We are indeed, in our child and family services work, hearing a lot about some of those issues. My next question is really related to those that are coming out of jail. In many cases, people fighting poverty end up in our jails. There seems to be an opportunity to take advantage of this by making sure there are good educational programs while people are in jail. Certainly, as they are coming back into society, transition things like referrals and upgrading, referrals to housing upon release, referrals to behavioural support such as

anger management, parenting skills and health education. Are these services provided at this time?

We do have counsellors at the corrections area as well. Also just working with those individual clients, the inmates, upon their release, rehabilitation development stages. We do have a team that refers them to the outside link. Once they leave the facility, we just don’t ignore them; we have contact with the community they’re from to see how they’re doing and if they’ve moved on with their lives. Not only that, we try to set up as much arrangement as we can with the client services department as well.

What is the process for placing someone back in the community after addictions treatment is completed? Is there counselling that takes into account employment services, housing and other basic needs?

This particular area consists of interdepartmental avenues with Health and Social Services and Housing and our Department of Education, Culture and Employment, through the income client service officers. So we continue to work together in that respect. There is a process in place where when inmates leave the facility, planning takes place to certain contacts in the communities. So we do what we can to provide those services from our departmental perspective.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What I hear from people I’m chatting with is often our system does not ensure that the context, and there’s an infinite variety of circumstances in people’s lives, that all important context does not go with them through the system and that often income support is not cognizant of that. It’s a relatively cold and objective system if it doesn’t incorporate the very human aspects of it. How does this Minister and others in this government ensure that all important context goes along with people as they access all types of different government services?

We consider as much context as we possibly can, once the individuals provide that information. Sometimes we have to request the information when they are not provided immediately, but we do what we can to get the information out of them. People do change, so we need to work with those individuals and, through the development stages, provide training for them to have productive choices in life as well.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d just like to ask a follow-up on my

Member’s statement and ask the Minister of Transportation some questions with regard to carry-overs in my riding. Last year we had a huge opportunity to provide some chipsealing towards Fort Simpson, reconstruct Highway No. 7 from the B.C. border to Fort Liard, and complete the Nahanni Butte access road. Unfortunately, we were unable to do it. I’d like to ask the Minister what the plans are to complete these projects this coming fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has listed a number of projects in his riding that have been deferred or carried over. Our intention is to get them all done for this year, on top of the projects that are listed; providing that the budget is approved, of course. We’ve had a lot of work going on in the area of Nahendeh, I think to the tune of almost $30 million worth of projects. We had a few projects that weren’t able to move forward as a result of weather and other issues, but we fully intend to have those done this coming year.

I guess the most important question for the constituents is: will we be involved in another lengthy tendering process and awarding the contract where it will take us into late summer or fall to complete these projects, or can we get out of the gate early and complete these projects in the springtime?

There were only a couple of projects and some of them had a fairly large budget that we weren’t able to bring forward. Those have, for the most part, awarded, and we expect those will come out fairly quickly in the spring. Conditions, of course, with the weather and ground conditions will be a factor, but we expect those to move forward. There are still some that need to be tendered, but we’ll have those out fairly quick also.

With the couple of contracts that the Minister did speak about, do we have to wait until the new fiscal year, April 1st , to get those

tendered out, or is the work and process underway to get those contracts into the system and into the public’s hands?

Some of those were already tendered out and have been awarded, and we’re not able to move forward as a result of weather conditions and some other issues that have not allowed these projects to progress. I would expect that we’d be looking at coming out really quickly, as this money is being carried over.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I guess one of the largest incomplete projects was the Highway No. 7 from the B.C. border to Fort Liard. What efforts and plans and how many kilometres will be completed this coming construction season?

The Member is asking me to talk about some very specific details. I don’t have it in my memory bank to tell him how many kilometres are going to be done. I could tell him there was $5.4 million dollars planned for Highway No. 7 that needs to be concluded. We’re also planning to do a number of kilometres along Highway No. 1 to get chipsealed. That’s the information I can share, is the dollar amount. I don’t have the actual kilometres and locations.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to my colleague from Nahendeh for leaving me a few minutes on the clock here. My questions today for the Premier relate to the Member’s statement that I made. We say that we are interested in lowering the cost of living for people in the Northwest Territories. Some 22 years ago the Government of the Northwest Territories repatriated the power company from the Northern Canada Power Commission and established the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. As creating that Crown corporation, we necessarily, as a government, owned it, we were the shareholder. Then we instituted the Public Utilities Board to regulate that power company and some other utilities in the Northwest Territories. As the shareholder, we require the NTPC to act like a business and to earn a profit so they can pay us, as a shareholder, a dividend, which we could then take and redistribute that money to levelize the power rates in the Northwest Territories. As you can see, the whole thing gets really convoluted.

The Premier told my colleague Mr. Ramsay that we could have a fairly immediate positive impact on the cost of living in the Northwest Territories if we would implement some of the recommendations in the electricity rate review. Could the Premier tell me if there are any recommendations there that would somehow streamline this fairly convoluted process we have for generating, regulating and delivering power to the people of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker,I believe the rate review work that was

done does highlight a number of areas that we could look at when it comes to the way we do business and how we’re structured across the board, and that would include the Power Corporation. For example, rate of return versus cost of doing business, in a sense, is one of those areas that could be looked at. The other work that we were doing is tied to this. We’re still wanting to sit down with committee to go over how we would look at the NTPC review itself. But more specifically, I believe there is opportunity in the energy rate review work that’s being done and how we would respond could give us areas to look at in looking at potential areas of change, if the House was willing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The time for question period has expired; however, I will allow the Member a supplementary question. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in what becomes of all these reviews because, Mr. Speaker, in the community of Hay River resides the Power Corporation headquarters, which we value very greatly; the headquarters for Northland Utilities, which has been there for over 70 years; and, of course, the headquarters and offices of the Public Utilities Board, also located in Hay River. So this is something that is very important to me, but I’m sure very important to other communities and other people in the Northwest Territories as well.

Mr. Speaker, again, I ask the Premier, is there a precedent or a template out there somewhere of a jurisdiction like ours where we can bring the generation and distribution and sale of power closer to us as a government, in some way eliminating some of these very costly processes that we necessarily have to go through. Thank you.