Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and the Department of MACA here today. As I said, sometimes we don’t stop and be thankful for some of the great work that departments and senior leadership provide to the people of the Northwest Territories. I think this is one of those occasions where I need to aim my congratulations on how the Minister and department deal with sport, recreation and youth. As far as I’m concerned, you guys are well beyond your leadership in this area in relation to even provincial counterparts, and I encourage you to continue down that path. I think that’s a very strong message and it’s one in which you don’t get too often from this Member when things go well. Congratulations.
There is no denying that I have brought many, many times to this House and I wish I could have
seen this topic embedded within the opening comments. That subject is emergency preparedness. I can’t stress enough the fact that I believe if there is one opportunity for this department, it’s to focus resources and priorities in preparing our communities for that inevitable day that could happen to any one of them. We had a bit of a glimpse of that earlier this year with two of our communities. We’ve also seen a very tragic accident on our highway system as of late which also… I’ll talk to that in a second and echo my comments to Mr. Nadli here. I’m very concerned that the department is either underfunded in this area or isn’t treating this in the proper respect, if we’re using the right measuring stick, to put that in light of what I think is required by this department. What I mean by that is that I am looking for that day when all communities have complete and updated hazard and fire assessments. Sometimes a lot of these terminologies get really confused, not only in this building. They get confused at media level and they definitely get confused sometimes at community level. As I said, the fire and hazard assessments, all 33 communities, it would be a great accolade to see that done in this fiscal year.
Complementing that would be the completion of all community emergency action files, which, in my mind, is a very different element to the fire and hazard assessments. To that, I would hope that this information, once it’s compiled, is systematically filed and maintained in a real-time database. It makes no use to put this in a hard copy format. This has to be something that is accessible by all communities in real time. I feel that the GNWT needs to focus the proper resources and expertise to achieve that milestone. I challenge them in this fiscal year, if they don’t have it in place, to put the means in place, to do it by our next budget, because I will be bringing those same comments back to this House. I’m hoping that the Minister will have promising opening comments to address what I’m talking about. This type of emergency information is a two-way street design. What I mean by two-way is that we need to basically integrate all this information with our federal counterparts. Right now our communities are operating as silos in relation to emergency situations. Should an emergency arise, this real-time information or the lack of a plan will hamper and put our communities and people at risk. The federal components do have the capabilities of aiding us, but if we’re not able to communicate or we don’t have the contact person or we don’t have the phone number, how are we able to prevent injury or harm or further disaster and cost and potentially lives to our communities?
I don’t want to undermine what I’m talking about there. I want this information to resonate loud and clear with this department, because I will continue on my quest to move this forward. I want to make
sure that we provide the ongoing emergency management training for all our, whether it’s fire chiefs or base superintendents for community services in this area. I want to reach out and not normally would I say this here, but every time I do my investigations in this area there’s one name that comes out that I believe deserves an accolade and I have no problem putting that name on record here. That name is Kevin Brezinski. He deserves full praise. He is working extremely hard in this area to mitigate the exact thing that I’m talking about. Sometimes we don’t give praise to very hardworking employees out there that are working for the GNWT. I hope that we provide all the needed resources, funds, and all the tools at our disposal to aid people like that to make sure that this vision comes true.
I also want to echo the comments that were brought forward by the Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli. He spoke very profoundly of the needs of his community. I think he speaks to the truth of all communities in dire need of this government, this department, to look at the extension of what I was just talking about, and that is the extension of our Ground Ambulance Program, our highway fire and emergency service. As we found out, the Emergency Triage Intervention Program, via whether it’s air ambulance, so they’re working in conjunction with other departments, the inter-department relationships that this department will need to achieve to allow the people of the Northwest Territories the confidence.
We have the capabilities and the abilities to protect our own in the event of tragedy. Currently, I think it’s painfully obvious that we do not have the proper systems in place, and that’s no fault to anyone. It’s the fault that we haven’t put enough resources into this. Unfortunately, I hope that no one in this room and no one that’s listening in today are involved in a situation where a loved one is put at risk or in peril, or potentially death of a result of the fact that we could have, or should have, done something in this area years ago. I put the challenge out not only to this department, but I put the challenge out to the Department of Finance: Find the money for this, period. This is something you cannot put down on a spreadsheet, this is not a line item on a balance sheet, these are lives. And I’m sorry, you cannot put a dollar figure on a life, not in any budget, not in any budget that I have.
So I challenge this department to continue their quest to look at ways just to put this program in place, and I ask that they follow some very key components to that ask, and I ask that this be a fully coordinated program. I ask that this become a very standardized program. So whether you’re in community X or you’re in community Y, our systems are standardized. If we have a ground fleet or an ambulance fleet that if I go into the back of that truck, that I know that the fire extinguisher is in
the same spot, that that First Aid kit is in the same spot, that those Band-Aids are in the same spot, so we can actually coordinate our efforts in the event of a major emergency, that if we’re bringing in help from other regions, they don’t have to learn the system. They just need to act and react accordingly.
Finally, it goes without saying, when we’re dealing with budget, is to please make this cost effective. We can make this cost effective. There are many programs and protocols out there provincially, that are light years ahead of us. Let’s learn from our counterparts. Let’s learn from our brothers and sisters down south to make a more cost-effective program and tailor this program to our uniqueness, our geographic uniqueness of the Northwest Territories. And let’s make this, together, a successful program.