Julian Morse

No, thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of ECC. Mr. Speaker, what is the status of the initiative to bulk transfer Commissioner's land within the municipal boundary of the city of Yellowknife at this time? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this summer I received a request from a constituent to deal with an issue that seemed to pretty clearly fall under municipal jurisdiction. Someone was illegally dumping domestic garbage in a small wooded area about 10 metres off of one of Yellowknife's most densely populated neighbourhoods in my riding. MLAs often receive issues which fall under municipal purview, and I make sure to forward these issues on to city Council to handle. But we looked it up and, sure enough, this piece of land in question is untenured Commissioner's land. So despite being deep...

Thank you. And I wanted to similarly ask some questions about the Gordon Lake patrol station. So I'm just looking at the most recent mobile core Bathurst caribou management zone, and the patrol station is on there. It looks from the map that the patrol station is not on the main winter road route. I could be wrong about that. But is there talk of relocating the station to the winter road, or am I just simply mistaken?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I always say, there's lots of lakes in Yellowknife so it takes a while to get us all figured out.

Mr. Chair, I really just wanted to put my comments on the record and just compliment the committee on an excellent and comprehensive review and really wanted to highlight, again, the recommendations that committee made. They're extensive. There's 15 of them in total, and I think it's important to note that if you take the recommendations in their entirety, and I guess I would direct these comments towards Cabinet. I mean, they're going to be directing their staff and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that certainly is good news.

Mr. Speaker, are there any outstanding applications currently before the department of ECC at this time from the city?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I understand that there's a desire among certain Members to respond swiftly to things like a report like this, and certainly there can be merit in doing that, but I also want to note that it's important to me to take the time to understand an issue fully, give appropriate weight to a decision as impactful as departmental restructuring or establishment of a new agency altogether. We have limited resources, and we need to take the time necessary to be responsible stewards of those resources. For these reasons, I have advocated for and I'm looking forward to a...

It sounds to me like we don't have -- or how do I put it. So the expectation is there won't be any additional staffing needed, there won't be any additional resources needed to operate this facility based on what we know right now?

Okay, thank you. And that's really what I meant was not so much that the department would be setting priorities on behalf of communities, but the department would be setting priorities for itself on where it's going to, you know, put its resources in terms of helping communities.

And my next question was going to be if there's any communities that are currently at risk of their funding lapsing. And it sounds like we got some time, so I take some comfort there. And those are all my questions for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that answer, and I guess I would just ask back, based on that answer, I mean, what are we doing to support the communities in streamlining whatever reporting process we need to. Just because I think the bottom line here, I think we can all agree, we want this money to get spent, this is money that's coming in from the feds, it's in the communities. We absolutely want those projects getting done. So it's really just a reporting issue. I have a feeling there's a bit more to it than that. But can the Minister just discuss how the department is providing support to...