Robert C. McLeod

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...

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank the Member for clarifying that. Well, again, in some communities the RCMP would bring him to the health centre and in some communities there may be a van that’s used by the health centre. In communities where they have ambulance services, obviously they would call an ambulance and an ambulance would go pick them up and bring them to the health centre or to the hospital. So as far as who is solely responsible, I really don’t know the answer to that, but I know in different communities different people respond, different organizations respond to those that are...

No, there is not, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the Member raising that. I will make a determination. The Member is correct; and I have said this a number of times, we need to make sure we get a good quality product before we put it out there. I think I had used that line a couple of times, because we had an extension a couple of times. If it’s a matter of a month or two to make sure that we have everything worked out and everything worked out the way it should be, then I will commit to the Member that I will make that determination close to the end of the month. We’ll be sure that we let the public know right away...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to welcome a former resident of Inuvik, Mr. Dez Loreen. Welcome to the gallery, Dez.

Mr. Chair, was there a question or was that just a comment? I don’t believe I heard a question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member is correct. We have looked at our O and M funding in the water and sewer and as a result of forced growth, and working with communities on some of the water and sewer, funding was increased. The O and M funding is one that we still need to work on a bit, because with all the capital money and capital projects that are going into communities, the concern we’re hearing from communities is that the O and M funding is not keeping up to the amount of capital that they’ve got. Considering our fiscal situation, I think there’s only so much we can put into...