Work is being done in terms of the planning and potential notification, pending the passage of the budget and April 1st kicking in. If there are people that have to

be moved or housed or relocated, those kinds of things, it could take as long as 18 months or two years to make the final move. Political commitment has been made. If the positions are vacant, things

may move faster. The Minister of ITI would be well able to speak to that issue when his budget comes before the House. Thank you.

I look forward to those questions in the House. The Minister stated in his budget address, the 2,000 people plan.

Can he give us a bit of an update on where that plan is? Ms. Bisaro discussed this as well. Where are we at? We are one year in. Have we made any successes in getting 2,000 more people to live in the Northwest Territories?

The first year has been a planning year and we’ve been working with industry and we are looking at changes to the procedures. For example, in Human Resources, where we want to be able to go south to job fairs or recruiting, that we’re going to empower the folks that go down there to look at the resumes and do interviews. If the people meet the criteria, then a conditional job offer can be made pending the checking of references. That’s as opposed to the current process where we have to come back and months go by and people wander away. That’s one thing.

We are expecting and the Minister of ECE will be standing up in the House here in the very near future about good news issues where it pertains to the Nominee Program, the expedited process, the number of spaces we are going to have as a government, the ability to really ramp up our efforts in that area that will see a significant influx to the Northwest Territories. We are working with ITI on the work that they do, as well, with Make Your Mark and the other programs they have.

As a government we’ve made a decision that when we go south, now that we’ve sorted out education access to the names of the students in the various communities, want to start budgeting in our travel time to sit down with students in the communities we go to, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, you name it, to take them out and meet with them and do the recruiting that we talk about to ensure we don’t get superseded or bypassed by industry or other recruiters because we don’t make that effort. In fact, when we were down in Ottawa just recently, I and Minister Lafferty and Mr. Beaulieu were at breakfast with about eight or 10 of the students from Ottawa. We talked with them and the good news was that every one of the folks that came to breakfast indicated that they are definitely coming back to the North, but they really appreciated that effort, and that effort will pay dividends.

So, those that scoff or those that say you’ve had a year, you should have 500 people here already, sometimes ready, fire, aim is not the process to take. We want to get our aim clear first, before we pull the trigger, and that’s what we’ve done in this first year. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was a great Minister’s statement. The Minister didn’t talk about the mine workers who fly in/fly out.

How are we working on them to make sure they come back and work in the Northwest Territories and quit flying over our heads? How do we get them to stay in the Northwest Territories?

That is an issue that bedevils every jurisdiction that has a lot of resource development, like Alberta. Probably many of us have been on planes, I know I have, when there’s a shift change coming out of Fort McMurray. So it is a challenge. What is happening with Dominion Diamonds, for example, they’ve taken that issue head on and they are doing away with their incentives and paying of travel back and forth to force the issue. It’s that kind of courageous corporate action that we’re hoping will bear fruit and add to our 2,000 in five year success. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier on the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link as well as the Inuvik Satellite Facility. I have questions for the Minister of Finance.

It’s been in the newspaper and on NWT Days we had a delegation going over to China and Japan. We had a delegation go to Sweden as well as Germany, I think last year.

I just want to know what kind of talks and, I guess, commitments are we getting from other countries to look at putting up antennas or satellites at the Inuvik Satellite Facility. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative has been one of acceleration that the federal government and other countries were very interested when we started talking about this project in the last government and they were giving us a lot of verbal support. As we move forward through the last government, late in the last government, but this government where we worked with the Assembly and we ramped up our interest and we’ve moved this project from the political debate to the approval of the money and project design to, as the Member said, the actual start-up of the installation and the fibre optic line,

there’s been an increasing amount of business. Literally, countries are beating a path to the door of Inuvik because they know that we are committed. The money has been voted, the project is being built, it’s being built by a high quality firm with Ledcor and NorthwesTel and it’s going to give the very benefits the Member is talking about.

So we have the Swedes; we have the Germans; we have interest from the Norwegians; we’re talking to the Japanese; we’re looking and talking to the Italians; we’re looking at going back this June to go do another quick tour to make sure that we can really market this now that we have a product that is going to be on the ground in the second part of 2016. Sweden Space Agency just came out, in fact, when we’re heading to Ottawa, with a very positive press release saying they’re doubling their investment in Inuvik because of the fact that they are now very satisfied that this project is going to happen and it’s going to have enormous benefit to Inuvik, all the way down the valley, but Inuvik is the anchor tenant and it’s going to change the face of Inuvik. For this $80 million, we’re going to be transforming the economy in Inuvik away from total reliance on resource development to this type of information technology that has an enormous long- term benefit and life. Thank you.

