Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure the Member and all Members that MACA will take all necessary steps to deal with illegal squatters. The uptake on suspending the strategy has been very good. We have had a lot of folks come forward to legitimize their leases, not only in the Yellowknife area but in other areas in the Northwest Territories. We actually had 100 percent uptake in the other communities, so the message is out there. I can assure the Member that all illegal squatters will be dealt with. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, thanks for the Minister’s comments there. Good work has also been done on the development of the recreational leasing framework. Information is being gathered towards a comprehensive understanding of the resource base and the use of the area can bear while maintaining our vital interest in preserving the watershed of Yellowknife for our drinking water supply. The next essential step is an invitation of the general public to contribute its knowledge and suggestions. Will the Minister commit to a full public consultation, keeping in mind the need to allow sufficient time for full consultation should they happen and go ahead in the summertime? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we are in the process of finalizing the density study and it is our intent to meet with the Cassidy Point-Prosperous Lake Association and hold a stakeholders forum, and the intent is to hold that in June of this year where we will be able to get input from all interested stakeholders and members of the public. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister’s commitment to include all of the public in that consultation. The work this government is doing in the block transfer area is good, but, unfortunately, similar action from the federal government and protection of the commons is missing. For those who set up a metre outside the block land transfer boundary, they are home free. The federal government must be kept accountable and be called upon to meet its responsibilities. How is the Minister keeping the pressure up on the federal government to hold them accountable? What steps are being taken to bring them to the table for an effective partnership on this issue? Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, we do have a working group that does include the Aboriginal group. INAC is also invited to the table to take part in the discussion. So I can assure the Member that we’ll do what we can to continue to invite them to the table and have their input.

Some of the federal land, obviously, would be land that would be identified in some of these land claim processes that are going on, but it is our intent to

always make sure we have the stakeholders, including INAC and the Aboriginal governments at the table to have a good discussion. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m afraid that is less than a satisfactory response. I’m sure the federal government is welcome at any of our tables, but here we need to go to their table and do some real work here. So I would have to grade that quite low, Mr. Speaker, and I’m sure the Minister can come up with better.

But I don’t just lay this on the Minister of MACA, Mr. Speaker. Every MLA and especially Cabinet has a role to play, because as the Minister recognizes, this is dealing with the federal government, big daddy out there. I’m wondering what role the Minister sees all of the MLAs and, for example, a block land transfer of this area, the Yellowknife MLAs, but throughout the NWT, I know the Minister is working in the Delta, and Cabinet. What role does he see all MLAs and Cabinet playing in working with the federal government to get them going? Particularly, how is he working to get this accomplished through the devolution discussions? Obviously those are going to take six to eight years and at the rate this problem is developing, we’ll be looking at doubling to quadrupling of this problem by the time we have authority to the land. Thank you.

Thank you. I would grade that question B or B plus.

---Laughter

We’re starting to grade everything here and I’ll work on improving mine for the next report card.

We’ll continue to work with the federal government. I mean, obviously there’s a lot at stake here. I mean, there are devolution talks, which you know would speed up the whole process because we’d have more authority over the lands in the Northwest Territories. But I mean, I can assure the Member and all Members that it is our intent to constantly work and put pressure on the federal government to realize that they have some responsibilities up here and they need to take those quite seriously, they need to become involved in discussions we have. We can have discussions between the Aboriginal governments and the territorial government, but we also need to make sure that we have discussions with the federal government and I can assure the Members that I will continue to push that issue quite strongly. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure the Member that all departments are committed to increasing the representation of persons with disabilities in the territorial public service. 20/20: A Brilliant North public service strategic plan, which government developed with all departments, makes it a priority to increase the representation of persons with disabilities in the territorial public service.

Now our GNWT employability working group, as the Member indicated, in 2009 we invited the Yukon workplace diversity office to come and talk to us about best practices and we learned a lot from that and it is our objective to become something similar.

Now HR is working with all departments to establish human resource plans so that we can begin to work to increase our percentages. Right now it’s 0.5 percent of persons with disabilities working in our government and we’re going to start working to increase it to 0.8 percent, which will get us to having a representative public service. Thank you.

