Robert C. McLeod

Thank you. I appreciate all the Members supporting their colleague. It shows up in the regional office. So it wouldn’t show up in the headquarters. It shows up in the regional office. Thank you.

The members of the working group are the Department of Health and Social Services, Department of Justice, Transportation, Municipal and Community Affairs.

We have the fire marshal and the assistant fire marshals that cover each region.

Thank you. I’m not sure about the report. We’ll do some digging around and see if we can find the report. We continue to work with the community governments on their water treatment plants to make sure that they’re adequately funded to operate these water treatment plants. So we’ll continue to do that work. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The federal money that was available as free money, as the Member likes to call it, we’ve taken it up pretty well every year. For some reason it wasn’t available to us last year. Every year since its inception, I think we have taken our share of it.

As far as being published publicly, no, it’s not, but I mean, I have committed to the Member and he talks about the importance of emergency plans, and we recognize the importance of emergency plans. MACA has been having to deal with these for so many years. We’re working with the 15 communities that need to update their plans. We’re working with them to try and get their emergency plans updated. I have committed to trying to compile as much information as possible, finding somewhere we can put it so that everyone has access it, and I will honour that commitment. If the Member is looking for...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We recognize that there is going to be a lot of activity around the Sahtu. I think our staff can prepare for that. Our superintendents and our regional staff will work closely with communities, probably identify some of the challenges that they may be facing.

Again, we go in there at the communities’ invitation. We work with them very closely on this issue. I can assure the Member that we know. We will have the assistant superintendents in all regions too. I think that will go a long way. We will work very closely with community and do our part in supporting them in...

Well, the working group are looking at all these different issues right now and they’re coming up with ways, some options, and also looking at the cost. I think it’s been mentioned in this House before, if we were to look at the cost of implementing the overall ambulance service across the Northwest Territories, it would be quite high. So they’re exploring all these options.

As far as an actual timeline goes, I don’t have the actual timeline. I know that they are looking at a number of different issues, but I will keep the Members up to date on the work that they’re doing and hopefully we can...

Thank you, Madam Chair. As far as formalized communication plans go, I mean, I committed to the Member before that we’ll undertake the work in trying to provide a database and putting one together. We will update the Members regularly on the work that we’re doing, that way they have some comfort and we’ll even provide them with a lot of information that we get from the communities as far as contact numbers go. But I have to say that our communities, especially those that have had to deal with emergencies before, do a fantastic job reacting to emergencies, and they know who they’ve got to...

Madam Chair, as far as capacity part, as I said before, we have added an extra enforcement person. Once we come back in the fall time to do the business plan review with committee, if there’s an opportunity there, if we feel that we’re lacking in capacity, then we will possibly come to committee and get some feedback from committee on that issue.

I’m sorry; I missed the first part of the Member’s question. I think it was just complimenting the department in all the good work that we’ve been doing.

---Laughter

Except listening. Thank you, Madam Chair.