Thank you. In the budget address the Minister announced the establishment of the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics in Inuvik. Aside from that, I want to ask the Minister, has he been talking with the Aurora Research Institute or Aurora College in looking at developing some kind of training program so that as the Fibre Optic Link becomes in place whether or not that type of training is available for people in the Northwest Territories? This is a new, different type of industry and gives our residents a chance to become educated in something else. Has he been having those talks? Thank you.

Yes, there are discussions underway. The reason the Western Arctic Geomatics Centre is going to Inuvik is because of the fibre optic line and the work and opportunity that’s going to be created by having them located there. The college has been in meetings, there’s a working group forum. The Germans, among others, have offered up 20 percent of their volume for data processing in Inuvik. So, there are training opportunities, there’s going to be other opportunities related to service development, value added secondary industry opportunities. When you look at what happened in Kiruna, Sweden, $100 million to $150 million and 400 jobs, approximately, added to the community over the years, an advanced physics university in Kiruna, and the college is ideally situated to take advantage of that and we are hard at work to make sure that we get all the training opportunities that we can. It’s going to really give young folks some

opportunities in other areas where they can use other skills, their math, their sciences and all those other skills. We’re going to work with the countries that are coming in, the college, the government to make sure that we are as ready as possible and there’s an enormous future here. Thank you.

Thank you. There are a lot of benefits once this fibre optic link gets connected down the valley here.

I want to ask the Minister, talking with his Cabinet counterparts in terms of such benefits as telehealth, e-learning, has he been doing some type of inventory to make sure that we have those type of resources in the community so that we can increase the telehealth, the e-learning and with other departments as well? Thank you.

Thank you. The communities coming down the valley are all going to have a direct fibre link or a microwave link and just about every community that I can think of has the capacity to do telehealth and the schools are all hooked up. What they don’t have is the bandwidth to be able to do it properly. So now we’re going to marry up the fact that we have the infrastructure with the capacity to, in fact, allow them to use telehealth to its full capacity, that students can log on to their computers and do work and not wait half an hour to get on. What’s going to be important in terms of opportunities for the communities coming down the valley is that final mile piece, the connection from the fibre link into the communities. It’s going to be an opportunity for businesses or communities, community development corporations to look at wiring their community to put the businesses all on the link to allow them to benefit, as well as the phones, cable, all that kind of thing.

Even Tuk, once the road is built we’re going to go back up and we’re going to put that fibre link into Tuk and it’s going to have all the same connectivity that Inuvik does, or Yellowknife. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Maybe some short responses.

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have a delegation that’s travelled around the world looking at investments. Would the Minister be looking at possibly creating or hosting some type of conference in Inuvik so we could get a delegation from all over the world and it would boost the economy in the North and boost the economy in the Beaufort-Delta to see the potential of the Fibre Optic Link and potential of the satellite facility? Would the Minister look at hosting a conference of some type? Thank you.

Thank you. The role of a Minister is very difficult, that fine line between fulsome responses and being accused of not answering the question, so we try to err on the side of answering the question so that we can remove that complaint.

In regard to the Member’s specific question, the community of Inuvik has indicated to us in writing that they would like to see a very major gathering of this type that the Member talks about in Inuvik. Instead of the oil and gas show, they would like to convert it, not this coming year but next year, into a gathering that’s going to bring together all the folks.

About a year or so ago we invited all the university presidents, for example, up to Yellowknife to have a discussion about the possibilities of how we do business with our research agenda, traditional knowledge, the remote sensing that’s going to happen. Now that we’ll have the satellite station up and running, it enables a whole different kind of conversation and we’re going to be working with the Town of Inuvik to have that very meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier in the day I spoke about the planning study for the replacement of the Fort Simpson Health Centre. I’d like to ask the Minister of Public Works and Services what is the current stage of the planning study. I am aware that they’ve done an initial visit to Fort Simpson I think at the end of November. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister of Public Works, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The RFP for a planning study for the Fort Simpson Health Centre will be released this month. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I guess I was mistaken, because there was an initial visit to Fort Simpson by Public Works and Services staff. So maybe the Minister can indicate exactly what that initial visit was about. Thank you.

Thank you. More of the consultation portion of the work that Public Works is doing is determining what type of items would be associated with planning studies. We’ve looked at the needs assessment, operational plan, functional program and feasibility analysis for the specific health centre. So that was what the initial meeting with Public Works was about and then from there the decision was made to release the RFP to complete the planning study.

The community is certainly interested in exactly what type of building is being planned. I think there were several types. I think there is a B/C that is currently being built in the community of Fort Providence. I’d just like to try and get a handle from the Minister what guidelines or parameters or design plans does he have from the Minister of Health and Social Services to develop the replacement health centre for Fort Simpson.