I don't know if the Member is flipping or flopping. In November of last year, he criticized heavily not only in this House, but in the media, about issuing a red alert where he felt I was being too negative about the state of our economy. Today, he says that I'm leading people to believe that the future is too rosy. Well, I mean, the reality is that our economy has gone through a tough time. It's going through a tough time, and we are working very hard to make it improve. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services about the day program for seniors in Yellowknife.

To recap briefly, AVENS ran the program until it closed about a year ago, and then the department advertised for a new service provider in the winter, but had no success finding one. Then the department advertised again over the summer. My question is: what response did the Minister get to the second call for interest in running the program? Mahsi.

Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is an incredibly important program, and following up on the Member's recommendations in one of our previous sittings, we did go out for another call on that RFP and we reached out to potential proponents to get some additional input on what wasn't right in the first RFP. Unfortunately, we had the same exact result. There were no applications or no submissions submitted on that RFP. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you to the Minister. I'm wondering what the Minister's understanding is of why the non-profit agencies aren't bidding on this opportunity.

There was a variety of concerns raised by potential proponents. One of them was space, and having some dedicated space for the type of program that we were hoping to deliver. There were concerns about being able to provide, you know, the care for higher-need seniors in this program. There were some budgetary concerns, as well as some other minor administrative-type concerns, but there were a number of concerns raised by potential proponents.

In some communities in the Deh Cho, also in the Beaufort Delta and Behchoko, an adult day program is delivered at least three times a week. So why is it possible to make those services available in those communities, but not in Yellowknife?

There is a variety of different day programs that are provided. There are those day programs that are provided by different organizations to provide socialization and those types of things. There are also day programs that actually provide some sort of respite to family or other caregivers, where family members can come out of the home.

We have provided a number of them. We can do it in Yellowknife. I don't think there's any reason why we can't. We had pursued a model where we were seeking somebody to provide some of that higher-acuity respite day program-type services. We have been unsuccessful.

Mr. Speaker, I did meet with the Yellowknife MLAs on September 13 to explore options that are available to us, based on what we learned from these experiences. Based on that meeting, the department is actually going to move forward, and we are convening a meeting of other community stakeholders to explore other creative solutions for the delivery of a day program here in Yellowknife.

We believe that there is an appetite. We just have to find the model here in Yellowknife that works for those residents who need those services. I applaud and thank the Members for meeting with me and sharing their insight at providing some direction on how to move forward.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I realize the Minister is attempting to find a solution to this impasse. The fact is, this is an urgent problem. We have both frail seniors and seniors who have dementia who need these services. Families need the respite of having their people go to these programs during the day. I would like to hear a sense of urgency from the Minister, an indication of the time that it might take to get this program up and running. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I share the Member's concerns, absolutely. I mean, we have gone out for RFP on this twice. We had hoped that we would find a proponent. The model that was suggested doesn't work. I met with the MLAs. We have come up with some proposals to move forward. We are taking action. A meeting is booked for October 18^th between the department and other stakeholders to actually start breaking down some creative solutions to address this problem.

I see it as a priority. The department knows it as a priority and we are trying to get something on the ground as quickly as we can. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Investment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't think I want to answer all four of his questions in one question, so I'm going to just answer part of it to give him another opportunity.

As the Member knows, we're moving forward with the design and construction of the fish plant in Hay River. We have already finished our design brief on this facility for the fish plant. We have moved into the detail design of it now. We continue to work with the fishermen in Hay River on this whole process of the design stage of it. We have picked our lot where we want to have this in Hay River, and expect construction to start in the early spring, but that's all conditional on getting Infrastructure Canada's Investment in Canada Plan funding the Food Security Program, but that's in its final stages. I suspect we are going to hear something shortly on the announcement of that.

The Member is quite aware that last year we went out, we used CanNor funding. It was kind of a unique situation. We went out and bought some of the equipment, but we took advantage of a CanNor program that was about to expire to buy some of the equipment for the new fish plant. That's basically where we are at on the building. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That was almost the same answer I got last time, but there's a bit of progress there, so I will accept it.

Last month, the federal Minister of DFO established a ministerial advisory panel to look at ways to transform the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. The panel will explore new governance and ownership models that support collaboration and cooperation amongst fish harvesters and involve them in decision-making. My question to the Minister is: how will ITI support our fishermen to ensure they are fully involved in this process?

The Member is quite right. The new Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, announced that on September 21^st. He's the new Minister replacing Dominic LeBlanc. As the ministry advisory panel, we were informed of this situation.

I am looking forward to having discussions with the Minister on this advisory panel going forward, but we want to look at this as a new opportunity and a new partnership opportunity with the federal government.

I have stood in this House many a time saying the challenges that the fishermen had around the Freshwater Marketing Corporation and the lack of investment in the Northwest Territories in the last number of years. That's why we came out with a fishing strategy of our own, how to break away from that and have the possibility of marketing our own fish nationally and internationally. We will continue to look at this new situation with this Minister going forward, and work closely with the Fishing Federation on the ideas that DFO brings to us.

Now, I'm going to go out of my way and say that they are going to bring the best idea forward. Maybe it's no better than what we presently have, but we will be apprised of the situation and work closely with the fishermen.

It's my understanding that the chair of that Ministerial Advisory Panel is none other than the former DM, Peter Vician, who I believe was the godfather of this commercial fishing strategy. So hopefully our fishers are well taken care of.

I would like to ask the Minister: what is the status of the fish sector support officer position that we approved in last year's budget? Has this position been filled?

I do not have that information with me, and I hope to get back to the Member on that.

Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.

I want to thank the Minister for his assistance with this. You know, I give him a hard time that it's been years and we haven't really made progress on it, but I understand there are a lot of moving parts there. There are the feds, which we are very dependent on; there is working with the fishermen who are busy fishing. They don't have time for all these meetings. So I want to thank him for the work and the staff for the work they have put in on this.

My final question is about the governance model that is going to be used to run this proposed fish plant. When I talked to the fishermen, there were concerns about: who is going to make up the board? Is it going to be representative of the fishermen? Maybe they don't want fishermen on there. Maybe they prefer to be fishing. There are a lot of issues surrounding this, and the Minister is well aware of it. What is ITI doing to ensure that there is a proper long-term governance model for the fish processing plant?

As I have said in this House, we are working closely with the fishermen in Hay River. The Tlicho Fishery has put forward their own business plan. There were a number of concerns even around, I think, the last set of questions that the Member gave me, about the O and M of this operation. At that time, I reassured him that, in the worst-case scenario, the way we have looked at it and done our numbers, this thing would still make money, but we are going to work closely with the Tlicho Fishery on how this fish plant is run and designed.

It is imperative that we work closely with the fishermen because they are the ones who fish. They know what to do. I am not a fisherman. I couldn't tell you what to do about fishing, so we need to work very closely with them.

What we are there to do is to help support them and guide them to where they want to go. Do they want to be part of the Freshwater Marketing Corporation? Do we still want to break away and look at going, like I said, on our own and marketing our own fish internationally and nationally? At the end of the day, I would think every Member in this House wants to see more money into the pockets of fishermen, and that is what we are trying to do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.