I am afraid I have to ask the same question again because I need to have the Minister clarify for the general public. If I have a tenant who is slapped with a 30 percent increase in their rent, albeit it is the only increase in rent they have in an annual year, can the rental officer deal with that complaint? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, the rental officer does have a certain responsibility to deal with clientele. If it happens to be on the rent increase, again, they have to be given notice. To deal with the specifics, I need to find out more of the regulation itself because we are going through some amendments to the regulations. I need to get more clarification on exactly what the Member is referring to. I can certainly get back to the Member on the specific item. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought I was pretty specific. Exactly what I am referring to is an exorbitant rent increase in any one year. A 30 percent rent increase has been seen by some tenants in my riding. So I need to know where the tenant can go. Can the rental officer handle a complaint about an exorbitant rent increase? That is my concern. The communication from the

Minister’s office advised that this issue speaks to the broader issues of housing affordability and states that Justice, ECE and the Housing Corporation will look into this and determine how best to address the issue of housing affordability. Could the Minister advise me what that means, what steps are going to be taken to look into this? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I did indicate in this House that this will be taken into consideration. There are going to be new amendments to the act itself. It has to be brought back to this Assembly. The amendments have gone through this House back in June. We are going through implementation stages. We are going through the regulations. If there are going to be changes, that will certainly take into affect during the business planning process. We will continue to improve our services that we provide to the general public. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of ITI some questions on our business policy. I was just perusing the request for tenders and I noticed that there is a new addition to our government tenders. It speaks about chapter 5 of the Agreement on Internal Trade will apply to this procurement. I am not aware of what that means. I am not aware of an Agreement on Internal Trade. Can I ask the Minister to explain what that is? Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Agreement on Internal Trade is an interprovincial agreement which has been signed by all of the provinces and territories. I think Nunavut is the most recent signatory to this agreement. This promotes the free movement of labour and capital across the provinces and territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As well, I saw in another bid document that said the Agreement on International Trade. Is there a separate Agreement for International Trade or what is the explanation on that, Mr. Speaker? Thank you.

I am not familiar with a separate Agreement on International Trade other than the ones the Government of Canada has signed off on in which we would be participating in,

like agreements like NAFTA for example. With regards to the AIT chapter 5 that is referred to, I am glad that somebody is reading the fine print in the ads, because chapter 5 provides for an exception and here in the Northwest Territories it allows us to have preferential hiring and buying to recognize that we are in a depressed area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have to concur that sometimes the Committee of the Whole meetings are long so we tend to read anything that is before us. That just happened to stand out. I think the Agreement on International Trade that I referenced may have been a typo in the ad. Can the Minister provide me with a copy of this document? If I had a question, Mr. Speaker, was there an assessment done on how it would impact local business, their ability to bid on contracts and is there an increase in competition? Thank you.

I should point out that this is not a new wording in the ads. It is a boiler plate that has been around for some time. When the Agreement on Internal Trade was signed, I think it was about four or five Assemblies ago. We specifically requested that chapter 5 allowed us to carve out the fact that we do have a Business Incentive Policy and that we do have northern preferential contracting and tendering. Certainly I will make a copy of the agreement available to the Member and any other Members that would like to have a copy of it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It actually sounds like an old agreement. I thought it was something new that we weren’t aware of. Is there a reason why our government in the procurement policy now is putting this line item in the bid advertisements? Thank you.

My understanding is that it has been a boiler plate item for some time now. I will just reconfirm that it is not something new, because I have checked and there have been some discussions at the First Ministers. Those discussions have been mostly on labour mobility. I will confirm that this is not something new for the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my questions are for the Minister of MACA.

Today is the start of the Volunteer Summit. It is co-hosted by Finance and MACA. I am pretty optimistic that we are going to get some good information from the different voluntary organizations and the different NGOs. I am curious, what are the next steps once that information is gathered? What are the next steps as far as moving forward with the voluntary sector? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is right; the summit does start tonight at 6:00. They are opening up at the Explorer Hotel. I invite the Members to drop by. What we are hoping to get out of this is a plan of action for deciding how we are going to go about dealing with the volunteer groups across the Northwest Territories. We are hoping to put together a plan and look at all the different options there are out there. We all know that volunteers are important in the community and we need to come up with ways to recruit new volunteers, and we are hoping to put all of that into a plan and hopefully have the opportunity to implement it so we can strengthen the volunteer circuit across the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

I’d like to thank the Minister for that response. It might be a little bit early but I’ll ask anyway, do we have any sort of timeline in how we’re going to move forward with this information and recommendations that are gathered through this summit and at what point will the Minister be able to get back to standing committee with some of the findings so that we can move forward? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As to the timelines of when we can come forward, we’re hoping to do that as quickly as we can process all the information. Once we have that information processed, then I would make an invitation to sit down with EDI and discuss where we go from there and get their feedback on it. Then, hopefully, get out there and start presenting it to the public and see what kind of feedback we get from this initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions for the Minister of MACA in terms of the consumer protection in the Northwest Territories. I understand, Mr. Speaker, that the department does have personnel that take care of

the consumer protection, but I also understand that there are a lot of scams that are happening in the Northwest Territories -- theft identity and fraudulent activities -- and we want to have some protection for the residents of the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister what is this department doing in terms of protecting the consumers against these types of activities that may be happening or are happening in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.