We do have funding that gets down to the regional level and the community level that folks can access at the community level to help them get out on the land hunting or trapping, and certainly that’s something we will continue to support. As far as providing assistance for helicopters to take folks out, that’s something we would have to continue to discuss with the Member.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I know the communities have done a great job with the helicopter companies and have somehow made arrangements for that benefit to happen every spring, and certainly in talking to the helicopter pilot, there were a lot of hours flying into the communities bringing people out to the spring hunt and locations where they were going to spend some time. I just want to continue to support that avenue.

Is there any type of programs in ITI that will look at a youth program that will specifically teach the youth about the traditional way of life given by some of our community professors who know how to live off the land?

We do have the Take a Kid Trapping Program, Take a Kid Harvesting Program. It’s $125,000 a year. We also have the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program at $600,000 a year. We also have the Western Harvesters Assistance Program, or WHAP, that’s $15 million a year. We also support local wildlife committees. We also look at the Community Harvesters Assistance Program, that’s another $1 million that we put out there. We do also have a Harvesters Disaster Compensation Program that we run through the Department of ITI, all there to assist people as they pursue traditional lifestyles on the land. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. At the moment, we are in the process of writing off debts to BDIC.

Can the Minister and his department write off the deficit for the Hamlet of Fort McPherson? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we can’t, but we will work with the community of McPherson. There has been some work done already to have a deficit recovery plan. We will work with the community to see what their options might be as far as recovering some of the deficit that they are currently running. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Why did the department not step in sooner to fix this problem?

We gave our community government funding and we are confident in their ability to administer that funding. However, in some cases, we come into situations like this and it’s unfortunate that the residents of the communities normally end up paying for it. With the new Accountability Framework, we will be able to track the community’s finances a lot better, and if we see potential red flags, we can step in a lot sooner.

As far as the Member’s community goes, we have appointed a municipal supervisor to help with the deficit recovery plan, so we are working with the community right now and will continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Can the Minister and his department move to a five- to 10-year plan to pay back the deficit to ease the cost of living in Fort McPherson? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We will have to examine our options. I am willing to meet with the council and the residents of Fort McPherson to fill them in on the deficit and some of the work that’s being done. There are other options that we may have at our disposal. We may have to look at possibly dissolving council and appointing a public administrator in the community. Again, these are options that we need to explore and I am going to meet with the leadership and the citizens of Fort McPherson, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That leads me to my fourth question. Will the Minister and his officials come to Fort McPherson and work with the community on a better recovery plan? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We would be pleased to come to the community and meet with them again. We want to make sure that they have all the tools at their disposal to try to deal with the deficit. So, we’ll be glad to work closely with the community to come up with a recovery plan. With the new Accountability Framework, we’ll be able to monitor our communities a lot closer and if there are any potential issues in the community, we will be able to identify those quicker and step in a lot quicker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has made it very simple, suggesting that there’s a silver bullet that would resolve this complex issue. Suggesting a mock parliament, we were raising the issue to raise dialogue and debate and to help identify the barriers that women face in getting involved in politics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks for that simplistic answer. The lack of women here is a reflection of women’s lack of political power in our society in general. We need to enable women to represent their various perspectives in our day-to-day functioning of society. We need to support women’s organizations that represent their views and environmental assessments, economic decision-making and so on. We offer similar support to Aboriginal organizations and this is a good thing.

Rather than just funding the Premier’s handpicked Status of Women Council for a narrow selection of topics, will the Premier commit to providing similar levels of funding and political access to women’s organizations to enable their meaningful participation in a broad range of topics on the road

to fair political representation that would benefit us all? Mahsi.

We should be welcoming any opportunity to focus on women’s participation in politics in a very direct and high profile manner. We’re not trying to shut it down. We need to come together as a society and have a constructive discussion on this issue and what we can do to solve it together, not just trying to score political points, Mr. Speaker.

I don’t recall at all making any comments about shutting anything down. I’m not sure where the Premier is coming from on that.

One practical barrier I’ve heard is that our meeting schedules are very demanding. We compress a year’s worth of meetings and diverse, very intense activity from morning to night, that’s probably especially true for the Premier. It has been shown in other jurisdictions that reasonable meeting schedules are more family friendly and, therefore, encourage more participation by people with families, both women and men.

Would the Premier commit to studying this issue and reporting back on the possibility of a more family-friendly schedule in this Legislature? Mahsi.

That’s something we should all aspire to. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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