Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The recommendations that came from that review are certainly important because it went out and heard from all of the people of the Northwest Territories. Once again, working with the committee system we do have to come up with an implementation strategy. I believe it was the will of this Assembly to continue and implement those changes. We can do it.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Miltenberger.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It goes without saying, that the work of committees is vital to the functioning of this Assembly and good governance, proper legislation, proper policy direction. The issue always tends to come down to not the matters of policy issues but the issue of resources with the work that was done by the previous committee. There was agreement that things could be done that were agreed to prior to the passage of the last budget. There, I think, would be a valuable need to have that piece of work once committees are structured and once Cabinet is picked to bring that work back on the table as part of the transition work and setting the priorities going forward for the business planning process to review the outstanding recommendations and how do we collectively want to move forward on that, and if we’re going to identify resources, how do we do that, factoring all those pressures in.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. McLeod.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The child and family services review was a very comprehensive piece of work and I think that it was reviewed close to the end of the 16th Assembly. I

think it would benefit from a more comprehensive review by this Assembly. I think our children are our most important asset and we need to make sure that they’re looked after. However we deal with them, it really affects how they go forward in life. I think that by working together and supporting each other, we can have something that will be truly in the best interest of children.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Moses.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Alfred Moses Inuvik Boot Lake

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question deals with early childhood programs and development within the Northwest Territories. Early childhood development is key within our population and investing these types of programs will result in success for the future of our children, our families

and our communities. Right now we are currently seeing a need for the infrastructure in terms of facilities as well as training staff, more or less, in our regional centres. We’re getting an increased population with families going to school, looking for work, and in some cases lowering candidates. For Premier is: what are they willing to do to invest into these facilities and training the staff, quality trained staff for our families and communities, and how they prioritize where these would go in terms of the Northwest Territories?

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Menicoche.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Kevin A. Menicoche Nahendeh

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This government must continue to support strong families and abilities to make a living. The early childhood programming and their lack of infrastructure is seen not only in the larger centres but even in our smaller communities. That’s something I would certainly review and look at and find a way to be supportive of the programming. I believe that the training that Mr. Moses was talking about and quality training is definitely needed.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Miltenberger.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the next few weeks we are collectively going to be getting together to finalize the list of priorities as the Legislative Assembly. As a result of our time together and all the concerns, this issue has come up consistently in a lot of the priorities already listed. If it’s identified as a priority and comes forward in the business plans, then we’ll be looking at where do we find the money.

I’ll point to one potential area of re-profiling of funding: through the program review department that is located with the Executive there was work done on inclusive schooling and PTR, which indicated that they are overfunded by the formula and there was potential to possibly re-profile some of that money. This area would be one that would be considered, I think we could consider to do that if that was the agreement once we review all those figures and confirm that that is in fact the case. That is an opportunity to putting some of that money to use.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. McLeod.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This question came up during the election here in Yellowknife. I think the Status of Women posed this in a questionnaire to all the Yellowknife candidates and they pointed out that early childhood programs really benefited families and couples that wanted to improve their education and so on. In that response I indicated my support for that and I would want to see it continue.

I think we need to also involve the federal government. The federal government in the past has funded daycare programs. I was struck when I went to Ulukhaktok to open their arts centre there, how a small community like Ulukhaktok has a daycare centre for the community, and I want to see how they were able to make it happen in a small community like that and perhaps learn from that and see how we can do it in other communities.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Lafferty.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

October 25th, 2011

Jackson Lafferty Monfwi

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this opportunity. It’s been four years since I last asked questions, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

---Laughter

I’d like to reflect on Mr. Beaulieu’s question on the youth. This Legislative Assembly, the previous Assembly, and as we move forward I’ve heard over and over about the youth as the most priority within this government. I’d like to focus with a twist on what we can do even further into the communities.

