Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That question was raised with Minister Lebel when we had the meeting with him and it wasn’t confirmed nor denied whether they would be willing to look at 75/25. Our belief is that that will be the case. He didn’t say otherwise, so we’re going on that premise that it will be 75/25.

I’m just wondering, with the meetings with Minister Lebel, if there was discussion of other infrastructure such as the Mackenzie Highway and the potential of needing funds for that, and is the federal government interested in the responsibility for constructing roads on the Mackenzie Highway; specifically, the Sahtu area.

In other meetings we had with other federal Ministers, the subject of the Mackenzie Valley Highway did come up. Certainly, we let them know what was happening in the central Mackenzie in terms of the shale oil development there and the need for further infrastructure investment in our territory.

In terms of the discussion about dredging in the port of Hay River, that discussion did come up as

well with the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Steven Fletcher.

The Minister must be reading my mind. My next question was about the port of Hay River and the dredging that the federal government is responsible for.

What is the next step in confirming some of this funding? We currently have no commitments from the federal government. What is the next step? Do we have another meeting planned with Minister Lebel to confirm some of these infrastructure dollars that we require?

First, with the Inuvik-Tuk highway, we are going to, hopefully, be working toward a funding arrangement with the federal government here in the very near future.

Secondly, on the Mackenzie Valley Highway, we thanked all the federal Ministers that we met with for their involvement with the help we’ve gotten from CanNor to continue the work on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I mentioned earlier we had just recently got another $600,000 through CanNor to allow us to work with communities up and down the Mackenzie Valley to continue that momentum on the Mackenzie Valley all-weather road.

On the port of Hay River and the dredging program there, it was suggested to me by the parliamentary secretary that we engage in a letter writing campaign to himself and to the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Denis Lebel. We certainly will take him up on that offer and get those letters out as soon as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The question on the Hay River dredging, I’m just wondering if the Minister has any dollars to commit to doing, other than letter writing. Any dollars for assessing the value and the cost of dredging the Hay River?

The federal government didn’t commit any dollars during these meetings, but we did mention to them that at one point in time they had a $50 million program for dredging and how detrimental the lack of having a program is to a community like Hay River. That was quite clearly articulated to Minister Fletcher. We will try our best to get some funding from the federal government to look at a dredging program in the port of Hay River.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions. I’m going to follow up on some questions mentioned by Member Bisaro. She asked about the downtown day shelter. What I found very odd was the fact that the Minister of Health and Social Services is now saying they’re going to continue the existing vendor to run that facility. With all the concerns and issues that have been raised and the coverage on that particular facility on the quality of the way it has been run, why is he just sort of rolling it over and going to another year contract with the same vendor?

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are not a whole lot of people lining up to run a day shelter, but right now what we’re doing is finding a department or an organization that’s prepared to do that work. We don’t have a final proposal or agreement with them either, but the assumption is that that’s what we’ll do there. There is a possibility, even though we are having some difficulty, that YK Health and Social Services Authority, once they go through an RFP process, and we are questioning whether or not we can get the RFP process completed by the end of this fiscal year. Because we don’t think that we can do a proper process, we thought that we’d extend it a year before we went through that process.

Mr. Speaker, what I’m hearing from the Minister is the department can’t put their paperwork together in order to ask for a proper proposal. We have the Tree of Peace less than two blocks away. We have the Salvation Army just a few blocks north to that particular thing. The Salvation Army has even expressed interest in this particular project if they’d like to take it on. We would rather be satisfied with a substandard or an extensively inadequate product rather than sort of reaching out to what’s good.

Why is it better to continue on with the same people who can’t even force reasonable policies such as no drinking on premises? Why don’t we just shut it down and start fresh properly? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think that running a day shelter is a difficult task. Like I indicated, we’re not sure if it’s better to continue with our current vendor. We don’t even know if the current vendor will continue beyond March 31st . All

we know is that right now we haven’t received a contribution agreement between ourselves and the YK Health and Social Services Authority so the money can flow to an operator or an organization that can run that facility.

What we do know is that we’ll continue the funding so that we don’t have to close it down. It seemed to have some value. Some Members think that there is value in keeping the day shelter open, so we’ll keep the money flowing. It was intended for a three-year pilot project and we’ve decided not to shut it down after the first three years. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the day shelter services are so important here in the city and they do help a lot of people. But the reality is, if it’s going to keep being run into the ground by the same bunch of people, we might as well just stop, refresh our mandate and policy, and ask ourselves why do we do this and how do we do it right.

Why doesn’t the Minister just say, let’s take this money that we’re committing into going forward, shut it down and put out a real proposal so we get the services we need that help people who need services such as the day shelter provides, rather than allowing it in its existing form which does more harm than good? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people using that shelter now. So I’ll have the department look at that. Maybe if the most prudent thing to do is shut the shelter down until we get a proper proposal and operator, or an organization that we think can improve the services to the shelter, then we’ll wait until it gets a little warmer and then we’ll shut it down. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister sort of answered my last question in that form.

What would it take to just sort of pause at the end of this fiscal contract to re-write and re-evaluate what we need and what we want as objectives, and to start fresh, maybe in May or June, and do it right, rather than continuing to limp on in a bad form as we are presently existing now?

The whole town knows it, the whole neighbourhood knows it, and certainly the people that are there know that. So what will it take for you to do that? Thank you.

Not much, actually. We could actually let the funding expire on March 31st ,

shut it down and then start from scratch, look at that building or another building, whatever, and then see if we can provide a better service. We’re prepared to do that.

We are looking, more or less, at the individuals who were using the shelter, the tremendous high use of the shelter, and the weather. Even though we were not receiving some information that we needed to continue, we decided to continue to flow the funding until the fall. But if the Members in the Legislative Assembly think the best thing to do is shut it down

and start over, we’re prepared to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The preamble today was a little bit long on everybody’s questions, so I’m going to allow Mr. Nadli to finish off his oral questions for the day. Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I promise to keep it short.

My question today is to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Right now at the local level we have a lot of volunteers that participate quite graciously in the fire department. I just wanted to ask the Minister, can he comment further on the assessment of community fire services. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through the office of the assistant fire marshal in each region, we’re working with community fire departments to identify training and anything else they may need. I believe that work has been done and we are just waiting to hear. Once shortcomings are identified, we will work with the communities and try and get them trained up, or work with them in identifying potential pieces of equipment they may need. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to thank the Minister for his response. I understand that there’s an Emergency Management Training Strategy in place. It’s in the development stages. Most of the training that local fire departments receive is defensive for dwelling structures or home structures.

What are some of the results that have been achieved through the department’s Emergency Management Training Strategy? Thank you.