Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not quite sure of the status of the application right now. I can tell the Member that we have met with the NWT Fire Chiefs Association, the NWTAC and the Heart and Stroke Foundation to partner up to access this national application-based funding. So, we’ve started the work with them. We also started the project plan. We have initiated project plans, and stakeholders will be surveying all the communities to determine their needs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. The New Deal took effect in 2007. That’s when we devolved the responsibilities for the communities to look after their capital purchases. A number of communities have taken us up on that, they’ve made some really good decisions on addressing some of their priorities. So in 2006, when the Member asked the question, we were still responsible for a lot of the capital that went into the communities and it usually had to wait in line to get through the capital process. Since the communities have the responsibility now, they are identifying a lot of their priorities, and if a fire truck...

Thank you. We try and work with the communities. We’ve been working with them the last while to update their emergency preparedness plans and we work with the communities, we don’t try, we do work with the communities to upgrade any training that they might need, upgrade the equipment that they might need. The people at our disposal, we use their expertise to work with the communities to help them come up with a plan to deal with a lot of the situations that they’re dealing with. Thank you.

We’d be happy to work with the community. Again, we will wait to hear from the community and what some of their timelines are. They know what’s going on in their community. So once they extend the invitation and give us a definite timeline, then we will make our people available to go in and assist with the training of their fire department. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re pleased to hear of Colville Lake moving some of their priorities around and getting a fire truck. So we would be pleased to work with the community in getting some training and that, once their fire department is established, we will, on their invitation, go in and work with them and get some training for their recently formed fire department. Thank you.

We will include this information in our annual report and then in our performance measures as we publish this part of the business plans. We are also happy to make this information available on our website. Once we start gathering a bit more solid baseline data, we will put that up on our website as well.

Thank you. We are partners with ECE and Health and Social Services through the Healthy Choices initiative and some of the programs that we work with through the Active After School Program and we have a food program that’s pretty well fully subscribed to. I think just about every community and school in the Northwest Territories receives money, except one, through the Active After School Program. So we work with our colleagues over at ECE and Health and Social Services to try and access as much money as we can that we pass on to communities to deliver all the important programs that they run...

These organizations submit budgets and the funding is application-based. So we assume that they’re calculating their own forced growth as part of their application. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to use this opportunity to recognize a couple of hardworking Pages from Inuvik Twin Lakes. I’ve got Ms. Tyra Cockney-Goose, who’s sitting over there by the deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, and I’ve got Julienne Chipesia. She’s just on the other side of the glass there. I’d like to thank them and all the other Pages for all the work they do throughout our time in session.

I’d also like to recognize two residents of Inuvik. They are constituents of Boot Lake, but I got up first, so I get to recognize them. We have Ms. Angela Young and Sandra Ipana. Thank you very much...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize my constituency assistant. No, it’s not Wendy; it’s Leah Ipana, my constituency assistant. Welcome, Leah. Thank you.