Tom Beaulieu

I’m just trying to get up to speed on the situation over there. The senior citizens home has gone through some review and there has been the determination that more services could be provided. The Housing Corporation has issued a request for a proposal for a design required for the changes that are necessary. At this time, the Housing Corporation is looking at the RFP submissions. We were hoping that sometime close to the end of last month they would be able to review those proposals to see how they were going to proceed with any design changes that may be necessary to accommodate the people...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Fort Providence Senior Citizens Home is definitely in the inventory of government; however, it is in the inventory of the NWT Housing Corporation. I believe that the Housing Corporation does work with the Dehcho Health and Social Services Authority to provide some services. The senior citizens home in Fort Providence is not a long-term care facility. It’s an independent living facility. I’m going to have to get some information from the Housing Corporation on what type of security is provided to the residents there. Thank you.

I would like to introduce a couple of people in the gallery. Steve Loutitt is director of road licensing and safety for the Department of Transportation, and Anita Merritt is his friend visiting us from Alberta.

Thank you. We have a guy that is going to be living in Tulita right throughout the entire winter road season who works for us. He’s a fairly senior individual in the Department of Transportation. He’ll be working with two monitors also out of the Fort Simpson office and we’ll be doing some debriefing at the end of the winter road to see what is needed. I think it’s at that point that the department has indicated that there may be certainly a look at our base. We have a certain amount of money in the base and that requires the contractor to grade at certain intervals and sometimes there’s a lot...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we will be working with the community to install the bridge. The bridge is in Inuvik, as the Member indicated. There are also piles that have to be ordered and installed in order to place the bridge on, and that’s also going to be happening on this winter road.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the ‘13-14 actuals it was a process where we didn’t spend the money that was in the budget. So if we go back to the mains from the previous year, the mains of ‘13-14 would be more in line with the mains from ‘14-15 and the mains from ‘15-16, but the actuals indicate that we didn’t spend all the money. There was an opportunity in that area where we had passive restraint, so we didn’t spend the money. That’s why it reflects the difference, the large difference there.

No, we haven’t offered up any money to our share of any dredging. What we do know is that the federal government is not dredging the harbour in Hay River. They haven’t had a dredging program since the early ‘90s, late ‘80s. Since then we’ve had a little bit of money at one point. I think in 2012 there was $60,000 allocated to remove some of the silt from a key area. But aside from that, essentially the dredging program has been non-operational for the years. It would take some money, for sure, to get the dredging operational again. The dredging equipment that was being used previously at the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will commit to contacting the Members to obtain a list of individuals that may have been faced with being qualified and not being able to get into the public service.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our officials have had a meeting with the Canadian Coast Guard and encouraged them to meet with the CMAC and the AMAB, they are two organizations, I guess, known as the Canadian Marine Advisory Council and the Arctic Marine Advisory Board, to see if there can be some dredging done on the Hay River and along the route up the Mackenzie. Thank you.

We have worked with that as a department, Human Resources. We’ve reviewed all of the vacancies to be filled. We’ve looked at the qualifications of those vacant positions and we’ve looked at if any barriers at all were placed in any of those positions, barriers that would make it difficult for individuals of a priority group to get into those jobs.