Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll direct this question to the Minister responsible for Municipal and Community Affairs who has responsibility for consumer protection.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department does have a consumer affairs branch. It’s a very small office right now; it’s complaint driven. As far as the Member’s question on the cost of crude, we don’t regulate the cost of fuel. If we were to do something like that, we’d obviously have to go through the legislation. It is a concern obviously amongst folks out there that constantly have to deal with it all the time. One thing we do do as a government through I think it’s Public Works, is if they get a shipment of fuel at a cheaper price, then they adjust the fuel price of the communities that they serve and they would reap the rewards of it. Obviously if the price goes higher, then it has to be adjusted again.

I know that the communities that are serviced by the petroleum products division do have fuel provided and the government does have these safeguards built in. I believe there’s some averaging and things to make it less onerous on the communities when the purchase of fuel has taken place at a higher price. But we regulate the cost of power in the Northwest Territories. I don’t think that home heating oil or gasoline and diesel to drive our vehicles is any less of an essential commodity, yet it seems like right now anybody can charge any price they want.

It may be somewhat controlled by competition, but I think that once you get into the North, the outlets for that competition do get decreased and get smaller. So if we don’t have any control over these retail prices, would the government at least undertake to

do some study or research into this to see if the retail prices have in fact been tracking and staying with the price of crude? Thank you.

The Member raises a very good point and I think it’s something we should do as a government, is try and track to see if the prices have been adjusting with the price of crude oil. I can assure the Member that I will have discussions with the department and with my Cabinet colleagues to see how we would go about this. It’s something that I think we should do to try and protect our consumers out there the best we can.

We are concerned about our consumers. We are concerned about the cost of living. Understandably, some things are not within our control. The price of crude oil on the world markets is not within our control. There are many other things that are not within our control. If we could at least satisfy our constituents here in the North that they are not being gouged at the pumps and at the home heating oil trucks, if we could assure them of that because this is something that is raised to me quite regularly and I think that the question could be laid to rest by the kind of research that could fairly easily be undertaken. Even if we can’t go back and find the historical data, if we could begin to track it going forward, I would appreciate that very much.

I agree with the Member that I think there is some research we need to undertake. I assure the Member that I will have discussions with the department and we’ll go about undertaking some of that research and try to track the price of fuel and gas.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Premier has promised to take action to address low employment rates in our small communities with large projects. In Aklavik the employment rate is 36 percent. That is way below the territorial average of 67 percent. There are simply more people who need work than there are jobs. We do have one project that is on our government’s red flag priority list A and that is the all-weather access road to the Willow River gravel source. When will construction begin on this project during the 17

th

Assembly?

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should clarify exactly what I said. As a government we are working to have a development project in

every community. In that way we can increase employment and create more jobs in all the communities. So for Aklavik we hadn’t specifically found a project, although we had expected that the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline would fit that bill quite nicely. We have been working with the community on the access to gravel and noting that it is a community responsibility.

Over the years our Department of Transportation has worked in partnership with the Hamlet of Aklavik and the Black Mountain Road Committee to advance this 18.5 kilometre road, which I think is going to cost about $19 million. We’ve been successful in providing $250,000 over two years to the committee to develop a project description report. I think that once we get our fiscal situation and our borrowing limit finalized, I think we’ll be in a much better position to advance this important project.

At this time I don’t have any further questions.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the downtown day shelter. I don’t need to go into length to highlight how important it is, but I can’t go by without stressing how important it is to many people who have nowhere else to go. My question for the Minister of Health and Social Services is such: With the closure of funding – I’ll say it that way – with no scheduled funding in the new year to continue this pilot project going forward, what is the Minister of Health and Social Services’ plan for people who are homeless and have nowhere to go, for the reasons that I’ve already discussed earlier today?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Health and Social Services has done an evaluation on the day shelter and at this time is reviewing the possibility of extending the funding through 2012-2013. The City of Yellowknife has also committed to extending their funding. Unfortunately the third funder on the project, BHP, will not be extending funding for this particular project but spending it elsewhere.

Am I correct to hear the Minister say in the House today that the downtown day shelter will be protected at least for one more year, the 2012-2013 fiscal year? Is this being said clearly today that he intends to keep those doors open?

Yes, that is the intention. The City of Yellowknife has put their money forward to extend the shelter. Health and Social Services has done a review of the service that has been provided, and once that review is done, the intention is to follow the City of Yellowknife and extend the money through 2012-2013.

I want to thank the Minister of Health and Social Services for letting us know this here today, because I’ll tell you there were a number of people who weren’t really sure what the plan was going forward. Today is the first time I’ve heard it’s actually being formally reviewed, so that’s why I was a little bit unsure whether it’s still being reviewed and would there be consequences of longer term funding options. It sounds like the Minister’s plan is to at least carry it through one year, which is great news.

In that review that the Minister referred to, is he also reviewing the type of programming offered at that particular facility? When I refer to programming, I’m looking at specific options for people, plans in the sense of helping people with work plans, whether it’s access to treatment, access to housing, access to employment options. Is that being encompassed in this particular review?

The intent of the shelter was to provide a warm place for people to go have coffee, socialize and so on. There is also the availability in there of some counselling pertaining to possible housing, employment and so on. The John Howard Society is actually the organization that works with the people in the day shelter in order to provide that service.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. A final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to be clear on the record here with the Minister of Health and Social Services, because in a relentless sense we cannot give up on these folks. We may be the only ones who are out there caring for them. We cannot give up. I just want to make sure that this review is focusing on options that will continue the counselling as well as offering treatment paths for people. I just want to make sure that we have a captive audience here, and that will be the mission and continued goal of the Department of Health and Social Services as they support the day shelter.

I’m hoping that the evaluation that the department would do, working with the John Howard Society, looks at continuing the things that the shelter was put there for, with access to washrooms, telephone, Internet and so on, and also some counselling to the individuals who are accessing the shelter, to try and improve their lives.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.