As part of our Shelter Policy review that we briefed committee on the other day, we had made a commitment to engage all the communities. I actually just had a meeting this morning with staff members and it is their intent to have regional meetings and meet with as many of the leadership in the communities as possible to get their input as to the best way to deliver housing in their communities and what improvements we can make.

We take our work very seriously and we want to make sure that we give everybody an opportunity across the NWT to engage with us so we’re not faced with situations like we have today, not only in the Member’s riding but we have a few other ridings where arrears are a serious issue. But we also have a number of communities, small communities, where they do an excellent job managing their arrears and making sure that collections are on time and up to date.

We have had situations where the responsibility for the assessment has come back to the Housing Corporation and I have committed to going back, we’re working checking back records there to see how much of the arrears were accumulated during the time where ECE was responsible for the assessment. Again, I have committed to getting that work done and reporting back to Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Colleagues, I’d like to remind you of your rules concerning question period and answer period. We’re well over halfway through question period and we haven’t gotten halfway through the Members yet. So, oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement today about youth at risk, I’d like to ask the Minister of Health

and Social Services does this government have any way of determining what the magnitude of this problem may be in the Northwest Territories. Is there any data on that that would help us develop solutions and response to this issue? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our best information, of course, is for those that are children in care that come under the Child and Family Services Act. The gap between, and I think the Member for Kam Lake acknowledged that and mentioned that gap for those teenagers. Our information is relatively weak. Thank you.

Thank you. When the Minister spoke the other day, I believe in Committee of the Whole, saying that this government cannot possibly have enough money to address all of the social concerns once they have advanced to the point that trying to achieve and address these solutions is so costly that this government doesn’t have enough money for that, and he stressed the importance of working on the front end on preventative measures. Mr. Speaker, I see a lot of opportunity where we as a government could bring programs, services to bear early on when these young people first begin to encounter some of the problems that we see playing themselves out before us today. I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what kind of programs right now currently exist to support parents and youth that are going through these difficult times where the attraction of drugs and alcohol and other things are setting some of our young people on a course of destruction. Thank you.

Thank you. This is a community issue of which there are many roles for people to play, and governments. The role that we play, we have resources on the ground with social workers, with child protection people. We have probation officers, we have teachers, we have nurses, there’s some youth centres, there’s recreation centres that we have. We work with communities to build their community recreation complexes. For those that need specific counselling, we have access to some psychological, and more difficult, but we have also access to some psychiatric services, though the psychiatric services out of Yellowknife.

So we do have some services across the North in just about every community in one form or to one degree or another. Thank you.

Thank you. I’d like to ask the Minister if he feels that the seriousness and magnitude of this problem perhaps would be worthy

of a specific dialogue with these organizations and communities that he’s referring to. I’m very concerned about this particular age group where it seems like we lose some of our young people where all these things that he’s referring to, somehow children, which is what they are, young people, are still falling between the cracks. Does the Minister think that in an attempt to come up with more specific solutions and specific programs that the situation would merit a dialogue on this very particular issue? Thank you.

The Member raises a good suggestion and there is and has been over the years and in some communities there is an ongoing interagency type of arrangement where the involved departments and agencies get together to discuss some of the issues where the elected leaders in the community get together as well as part of the process to deal with issues. Usually, unfortunately, sometimes spurred on by a crisis or some tragic event that has happened in the community.

But I agree with the Member that there is a tremendous amount of community resources. It takes something to bring them together to do that type of planning. There’s a significant amount of resources, both human and fiscal at the community level, and there’s also, with our type of government, an enormous amount of capacity for communities and the regions to be able to design programs that meet their needs with the funds that they have down there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would very much like to see the safety net around this particular age group strengthened through cooperation between teachers, educators, social workers, families, communities, churches. I would very much like to see this safety net for this age group strengthened, and I would ask the Minister if he would consider a specific dialogue and discussion with people who are in this field going forward and perhaps include it in a transition plan for the 17th Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you. The Member for Hay River South and I have a history going back on this issue, a shared history to a certain extent, going back probably over 20 years on dealing with children in care, teenagers. I would be more than happy to sit down as a good starting point with the chair of the Social Programs and the Social Programs committee. I agree that this could be one issue that’s identified in the transition plan that’s going to need attention, given the events that are happening around us. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve got questions today for the Minister of Transportation getting back to my Member’s statement where I was talking about the possible realignment of Highway No. 4, the Ingraham Trail, past the former Giant Mine site.

Back in November of last year the Minister and I had a bit of an exchange on some question about where the government was at with the realignment. Back in November the Minister stated that options would be narrowed down, and engineering and environmental reviews would be done, and that that would be done in short order. That was seven months ago and I’d like to just perhaps start with getting an update from the Minister of Transportation where that realignment sits with his department today. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all I have to thank the Member for being patient on this project, something that all of us had to do as we waited for the remediation team to put their plans together.

A lot of that work has been concluded. We’ve taken the opportunity over the last while to meet with the various organizations, including the remediation team and the Public Works and Government Services Canada to look at the different issues that needed to be addressed. We’ve also been meeting with the Aboriginal governments in the area, and we now have a schedule, and that schedule involves planned construction for this coming fall. That means there is a lot of work to do.

We want to conclude some of our final discussions on the route, we want to be able to put the business plan together for all the stakeholder requirements and to have construction move forward. The different routes have been narrowed from three down to two, after we had the remediation team reject one of the routes as it wasn’t suitable for what they needed. So there is work that is happening. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the next six months, but we would like to meet the schedule, have the construction start, have a construction period and have the realignment open by the fall or early winter of 2012. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for the update on the realignment, and I guess moving from three options to two in seven months isn’t such a bad thing. It’s down to two options. Maybe the Minister could let us know what those two options are and whether or not the option

to bypass the mine infrastructure and with the possibility of including a possible expansion at Fred Henne Territorial Park is in the mix in all of these discussions. Thank you.

I certainly can confirm that option three corridor has been discontinued. It does not meet the needs of what the team requires. We have recognized that this is a remediation project but it’s also the Ingraham Trail Realignment Project that has to fit along both the group’s needs or both the project needs. We are not looking at this point to deal with any additional camping space for Fred Henne Park. That’s not something that’s part of this project.

I think if we’re not thinking about possible opportunities from the road realignment that we’re missing the boat.

As I mentioned earlier, back in 2003 there were studies, reports on the need for more RV space in Yellowknife for both local residents and the travelling public, the tourists that come north. If we aren’t even having the discussion with ITI on the possible expansion at Fred Henne Territorial Park because of a realignment, again, I think we’re missing the boat. Is it too late? The question I have for the Minister is: is it too late to not have a look at that possibility?

The Giant Mine Project and the Ingraham Trail Realignment Project are not on the same boat as ITI and Fred Henne Park. Those discussions have been taking place. Right now it would be a different initiative. It would not be part of the dollars earmarked for a realignment that we’re looking at.

This is something we need to confirm as to what route we’re going to use. Right now we are looking at two possible routes. We’d like to narrow that down to one within the next little while, within the next month or so. A park is not part of that.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The federal government will be paying the lion’s share of the capital costs to realign the Ingraham Trail. As I mentioned earlier, if we are not looking at every possible opportunity to advance the interests -- and in this case it would be another department, it would be ITI, it would be Tourism that would be expanding Fred Henne Territorial Park -- again, we are missing the boat. I didn’t quite hear the Minister say it’s too late, but why is it too late? Why aren’t we looking at that possibility? I think it’s a real possibility, given some of the maps I saw three years ago when this was first brought up; almost four years ago.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.