Robert C. McLeod

There was a community liaison position that was piloted a couple of years ago and I’m not sure if it still exists, but now they’re having the single-window service centres that they’re trying, and maybe this is one area where they can be of assistance to the NWT Housing Corp.

It’s awfully hard to take folks out of the regional office and maybe move them into the communities. I think we might be better served if we were able to utilize the folks in the communities and be in contact with folks in the regional office.

I mean, we’ve seen a perfect example in one of the other jurisdictions of where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’m pleased to share with Members the infrastructure achievements of community governments in the Northwest Territories. Community governments are important partners for the Government of the Northwest Territories as we work towards achieving our goals of this Assembly.

Beginning in 2005 with the federal New Deal for Cities and Communities and then in 2007 with the GNWT’s New Deal for NWT Community Governments, community governments began receiving funding to invest in their own infrastructure priorities. While not all community governments have advanced at the...

Mr. Chairman, the Member is correct when he talks about the senior and I will respond to Mr. Yakeleya’s concern about the seniors and how I feel we go to great lengths to make sure our seniors are well taken care of. We do run into some cases. We do hear a case here and there. I think for the most part within our seniors we have across the Northwest Territories, a lot of those are living in their own homes. I think we look after them quite well.

The Member mentioned the preventative maintenance program and talking about all the number of programs that a particular individual had access to over...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To give the Member some comfort, we do plan on allocating resources to all those who have been approved. If somebody is approved, they won’t have to worry about us telling them that we have no money.

We’ve been very fortunate through the Rural and Remote Communities committee that they’ve identified some money for apprentices and we’ve been able to take some on and we’ve been able to retain them and add more on.

I take the Member’s point that as far as using able-bodied people in the communities. In some communities the LHOs have been very good at putting a lot of people in the community to work. You hear some cases where they’ve used them to maybe take apart an old building. I will commit to the Member that I’ll have discussions with my colleague, the Minister of Education, Culture and...

I would encourage most people to try to apply even if they don’t think the market is right, because they do have a length of time where they’re able to look for a unit. So if they were to get their application in right away.

Going back to the Member’s original question, though, it is part of the evaluation that we’re looking at and we see there may be some opportunity to maybe come back with a second intake for programs like PATH and that. Thank you.

I have committed to the Member that we’ll have the discussion and I’ll follow up with the officials on a number of other situations like this that we have out there. There’s opportunity to maybe have some discussions with my Cabinet colleagues and see if there are ways we can be a little more accommodating. I will commit to the Member that I’ll undertake that. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, obviously it would be our preference to use as much local labour as possible. Some contracts have been negotiated in the past. In some cases it may have been a project management issue where the project wasn’t done on a timely manner. Unfortunately, that hurts the local development corporation that they may have partnered up with. We continue to look on a case-by-case basis. They come forward, the good case where they may have different project management teams in place, then we would obviously have a look at it.

For those that want training, like the young person that you are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do get requests for negotiated contracts and we look at a few factors when we determine whether we’re going to follow through with the negotiated contracts. One of them, obviously, is the number of contractors that are in the community. If there are other contractors that have an opportunity to bid on the work if it goes public or if they’ve also submitted a request for a negotiated contract, we look at that. We look at past performance. If we’ve negotiated a contract before and the work and the timeliness of it has not been up to par, then that’s another factor we...

I hear the Member’s comments and I’ve heard those comments before, where you get some concerns from the residents in the NWT where somebody has accessed a program and they seem to continue to access those programs where somebody that needs a lot of assistance is not getting it.

I hear the Member’s concern with people who apply for these units, they did apply for the units and we gave them the units and there was a forgivable portion, especially the old HAP units. I’ve asked the corporation, just talking to the two Jeffs here, and I’ve asked if we can come up with the information on a lot of the...