Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I just want to follow up on my Member’s statement about the ability of Fort Liard residents and constituents getting at least a medical assessment done in B.C. One of the main reasons being is that they travel for three days, they come over here and the assessment says, yes, your leg is sore, then send them back home and then set up an appointment for a medical checkup.

I raised this issue in the House before with the Minister of Health and Social Services and I’d like to ask her again, has she looked into it and what can be done to address this situation for the Fort Liard residents? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I’d like to thank the Member for that issue. He has brought that up to me. I think it is an idea that is worth looking at and do some evaluation on. I’ve had a preliminary discussion with the officials about whether this could be looked at. We need to do further work on what services are available at the health facility in Fort Nelson. I understand that it has a lot less services than what Stanton has to

offer. We should also consider that we are already funding a lot of health facilities and services in the NWT and if at all possible we want to use that.

But I do appreciate the points the Member is raising. I think it’s worth pursuing. We haven’t concluded that review and I will undertake to get back to the Member on what we find and where we go from there. Thank you.

I understand with the Alberta system we have an agreement with the Capital Health Authority there. I’m not too sure which authority governs northern B.C., but a discussion like that with them will certainly go a long way to make travel and health concerns a lot better for residents of Fort Liard. To them it makes sense. How soon can these discussions take place if the Minister is proceeding on it? Thank you.

Obviously, Capital Health is our main service provider for services that cannot be provided within our Territories, but that’s not the only one. We have relationships with all sorts of different health facilities in all different provinces. So, Mr. Speaker, the important part is to look at for what services Liard residents go to Nelson. We need to look into what the Nelson facility is doing and how those services can be provided and whether or not those services are already in Simpson and Yellowknife and do some cost-benefit analysis. So we’re going to have to do more work on that. I would commit to the Member that I will try to get that review done in the next two or three months and get back to him. Thank you.

I don’t know if we can go as far as coming with a full-blown agreement with the B.C. health administration there, but I think sometimes all the residents want is to get their costs recovered for emergency, at least tooth services and/or other medical services that they travel to Fort Nelson for. In the assessment that she’s going to complete, can they also look at that arrangement of pre-approved travel? Thank you.

We could look into that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think what the Member is referring to is the Moose Hide Program that was introduced in the previous government. We tracked that and I think there were only four moose hides that were turned in. So we’ve taken a different approach in this government. We’ve established the SEED program, which is Support for Entrepreneurs and Economic Development. In that we have put in programs so that very small businesses, micro businesses, can access funding so that they can purchase raw materials so that they can continue to make some of the best arts and crafts in the world. We’ve taken that approach and I’m very pleased to see that there’s a very good uptake in almost every region and a lot of the small communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That’s interesting. I didn’t know how the Moose Hide Program had gone over, but I guess it is kind of a disappearing art and it’s unfortunate, because most of the people involved in that endeavour are usually getting up in age.

But the SEED program so that people can access materials, I’m glad to hear that there’s been uptake in that. Once people have access to those materials and then are interested in selling them, understanding that not everybody that creates these things is interested in marketing them, but for those who are, there seem very few, very well organized outlets for the marketing of these products. Like, I think of Winnie’s in Enterprise, the Fort Liard Craft Shop, certainly, shops here in Yellowknife that sells these products. Is there any program through the government which would help artisans organize themselves to market their products once they are made? Thank you.

I should probably qualify my statements on the moose hides. I think probably most people keep the moose hides for themselves, because they are an extremely valuable commodity in the communities. I think almost every community in the Northwest Territories has an arts and crafts or handicraft outlet where people can produce their craft and take it and sell. I know a lot of people make a lot of spending money from doing so, or some of them do it for their livelihood. We have quite a tremendous number of programs in this government. For example: we’ve upgraded our

NWT artist database; we have our branding logo program; we’ve been working on an NWT Arts Marketing Strategy; we do a lot of community consultations; we’re taking a number of arts and crafts people to the 2010 Olympics so that they can demonstrate their procedures and also their products; and, we also have a number of regional activities to further that. Also, through the BDIC we have a number of subsidiary programs that we use in a number of different communities.

Well, if communities are organized in the promoting and sale of arts and crafts in their communities, this is something relatively new to me. Because in a lot of small communities that I visited in the North, finding somebody who is an artisan and who has anything for sale in the community is like looking for a needle in a haystack most of the time and if you do find something, it’s very, very treasured.

Mr. Speaker, I guess it’s getting away from the business case for it, but a part of the tourism in the Northwest Territories is, again, to have access for visitors to view this particular area of culture in the NWT and I was wondering if the Minister could share with us what is being done to preserve and display something like the various art forms. What is being done by the government to preserve and display them for visitors and residents alike to enjoy? Thank you.

Thank you. I guess to begin we hire a number of people to go around the Territories on a regular basis to demonstrate different techniques, for example, on how to tan moose hides. We’ve shown people how to create spruce root baskets and also people that show how to do different kinds of artwork, beadwork, moose hair tufting and so on. So this is something that we do on a regular basis.

In terms of promoting it, I think we’re trying just about everything. We have a 1-800 number to promote artists and so that people can call. We have regional product displays; we have marketing and promotion workshops. So we work with our Department of Transportation so that we can put up displays to promote the arts and crafts at the different airports we’re looking to set up displays. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. That’s very informative and I must say that a lot of that information the Minister has just shared I was not aware of, but I think it is excellent to use government offices and spaces already owned by the government to display and promote arts and crafts in the Northwest Territories.

I would like to ask what role does the Prince of Wales Museum play in acting as an institution, I

guess, that has the capacity to collect, preserve, display arts and crafts in the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

The museum plays a very significant role, because we work very closely with our schools and education facilities, and certainly a lot of the children’s programs allow us to show some of these traditional activities. For example, we’ve worked with the Prince of Wales to have birch bark canoe projects where students from different schools can build a birch bark canoe, for example. So that’s all been put on tape and there are also books that have been created to show that. So we’re doing that with a number of different kinds of activities. The Prince of Wales has been very helpful in recreating some techniques that have been lost and recreated so that people can recover those skills. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi Cho, Mr. Speaker. Based on my Member’s statement today I have questions for the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation.

Can the Minister advise me if direction has been given to the staff to find creative solutions to address maintenance and repair issues for homeowners that have mortgage arrears or land tax or lease arrears? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The NWT Housing Corp has program staff in the regions and headquarters who work daily to find solutions to meet the housing needs of residents. On the issue of arrears and its impact on applications, it doesn’t prevent anyone from applying for the program; however, according to our policies, it prevents them from qualifying until their arrears are resolved.

We’ve had many people understanding that and are starting to take steps to write off their arrears, because they know it’s going to prevent them from applying for or qualifying for housing programs. So that’s one of the positives that has come out of this. Thank you.

Can the Minister tell me if the corporation has a strategy for dealing with clients that have income but feel that some of their housing problems are partly the fault of the NWT Housing Corporation, such as non-ventilated roofs where shingles were applied as an example? Thank you.