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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our volunteers are a very important part of communities as the Member pointed out. Through my role as Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs we have an opportunity to recognize a lot of the hard work that the volunteers are doing through the award program we have every year and this year we’ll be having it during the NWTAC again. Nominations come in, people nominate a lot of their local volunteers and then we honour them at the NWTAC’s annual general meeting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Certainly, it’s a good thing that this government, through this department, does celebrate and recognize the many volunteers in the Northwest Territories.

Is there a registered list of volunteers per region or the Northwest Territories as a whole, so we know how many people are registered as a volunteer for the many events that they volunteer for throughout the Northwest Territories?

As far as a territorial-wide volunteers list, not to my knowledge is there anything like that that exists; however, in every community for local events they do know within the community who is always volunteering for different events. As far as a territorial-wide list, I don’t know of one. Thank you.

The reason why I’ve asked for a registered volunteer list is because we are so busy throughout the year with the hand games in Whati or Tulita or Fort Good Hope, or tournaments we have throughout the year in Inuvik, Norman Wells or Deline or Yellowknife or Hay River that at the end of the year we can see the number of volunteers that contributed to making these events

successful. That way we can get a percentage of the number of volunteers that we have in our communities, regions and even the Northwest Territories.

I want to know if that is something the Minister would consider through his department as to a registered list of volunteers for NWT events.

Again, that would be something that would be awfully difficult to do because if you got a territorial-wide volunteers list, I think a lot of people would have trouble putting their name on it because they do volunteer a lot in their community. Within the different regions across the Northwest Territories, they have volunteers that help out with all events that take place. Again, as I said before, everyone in the communities and regions know who the pool of volunteers is.

I must also point out – and I failed to mention it before – MACA just announced last year at the NWTAC AGM in Hay River, we support communities, honouring their volunteers with $1,000 to help go towards some kind of a community event. I know there are some volunteers who take advantage of it and some communities that do an excellent job of honouring people in their community. I think that’s something we try to encourage as a department. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly have seen the contributions of $1,000 going into the Sahtu communities to honour their volunteers. I know in the small communities, we know who the volunteers are who naturally show up and do things. Other ones don’t like to be recognized, but they will do their part in any type of event. For example, we had the hand games in Tulita with the young people, they had a lot of volunteers there. We had the Sahtu Cup in Norman Wells, a lot of volunteers in Norman Wells to host that.

I guess I wanted to see if there was a registered list of volunteers. People don’t really want to put their names on it, but just to show at the end of the year we have 600 or 700 volunteers in the Sahtu, or maybe more, just to show a number and show the importance of volunteers. I’m not too sure how far my request this morning will be pursued in the Department of MACA. Thank you.

We’ve heard from the volunteers who get the awards at award ceremonies that the last thing they want is to draw any attention to themselves. That’s what makes it a pretty special group because they don’t do it for the recognition is what they always say. They just like helping out their communities.

As far as an official list goes, I suppose during the end of the year, a couple of phone calls to each region saying how many people did you have volunteer instead of putting an official list together, just some numbers. I think they will be quite high. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.