Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was amply clear. I think the answer was not amply clear. To put it in a different way, I’m well aware and I have no doubt that this Minister is well aware of many people who are summer students who keep coming back to the same jobs. They’re being given job offers in February and March even before the summer student season starts.

Mr. Speaker, the whole line of questioning is about trying to ensure that there’s fairness here, and if it smells funny, that tells me that something should be investigated. I’ll tell you when people are told that folks already have jobs in February and the summer student season hasn’t even started, something tells me something’s awry here and there’s not fairness. So, Mr. Speaker, that’s the whole line of questioning.

I’d like the Minister to see what he can do to make some recommendations for the future years that we ensure we have a full accountable process that shows students we’re being fair and honest with them. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess the reason summer students are hired in January and February is we ask summer students to put in their applications by the end of December of every year.

So for 2012 we ask the summer students to put in, those interested in getting summer employment, to put in their applications by December of 2011. So we’re quite prepared to look at the process. If it means that we should wait until April for summer students to put in their applications and have everybody compete for every job and if we think that works out in the best interests, we’ll be prepared to look at that and see. To me, I don’t see where there’s a lot of unfairness in the system, and if it does come out that it’s unfair, then we would certainly look at different ways of trying to improve it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on my colleagues Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Menicoche and myself on the issue of health care in our smaller communities. The three of us represent 15 communities in total. So that says something to the Minister when he meets with the chairs of the health boards, but also with the senior officials of the Health department. I want to ask the Minister specifically if there are any types of discussions going on for any type of early detection program on cancer in our communities.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There’s a constant effort to try to improve services in the community. In fact, myself and Premier Roland and Minister Michael McLeod were around in the days when the Sahtu was still part of the Inuvik region and we made the decision to move it into their own separate region. We set up the infrastructure, we had doctors come in there, we’ve added nurses, we put in all the support services that we have money to do, we’re looking at a long-term care facility, we’re looking at an improvement and replacement to the health centre. So, Mr. Speaker, there are very ambitious plans to improve health services in the Sahtu.

The Member has been very persistent in advocating for his constituency and he should be commended for his hard work and perseverance, but that is the general plan going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, and certainly we appreciate the wise decisions of the past government to move the Sahtu into its own authority, just like any other authority in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, finally the government has seen the light. Still, I hope that Colville Lake will get some improved services as it’s still back in the medieval times of health care services.

So I want to ask the Minister, given all that he’s given us in the House, will he talk to the chairs, talk to his deputy officials today and state that there is or could be an early detection cancer assessment program in our communities? People are being misdiagnosed, and people, the nurses, for whatever reason -- lack of resources, no support -- are handing Tylenol to people who should be assessed in Edmonton or Yellowknife for cancer. Can the Minister provide an answer for me?

Thank you. I will extend the commitment that I made to the Member for Nahendeh as well as the Member for Nunakput about discussing this issue with the deputy minister and the board chairs.

I’d like also to point out that we’re spending millions of dollars in electronic health records, medical records, telehealth. We have a very ambitious plan for a fibre optic line down the valley that would provide fibre optic link to all the communities and give them the best cutting-edge communication services so, in fact, their telehealth systems would work at full capacity. Children would be able to go on line and use all the resources and materials that are available on line. There would be cell phone, Internet, TV, all those systems in the community. There’s a lot of work by this government to improve services in communities.

I certainly look forward to the day that the initiatives that the Minister has indicated in the House become a reality. The fact of the matter is that I want to ask the Minister, in light of research projects that tell us there is contaminated fish in the Sahtu and other areas of the Northwest Territories, people are now starting to see new diseases coming up, can the Minister at least put a few million dollars of all the hundreds of millions of dollars that are going into fibre optics, television, TV, whatever, maybe take a little money out of the Deh Cho Bridge and put it into where they can save lives in our community?

I take this issue very personally because it happened to someone I love very much in my family. I saw the service that was being provided. It’s never been resolved. I ask the Minister if he would give a strong message to the nursing health centres to support our nurses. Can they have a program to start beginning to detect diseases like cancer? Something’s got to start now.

I indicated that I would follow up with the deputy minister and the chairs of the various boards and authorities to talk about this issue. The Member raises some issues about resources. Health will continue to be the largest department in government, with over a

$300 million budget that grows on an annual rate that is higher overall than the standard and ceiling kept in place for other departments as we try to control our costs. There’s a new accord being negotiated with the federal government for health transfers and social transfers, so money will continue to be put into health and social services. Keeping in mind there will never be enough money, I appreciate the Member’s concern about timely assessments and everybody being given the proper care when they come through the door. I will follow up on that issue.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

I do believe the Minister when he said he will follow up and talk to his officials. I believe the Minister will do that. We have just about completed our Assembly here and shortly we’ll all be going up to reapply for our jobs if we want to come back to this career here.

