Robert C. McLeod

I'm not quite sure an SAO has been hired. I think they were going through the advertising and maybe the interview process, but I will follow up on that. Also, I think there was a commitment at the time that we were going to have elections again. That is still the plan, to have elections in December and have the new council take office January 2017.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we need to look at all of our options. If that is one of the options then maybe they can give us a million dollars to implement 911. It doesn't hurt to ask. But again, this is an issue that I would like to see resolved. It started 10 years ago, and my answer at the time or when I first got to the MACA ministry was that because of technology and the lack of cell phones across the Northwest Territories, technology has improved. That's all been taken care of. There is no reason, I think, other than financial, why we shouldn't look at implementing 911 on a...

Mr. Speaker, I will commit to the Member that I will follow up on that and see if it could be redirected to the department. The Member is correct. 911 is an issue that's been in the Assembly, I think, for the last ten years. We are starting to hear more and more about it, and we had done some work on it, but I will go back to my commitment to the Member that we will look and see what we can do to try and forward them to the proper numbers.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things we could do to move forward on this. One thing I would like to see is we hear from the communities that it's costing them money and use of their equipment and that to get people out on the highway to rescue those that are in need, and one thing we know about the North is nobody is going to say no to anyone that is in need, so they will go there. What I would like to see is justification for the money that they say that they are spending going out, and then also, we need to work as a Legislative Assembly to try and meet some of our fiscal challenges so...

The department… We provide annual funding for community public infrastructure based on which community governments may use to procure equipment to support highway rescue and ground ambulance services beyond their municipal boundaries. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Through the School of Community Government, we do offer courses to elected officials after municipal elections, and we will do so in this case. It’s actually a very good course and it tells them of their responsibilities, what they can do, what they can't do. Through the accountability framework that we have implemented now, I think it's going to allow us to nip these problems before they get to be to the stage where they were at in Fort McPherson. That's going to be one of the benefits of the accountability framework, is it will protect the community from getting into a financial situation...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In July 2014, we met with the community of Fort McPherson and we were concerned about their financial situation. At the time, we said that we were going to place them under a municipal supervisor, which actually became the municipal administrator as well. We dissolved council and we took over the operations of the community of Fort McPherson.

I have to commend the people of Fort McPherson. We had made some changes early on that they weren't happy with. They let us know. We made some adjustments, especially to the elders' water rates, and they worked with the community...

Mr. Speaker, once the report was done and after exploring some options, it was determined that a phased-in implementation would probably work the best. There is some cost involved with that, and I believe there is some legislation that needs to be developed. Again, we have heard from the NWT Association of Communities and people across the territory, especially in the larger communities, the importance of this. The Member said in his statement before, I think we have studied this to death, and now is the time to implement some of the recommendations of the study, and I will commit to doing my...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Any prefix, you dial 1-1-1-,1 gets you the ambulance. Any prefix, you dial 2-2-2-2, gets you the fire department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I could have just said yes in answer to his question. Yes, I will work with the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. We all know that he can be difficult to work with sometimes, but I will commit to working with him and seeing what kind of opportunities we can put together for people. I have been looking through a number of courses offered through other institutions and looking at what the requirements are, and there is no reason why we can't maybe look at making some of those opportunities available here. Again, the first part of it is to try to get our people across the Northwest...