Shane Thompson

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's actually good news. I just wanted to get it clarified on that, and I hope the department is able to keep me updated. I know the community will, but, if the department can, as well, on the process of this as they move forward on this project. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my struggle is that the health centre, health cabin, whatever you want to call it, in Sambaa K’e, the one presently is owned by the community and they've used that as an opportunity for revenue themselves. In my conversations with the community, they were looking at a number of options. Has the department finally made a decision to move ahead and just build it, and does the Government of the Northwest Territories own it? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was asking about the Sambaa K’e Health Centre, not the one in Fort Simpson. That's all right. I understand. So, again, it's the Sambaa K’e Health Centre. Can you please provide the status on that? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Premier for his answer. I'm not talking about taking jobs away; if there's vacancies, you can put that part of the business plan I honestly believe, and work on it. My colleague spoke about a subsidy for small businesses or communities to help them hire additional summer students. Mr. Speaker, will the Premier commit to work with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to set up a subsidy of $5 an hour for at least a hundred positions at a cost to the GNWT of about $250,000? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I'd like to thank the Premier for his answer. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the Premier encourages his colleagues to try and meet or exceed last year's numbers, however, I believe there's a better way of doing it. Mr. Speaker, would the Premier please direct his colleagues to add summer employment opportunities for students as part of the 2017-2018 business plan?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank my colleagues. Out of these applications, 306 students were hired by the government. This sounds like a great number and it is; however, the previous year we had more summer students being employed by the government.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister spoke about the Premier and former Minister of Human Resources encouraging all the departments to see how we can better utilize our summer students. I think this is a great step, however we need to do more. This includes having the departments identifying the number of positions within their business plans and not rely...

I thank the Minister for his answer. I'm just a little bit disappointed in hearing that it's a generic one and I appreciate we need to develop a territorial one, but when we're looking at the small communities we're trying to get them off diesel fuel. I mean, ultimately, we're trying to make it a better place for people and reduce costs. So will the Minister get his department or the corporation to look at that strategy and talk to the smaller communities so they can work on something that they can make use of their money to make it more cost-effective to live in their communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I was talking about in my Member’s statement and as I was saying in question period, there was a public meeting with the Power Corporation and they talked about their strategic plan for the communities and the power, and how we're going to generate it and make it specifically for the communities. So I guess my question to the Minister, can he please explain if, by developing this, did the corporation actually work with the communities to come up with their specific one or is this a generic one for the whole NWT? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I talked about the public meeting we had in Colville Lake being presented there as the ideal model out there. Is the Minister able to work with the corporation or direct the corporation to come up with a better storage operation that can be used in these smaller communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I spoke about the Jean Marie and their willingness to become more energy efficient. I applaud them for doing this great initiative. Mr. Speaker, I was a little surprised to find out that communities can only generate 20 per cent of their own energy power from solar panels and stuff like that. This is a good step towards our mandate, but we need to do more especially for the smaller communities.

We need to help them become more energy efficient and the cost of living can go down. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister responsible for the NWT Power...