Thank you, Madam Chair. As we all are aware, the directorate is really the strategic think-tank and the overall coordinator of pretty much the Department of Health, and so with that I expect a certain level of, I guess, leadership. We know that the management of drinking water is a shared responsibility with a number of other departments here in the Northwest Territories. However, because we share this responsibility, no lead department takes that active role as being the leader, and that’s the concern that I think a lot of Members have and have expressed many, many times. Unfortunately, with all the emphasis, especially as of late with the Obed spill and potential tainted water in our waterways as we know today, you would think that the testing of water would be a high priority because this is what we’ve been hearing time and time again.

Now, if one goes on the MACA website, which really is the only website that we have at our disposal publicly to show what our water quality is like – are we doing the proper chemical testing and the bacteriological testing – if one goes on this website you would think that there would be testing which is, under our guidelines – there are national guides on testing – once a month in all our communities across the Northwest Territories on both chemical and bacteriological testing. This is not happening. This is not, indeed, the case. In fact, in lots of communities, based on the data that we have on the database on-line, which is our only public document of the availability of this information, some of this information is from 2011, some of it is from 2012, and we have some from 2013. In some cases we have one test in that year, and clearly we have to do monthly testing. That is our obligation.

Can the Minister tell the House, tell the people of the Northwest Territories if water testing is so important why are we not putting it publicly on record?