Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding is that the courses that they’re offering have been updated to include exactly what Member Bromley is talking about, the energy courses.

Madam Chair, the public safety division is purchasing supplies and we’re assisting DOT in delivering basic first responder training during some of the airport live exercises. We have a few communities that are partaking in this. The working group’s first priority, I think, would be to ensure that we have people that are trained to be first responders.

As far as the equipment goes, I think once they are trained to be first responders and the community, through some of the capital infrastructure money that they get from us, would be able to purchase the necessary equipment.

As far as the timeline...

Mr. Speaker, there are many opportunities for those that provide service to youth to network. We have a number of events that go on across the Northwest Territories at any given time where they could network and share some of their success stories and work with each other. However, I have committed to the Member that I will work with the officials and see about putting on a symposium.

As far as the timeline goes, once I have those discussions, I think I’ll be in a better position to give a definite date as to when we plan on having it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The forced growth funding, community government operations and maintenance funding went up by $1.37 million; water and sewer funding operations, $1.2 million; water and sewer funding classification, $413,000; grants in lieu of property taxes, $223,000; Collective Agreement increases, year one and two, $338,000; Property Tax Revenue Grant Program, $119,000.

We appreciate the Member pointing out some of the shortcomings of the communities across the Northwest Territories, and how we’re the only jurisdiction in the country that doesn’t have one. We’re a more stable jurisdiction with a lot of the people that are not moving about so often. In the bigger jurisdictions they all have the ability to just go down the street and, for the most part, find somebody to inspect.

Once we get some research done, I will commit to sharing it with the Members and, again, if there is input that the Members want to put into this, then we’d welcome that also.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are many opportunities for those that provide service to youth to come together on an informal basis and have discussions on how to improve the programs for youth. In the previous Assembly, I think the Premier at the time had a Premier’s forum with the youth and had a lot of providers there, a lot of youth workers, a lot of youth that were there. It was well attended, and the suggestions that came out of this forum for the age of the kids that took part in this forum were unbelievable. They did an excellent job. I mean, there are always opportunities for youth...

One of the things we’re working on is updating the Highway Emergency Alerting Protocol. As far as the interim measures go, I mean, I mentioned before that we’re trying to get some first responder training so we have some folks that are able to respond. We’re looking at different types of equipment they might need.

As far as implementing an interim service, that’s a huge undertaking, and I think we’d have to, as a department, have a look at that. We’d have to do our due diligence on that because it is going to be a huge undertaking. Even though it would be just an interim measure, there’s a lot...

They go in and they work with the local emergency personnel, and the local emergency personnel would share that information with the folks in their communities such as their town council, but the community is quite informed as to the work that the emergency folks are doing. It’s a great partnership and we’ll continue to grow that partnership.

If Members are concerned about the details of our strategic plan, I mean, we’d be more than happy to offer a briefing up to the members of SCEDI on the strategic plan for MACA.

Thank you. There’s a slight reduction in the amount of operating sales staff in this industry and that has led to the decreased revenue.