I can speak more specifically to my region and that will be the community of Behchoko. It does reflect on other communities as well. I’d like to focus on the number of break-ins for the last several weeks now, almost every weekend. We have a big facility in Behchoko, but it hasn’t been touched for a number of years. It’s no fault of the youth that the building is not being renovated, but at the same time there is a deficit recovery plan with our government. At the same time we can’t move forward on the actual building to retrofit the building. We need to do something for the youth.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask the Premier-to-be what is their overall plan to deal with these matters at hand where some of the communities are in deficit, they don’t have a decent facility for the youth, but there is a plan in place to have a recovery deficit plan in place.

We need to think beyond innovative and creative thinking. This is what we are accountable to the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask those candidates, we need to think beyond what we have before us. If there is a plan in place, what are your overall objectives to deal with those individual communities that may have a deficit recovery plan to deal with those facilities that are badly needed?

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Menicoche.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Kevin A. Menicoche Nahendeh

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Many of our communities throughout this Northwest Territories do have similar instances. Some will be arenas, some will be lack of funding for pool infrastructure, but they’re all community based, and with the New Deal we transferred all the

responsibilities to the communities. We can still have an impact. Government can still have an impact. We can make changes; we can look at unique solutions. I think one of them Ms. Bisaro talked about is a loan. How can we loan governments money that are having issues in the communities with infrastructure? Infrastructure deficit goes far beyond communities. It goes throughout the whole of the Territories. I would certainly commit to looking at unique ways of addressing this. I also believe that each of the communities should have proper facilities like a gymnasium, arena, etcetera.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. McLeod.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Bob McLeod Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I recently attended a dinner and sports awards of the Aboriginal Sports Circle. Some of the award winners spoke about the importance of sports in the small communities. These were parents, mothers and fathers talking about all the work they did in fundraising and making sure their children participated in sports. They all spoke about how important it was, how it made sure it kept the children off the streets, it kept them engaged and how important it was for the youth of their community. Certainly sports facilities I think are very important. I know municipalities, there’s a gas tax deal, there’s a New Deal, and I think that’s something we should look at. I guess I say that politics is the art of the possible, so I think it’s something that we should look at, very similar to Northland, to see what we can do to work with the community to deal with this very important project for the community of Behchoko.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Miltenberger.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our ability to deal with a lot of the capital infrastructure needs as a government with communities is going to be tied, I believe, very closely to the borrowing limit. Hopefully we’ll get that successfully resolved to see what kind of flexibility we have. As we look at infrastructure investments, we know we have some very major projects, but we also know that the community has needs as well. I think the other area we have to investigate fully is are there willingness for partnerships; partnerships with other levels of government, the Aboriginal governments. If there’s an area where there’s a major presence of corporations, what support is there? I notice in Yellowknife there’s a lot of very, very good support by the diamond mines for a lot of projects in Yellowknife. Those type of avenues as we think outside the box, as well, have to be explored.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Before we go on I’d like to welcome

former MLA for Mackenzie Delta, Government Leader, Speaker, Minister and currently president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council, Mr. Richard Nerysoo. Welcome to the House.

---Applause

Mr. Beaulieu.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Within Akaitcho and many other regions across the Northwest Territories there are a lot of contaminated waste sites from exploration or past mining. I’d like to ask the candidates for Premier what they would do to address the issue of contaminated waste sites across the Territories.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

The Chair Jackie Jacobson

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Miltenberger.

Questions By Members
Election of the Premier

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That particular issue has its own chapter in the Devolution Agreement-in-Principle. There are hundreds and hundreds of sites to be cleaned up. I think we have to nail down the responsibility to make sure the federal government is responsible for all the sites that are on their land so that as we proceed, we make sure the resources are there. We continue to treat Giant separately. That we negotiate a proper deal, recognizing at the same time that the federal government is cutting billions of dollars out of their budget over the next two or three years, $4 billion a year. That’s a challenge for us. Identification and then looking at what remediation money we do have to make sure we’re prioritizing that money and hitting the most important sites first.

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