Robert C. McLeod

Recently, we had a meeting with the NWT Construction Association, the Architects Association, and the Association of Communities and the Consulting Engineers of the NWT to obtain their views. One of the recommendations that came out of that is we are all committed to do a gap analysis to see what is currently being updated, so we have had that discussion with them. We’re looking forward to sitting down with them, and going through some of the recommendations and see where we can improve on the services that are offered to a lot of the small communities.

Again, I mean, I have to keep stressing...

I’m assuming that the Member means by interim measure that we provide the service until full service is available. Am I correct?

I’ll go to Ms. Young, Madam Chair.

Thank you, and we appreciate the Member’s comments. These are good courses and opportunity to bring folks from across the NWT together and talk about all the issues that face their community and try to find some solutions. So I appreciate the comments. Thank you.

As I’ve said, we’ve taken the money up every year. The Member talked about federal money. I’ll tell you one thing with the Government of the Northwest Territories. Not this Assembly, but Assemblies past, any time there’s free money from the federal government, we are at their door getting our fair share. It’s just something that we’ve always done and the government’s become quite good at.

I’ll provide the Member with the information. We’ll put something together to give him some comfort that we’ve done our work since 1980 when all this money was available and taken our fair share. We’ve used it...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member is correct.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think the Member’s big concern here is to ensure that the communities are ready for future development and I’ve assured the Member that with the assistant superintendent is a decentralized effort by MACA to get more people into the regions. So we’re looking forward to some of the good work that they’re going to be doing.

Again, we will work very closely with the communities to support them in their efforts to get ready for all the work that’s coming their way. If there’s a role that MACA can play, we will support them, and I’ll make that commitment.

The Member was...

Who is responsible for a vehicle that’s on fire? I really don’t know. It would depend which jurisdiction they’re in if there’s someone in the community that responds to a fire. That’s a difficult question to answer. It may sound like a simple question, but it’s a shared responsibility, and people will react as they react when they can. If there’s a firefighting service close by, then they will respond, because nobody in the NWT is not going to respond to any kind of an emergency whether it’s their responsibility or not. If they’re available, they will respond.

Again, the purpose of the working...

Yes, we do.

Madam Chair, I apologize to the Member. I completely missed his first part of his question before. We do have a communication plan again. I think the best thing here is, before we actually start rolling everything out, it might be a good opportunity to sit down with the committee and tell the committee this is the plan and this is our communication plan, because the Member is right, there are going to be a lot of new changes. We need some adjusting by folks out there. I would be more than willing to sit down with committee once we have all of this finalized and give them a quick briefing. I...