Thank you, and I appreciate that. I’ve read all that in the Brilliant North 20/20, which, like I said, I think is a good document. What I’m more interested in right now is already we’re including the reference on job ads to indicate that persons with disabilities should identify their disability and indicate that they need to be accommodated. We’ve also got this great diversity officer that this young man in question actually contacted and got information on how to apply, what to do, what to indicate in his cover letter, and he applied on the job at Stanton. At the end of the day, after he passed the interview, after he screened in, passed the interview, had good

references, he was told by Stanton that you’re not getting the job because we won’t accommodate your need.

This is a job pushing a cart in a hospital, Mr. Speaker. So I’m curious what is HR going to do so that in the future this type of thing doesn’t happen again. What we want to make sure is that departments are abiding by our rules. So how do we as a department... How does HR enforce the rules? How are we going to make sure that people understand and implement them as intended? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are working with all departments to establish the disability framework so that all departments will be able to follow this framework to increase our representation. Right now our focus is on employability, increasing the education and awareness of all departments with regard to dealing with persons with disabilities in the workplace with the sensitivity training. We expect that we will go a long ways to increasing the numbers of persons with disabilities in the workforce. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, I appreciate the Minister’s response, but I come back to this example. The person was told that they weren’t getting the job after they passed and the references were good and they were told that Stanton would not accommodate this person’s disability. So we know it’s happening. Does the department have any recourse where a department clearly isn’t abiding by the rules? Does the department have any recourse or ability to make sure that departments do adhere to the policies and procedures of this government? Thank you.

Thank you. We have established a GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability that’s making its recommendations to the government so that we can increase the representation of persons with disabilities. What we’re trying to do is strengthen our relationship with not only our government, but with non-government organizations, and the Union of Northern Workers and other unions so that we can increase our percentage of persons with disabilities in the workforce. Right now we’re working on developing a communications strategy that will go out to all people in the Northwest Territories and advance to a disability survey that was developed by what we call GACE, the GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability. We have developed a disability awareness training module that we’ll be sending out an RFP very soon to finalize that so we can start awareness training in the near future, and we are also dealing with the recommendation to revise the definition of disabilities in our Affirmative Action Policy. So that will give us greater awareness and will give us more ability to deal with different

departments when it comes to employability. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and once again I appreciate the Minister’s response. I know a lot of good work is done, but we’ve still got this situation where it seems to me that a department could ignore all the good work that the Department of Human Resources is doing in this respect if they choose not to accommodate, they just choose not to accommodate and they don’t hire, but we have a policy that says we’re going to accommodate. So what action are we going to take to make sure the departments actually live up to the policies and procedures that we have? What is the department going to do when those departments choose to ignore HR? HR is the gatekeeper, Mr. Speaker. What’s HR going to do to make sure that these departments who are choosing to ignore, choose to ignore? Also, what mechanism exists for a person who applies on a job like this when there is no appeal process because nobody filled the job? Ultimately, this job wasn’t filled by anybody. There’s no appeal mechanism for the person to say hey, I was discriminated against, what’s my recourse? To the Minister, thank you.

This is a process that will not happen overnight. As to what I’ve outlined, it will allow employees with disabilities to self-identify. We also have to work with all departments so that we can match people with jobs. We see this as a role of the diversity office and all of HR working in conjunction with the departments. As we go along we will identify jobs and people and do the matching so that we can increase our representation.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister of Transportation some questions regarding the Liard River ice crossing. In November I raised the issue that the department had plans to use their own forces to build an ice bridge. That’s certainly something I don’t support. I’d like to ask the Minister what the plans are for this coming year’s ice construction schedule.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not aware of any changes at this point to how we’ve constructed ice bridges historically, so I’d have to look into the issue.

I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker. I did not realize the exchange was completed. I just want to raise the issue that the ice is being constructed by local companies employing local people. It’s been a source of income for seasonal workers for many, many years. I certainly support the continuation of contracting that ice crossing out. I’d like to ask the Minister, I’m not too sure if the contract is up this year, but it’s certainly something I’d like to see continue.