Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Arlene Hache, a member of the Order of Canada and a proud constituent in Weledeh.

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I would also like to thank the Pages for the wonderful care we have been getting from them and recognize Kaitlyn Menard also from Weledeh.

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Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If I may, I would also like to recognize Ms. Arlene Hache who has been an advocate in the community of Yellowknife and the North for many, many years and who has just received outstanding recognition and been called into the Order of Canada. Thank you.

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Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to recognize a Page that we have working from the riding of Kam Lake, Ms. Madison Phillips and also to the rest of the Pages for all the hard work that they do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Item 6, acknowledgements. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are in the early stages of this whole process. As of right now, we are not quite sure of the costing. That is something that, as we go further into this, is going to have to be worked out. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we do have a lot of different types of communities. We have large municipalities such as Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik, which depend on their utilidor systems or their sewer systems which most of them already have some types of infrastructure to deal with treatment, but the other communities we have basically depend on water delivery systems, vacuum trucks and whatnot to deliver water to the community to the homes and then basically dispose of the water into a vacuum truck and dispose of it into a lagoon. Is there going to be a territorial strategy to deal with this issue, realizing that we have different levels of communities which depend on different types of services? Is there going to be criteria that we all have to follow? Is there going to be criteria which is different for smaller communities than, say, larger communities? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as we go further into the standards and what is going to be required of each community there will have to be a strategy, because one system is not going to work for every community across the Northwest Territories. That is something that, as we go further into the strategy, then we will have to decide what is best for each community at that time. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, one thing that we have seen and the challenges we have seen with the new water treatment plants that are going into the communities, they are all high tech. They have bells and whistles. They go off every once in a while. You practically need a computer technician to come in and try to reboot these things. I would just like to ask the Minister, whatever system we have, we have to make sure it is user friendly to the North and also that people are trained to be able to provide those services. Is there going to be some

sort of standard system we use across the board that is simple and easy to use and that we don’t have to get some high-tech engineer to come in to figure out our problems every time they go down? Is that something that the Minister can also develop into his strategy?

Mr. Speaker, the lessons that we learn from the water treatment plants are going to be used to go a long way in deciding what kind of systems, if any, we are going to have to come up with for the wastewater part of it. If there is a standardized system that we can come up with across the Northwest Territories, then that is something that we would have to seriously consider. It would be cost beneficial to the Northwest Territories too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, there is going to be a major capital cost to this. I would like to ask the Minister, knowing that we are already expending the $185 million to the Building Canada Fund, is there going to be a special fund from the federal government to deal with implementing this strategy throughout the Northwest Territories and you are talking possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to make these changes throughout the Northwest Territories?

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. We would expect the federal government to have to pony up some cash here, because it is something that using the money that would supply the communities right now. It is going to be quite an expensive undertaking to have this wastewater sewage treatment facility. It is a discussion that we are going to have to have with the federal government and make sure that they come up with some financing, because it would be too expensive for the communities to finance it on their own. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister McLeod. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my Member’s statement and ask questions to the Minister of Human Resources. What is the government strategy for continued support of our summer students? Is there an overall target for this coming year? How many students are we targeting to employ? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hiring of summer students is a priority for our government. Every year we work very closely with departments to identify many summer student hiring opportunities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to hear that it certainly is a priority. It is a priority of mine as well. How many students are we targeting in the Territory as a whole? Does the Minister have any details of how many in my riding? Thank you.

Last year we had 281 summer students that worked for us. This is a number that is down. I think the highest we ever had was 351 summer students. Our average usually runs around 315 summer students a year. We are hoping that we will get back to our average this year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to hear those numbers are very high. I certainly urge the government to continue that. In my riding, I have done some checking there. We have some .5 positions. I mentioned that in my Member’s statement. Is there a way to not do this, Mr. Speaker? Full-time positions, I think, are critical and should be encouraged. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Member that we feel it’s in the best interests of summer students to be employed fully for the whole summer and we’ll continue to work closely with the departments to endeavour to increase their allocations for summer students.

For the Nahendeh region I think there are about 15 to 21 summer students that are hired. Thank you.