think that does delay a lot of projects, but I can understand the government making a commitment and trying to accommodate organizations and aboriginal groups and negotiate contracts and, to me, not being able to agree on a price will delay projects. Has this always been a problem historically and was there this much of a problem when most contracts were publicly tendered? Thank you.