I want to ask the Minister, in this short time frame and in discussions with the chairs and deputy minister, is there any type of campaign that will be initiated or going out to our communities to encourage and support people that when they do go to the health centres to ask, they have the right to ask for a proper assessment? If they don’t think that the nurse, for whatever reason, is giving them a proper diagnosis, that they demand that they get a better assessment, a second opinion to look at some of the issues. They know their bodies. I ask the Minister if we could start that short type of instructions to the nurses and also let our people know they have the right to a proper assessment.

I will follow up, as I’ve already committed to, and I would point out, as well, that we have very many campaigns about patients’ rights, about the right to know, to take part and know what’s happening with your own care. We’ve got initiatives on healthy living, Get Active. We’ve been pushing people on personal choices to deal with lifestyle, eating, drinking, don’t abuse alcohol, don’t smoke, get some exercise would go a long way to promoting better health in our communities. All those things are ongoing, but I will pass on the urgency of the situation that has been raised here by a number of my colleagues here today.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of energy, Minister Bob McLeod. It follows up on a statement from the

other day on the conversion of communities to gas energy systems.

Norman Wells and Inuvik are up against the wall with their natural gas energy systems and, of course, we know the high cost of converting communities, yet we appear to be going down the road of committing new communities to the inevitable end of non-renewable energy supplies. Feasibility studies have been prepared on the conversion of Tulita, Fort Simpson, and Fort Good Hope to natural gas as the principal community energy supply. In this day and age I’m wondering why these contracts were not written to provide a comparative cost-benefit analysis of at least two options: conversion to gas or development of a local renewable energy infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for the Energy Coordinating Committee, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the time -- and we have to remember that this process started about 10 years ago -- it was envisioned that it would be a stand-alone community gasification process and it was proceeded on that basis. We’ve gone forward with those communities where it seemed to be feasible. During our interventions, during the Joint Review Panel hearings we made representation that provisions should be made to offload from the pipeline to convert these communities to natural gas if it was deemed fit to proceed. That’s the reason we proceeded on that basis.

I do appreciate the Minister reminding me of the history; he was dead-on there. I guess I would note that the information out of Norman Wells indicates that even if the community can transit to propane, the cost will be high, future costs will remain volatile. Because of costs, the propane conversion can only be considered a stopgap there.

As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, and as demonstrated in thousands of communities across the globe, employment and investment opportunities from renewables can be the basis of strong, local, sustainable economies and drive down living and business costs. Taking into consideration the Minister’s comments and the reminder of the history here, will the Minister work with his MACA and Environment and Natural Resources colleagues to consider this opportunity to take Norman Wells and other communities onto the path of renewable energy as a viable option that needs equivalent feasibility studies?

With the recent developments in new technologies in renewable and alternative forms of energy, I think it would be appropriate for us to do so. Our only consideration is we’ve been working mainly at the behest of the communities and we would want to go back to the

communities and indicate that we want to take another look at... I guess to me I think the best course would be to find a way to use all forms of energy. I know we talked to different provinces and they’re using alternative and renewable energy to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. There are certainly new capacities in storage of electricity. I think that it would certainly be incumbent upon us to look at all those alternatives. We do have to come up with a time frame for the National Energy Board for energy conversion, so we would have to take that into consideration. This was something that was decreed through the Joint Review Panel process.

I appreciate the Minister’s willingness to look at this. I think he brought forward some good points. I think a suite of energy sources is probably the way to go. We need to transition to a greater and greater proportion of renewable or at least low-carbon sources. I think the Minister is well aware of that. I’d like to note that in those communities there’s already been feasibility projects going, for example, for a pellet manufacturing plant out of Simpson, geothermal, hydro projects and so on that the Minister himself has been involved in. Given his comments again and this recognition of the need for a suite of energy sources transitioning to renewable, will the Minister pursue these feasibility studies and incorporate in them and re-examine the gas ones to look at what the local benefits are to the local economy and employment opportunities as well as the environmental benefits?

I think we can do this relatively quickly because we know, as the Member has indicated, Inuvik has gone to gasification and they’re having some issues. I know Tuktoyaktuk has been looking at converting to community gasification by doing the same thing as Inuvik. Norman Wells has been looking internally what they can do to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, and we’ve been doing a lot of work both in the private sector and in the government on biomass. I think we can look at all those various suites of energy generators and see what the best way forward is when we can do that fairly quickly.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for those comments. I guess my last point really is to see if the Minister might ensure that these are profiled in any transition documents, the need to transit to the heavier low-carbon sources, especially renewable, and work to make sure that that appears in any implementation of the Greenhouse Gas Strategy as well.