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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to echo Mr. Yakeleya’s comments. I’ve never seen the two, Mr. Krutko and Ms. Lee, look happier together in my years. That said, I would like the occasion, as well as Premier McLeod, to recognize all our Pages. Specifically I would like to highlight Ally MacInnis. She’s a Page from Yellowknife Centre, and I want to thank her as well as all the Pages for their fine duties. They support us in our work and it’s a very valuable service that we treasure here.

As well as Mr. Bromley, I too wish to recognize Ben McDonald, who is a constituent of Yellowknife Centre. I do know Ben works very hard at various things and I wish to acknowledge that he is a very learned scholar out there as well.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I would like to welcome all the visitors in the public gallery here today. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings here today. Thank you and welcome.

Item 6, acknowledgements. Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As mentioned earlier today in my Member’s statement, the Yukon government is making carbon monoxide detectors mandatory. However, I pointed out that, in reality, the GNWT needs to invest more in public awareness and standardization of regulations for all oil-fired and wood use appliances throughout the NWT.

My questions today will be for the Minister responsible for such a topic, the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. It’s clear biomass is on the rise in almost every community of the NWT. As I mentioned today, there are no regulations to support the installation of wood pellet stoves in 31 of our 33 communities. As well, many wood stoves are not compliant or meet safety codes and there is no established inspection process.

Can the Minister indicate to the House today by what means his department is using to monitor the safety, installation and inspection of wood and pellet stoves in most communities?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As far as inspecting them, we don’t have an inspection regime, and it is one we have been

exploring the possibilities of. People are able to have them inspected by wet-certified inspectors. The numbers are starting to go up as far as those that are certified to inspect the installation of wood stoves. It is a very tricky subject because there is a lot of liability to it. They are unable to see the full installation unless it’s new construction, so existing wood stoves are very difficult to see. They wouldn’t be able to qualify for home insurance if they’re not inspected by a wet-certified inspector.

Public awareness is by far lacking in the NWT as it pertains to carbon monoxide detector use. I would be safe to bet that a large percentage of residents do not have one, yet at a mere $40, this unit is a cheap investment for one’s safety. Can the Minister indicate how much money is spent annually on public awareness campaigns to educate the public on carbon monoxide detector use, and will he commit to increase this amount?

As far as the actual budget amount to help with the awareness, I’m not sure of the actual budget amount. I could get some numbers for the Member. I do know that through the fire marshal’s office they had a very good awareness program. They were actually giving away carbon monoxide detectors to those that needed them.

On the housing side of it, I know that in all the public housing units they’ve spent a considerable amount of money ensuring that all our public housing units have carbon monoxide detectors that are up to code. Any new construction now, I think since 2005, is required to have carbon monoxide detectors in their units.

The installation of all wood and pellet stoves within most of our communities is not regulated. Will the Minister commit today in this House to immediately mandate the much needed regulations with his department, with the community fire marshals, and with various community government stakeholders in standardizing all our communities for compliance, safety codes and inspection process for all oil-fired and wood use appliances?

I can commit to the Member that I will do some exploratory work and see how we can advance this. I do know that a lot of those folks that are building $300,000 to $400,000 homes, it will be to their benefit to make sure that all installations meet code, otherwise they may not qualify for insurance. But I will commit to the Member that I’ll just start some exploratory work and see how we can best advance this issue.

I can say that we are acting now, and we’re not ignoring the fact that these are very important components in each home, and I think that was my response to a couple of the questions before. I think we’re proving that our commitment to ensuring that

all homes in the Northwest Territories are safe and have a working carbon monoxide detector.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Finally, as a follow-up to a question I asked earlier this spring on carbon monoxide detector use in our local housing authority branches. We were informed back then by the Minister that all LHOs were compliant with carbon monoxide detector use. Could the Minister agree to table to this House a complete inventory of all NWT LHO housing and building inventory by region, with more specific information to carbon monoxide detectors, and more specifically, installation date, inspection date and expected replacement date.

I have said that all our public housing units are compliant. We’ve spent a considerable amount of money. We’ve installed carbon monoxide detectors in well over 1,300 units, because we have a lot of multiple family-type dwellings. They’re all compliant. But if the Member wants all this in writing we will assign someone to put all this information together and we will share it with the Members. Not only that, if that’s not good enough, then we’ll table it in the House so everybody across the Northwest Territories knows that what I said here today is the absolute truth.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to yesterday’s theme day when we were speaking about treatment programs throughout the Northwest Territories, I wanted to ask the Minister of Justice about some of the programs that they have in the corrections facilities.

Right off the bat, I’d like to ask the Minister of Justice what type of treatment programs specifically designated for addictions does the department provide in our correctional facilities currently.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Currently, the Department of Justice, through its corrections, does support a number of on-the-land programming available for inmates within our facilities where security issues are not significant. We also support inmates attending regularly things like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

In the last sitting, through Regular Members, we increased the budget at the South Mackenzie Correctional Facility where we have some

traditional addictions counsellor positions available to provide support. Those types of services are available in our Yellowknife facility as well. There are a number of things that we are currently doing within the facilities to support inmates with addictions issues.

Speaking with the Minister of Health yesterday, and some of the answers that he gave us in terms of detox programs moving along the same lines, if anyone that gets incarcerated for a serious crime and does have to go to either a north corrections facility, are there any detox programs in place, medical services provided to the inmates that need that detox in our facilities currently?

When somebody is convicted and sentenced to time in one of our facilities, one of the first things that will happen is they’ll go through a documentation and classification where their individual needs are assessed. If an individual does require detox, we do have nursing staff within our facilities who can help develop a plan to help that individual detox. It may involve some time in isolation during the actual detox, but they do have nurses available to support them through that process.

When an inmate is about to get released, in terms of getting educated on possibly some of the issues and concerns that might have gotten them into the institution, what type of education programs do the corrections facilities offer to get inmates back, or what social skills programs does the department offer to get these inmates back into being a member of society and not going back out and becoming another repeat offender? What type of education programs are there in our facilities to get our inmates back as regular members of society?

Each one of these situations would be done on an individual basis, based on the individual needs of inmates when they’re being released. Currently, case managers and other staff within the department or within the corrections facilities will work with the inmate to identify programming in the community that they’re going to be released to that would help support them in their continued healing journey, or help them deal with probation issues that may exist. Each case is done individually. They’re targeted and linked with different programs and services that may exist in individual communities.

One of the things that we are doing right now as a department, is we have been approached by some communities to do some reintegration work and engage communities to help design reintegration plans that work for the communities, that can engage the communities. We’re exploring that right now with Colville Lake and we’re probably going to run a pilot there to see how it works. If it works

really well, we will work with other communities to implement a similar type of process.

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