Mr. Speaker, the Office of the Auditor General identified the problem within MACA itself, not within the communities. I'm aware of the New Deal program but it seems to me that it is, in fact, a paperwork problem; it's providing oversight and looking at reports and validating them and so on. So what kind of resources does the Minister need to bring the department up-to-speed on implementing the New Deal?

Thank you to the Minister for that response. If staffing is not the issue, can the Minister tell us what stands in the way of the department fulfilling its mandate?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I know the Minister is new to this department but I have this general question: does the Minister believe the department is adequately staffed to fulfil its mandate especially when it comes to supporting communities and providing essential services? Masi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the report from the Office of the Auditor General delivered a message about the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs that's both loud and clear: the department is not delivering enough support to communities that provide essential services to their residents. MACA can't simply transfer money to communities for drinking water, waste management, fire protection, and emergency preparedness and hope for the best, especially when the health and well-being of residents is at stake.

But that's more or less what's been happening. The most shocking finding for me is in the lack of support for community fire protection. I'm quoting from the report here: "The department did not know which communities had fire departments and if existing fire departments met the requirements of the Safety Act or could be considered responsive, including which had a sufficient number of trained firefighters." The department has known about this problem since its last assessment in 2010-2011, but has only started to respond to this crisis since this audit began.

Mr. Speaker, MACA has a responsibility set out in law and policy to actively monitor the delivery of all of these services. Yet time and again, the Auditor General found that MACA had received or was working with incomplete information from communities. The department requires accountability from communities but doesn't follow up if reports aren't provided, or to verify information given and then used for departmental planning. In some cases, the department knew about the gaps but hasn't been diligent in closing them. The consequences are that residents' safety is threatened in NWT communities, with out-dated emergency preparedness plans and stockpiles of hazardous waste.

Mr. Speaker, the department agreed with the 13 recommendations of the Auditor General, but that's obviously not enough. When the issues raised by the Auditor General are combined with those that result from the glacially slow efforts to revise and create legislation, I see a systemic problem. It shouldn't take years to follow up fire protection issues or having to wait until the next Assembly to revise the Cities, Towns and Villages Act. The department either has too few resources or too large a mandate to meet its legally mandated responsibilities. If ever a department was in need of a zero-based budget review, it's MACA. I'll have questions for the Minister.

I appreciate the offer of the briefing and I will talk to my colleagues about how to make that operational. I think the thing is that the ways things exist now is that we're kind of left out of the picture except for the one Member on this side who attends those meetings on our behalf that we don’t have an active say in what topics are discussed and what positions are taken, and I believe that we should have a role in that because what the NWT looks like in the future is of concern to all of us. So my question again is whether the Minister in addition to offering a briefing can consider other ways to involve Regular MLAs in shaping the future relationships with Aboriginal and regional organizations?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the talks need to have limited numbers of people, but we're talking about the shape of our future governmental relationships between this government of the Northwest Territories and the Aboriginal governments, and it seems to me that this is an issue that everybody in this House has an interest in and a stake in. So I'd like to go back to my point about how the Minister can involve us if not through prior consultation about meeting project topics, then in what other ways he can involve us in shaping these relationships?

Thank you to the Premier for that answer. Mr. Speaker, in June of this year I asked the Premier a series of questions about content of similar meetings held with the same group of people, and I asked him if he would keep Regular Members informed of and invite our input into positions being put forward at these meetings by him and other Members of Cabinet. Can the Minister explain why this didn't happen this time either? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions now are for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations. Last week the press secretary issued a media advisory announcing the third annual meeting of the Intergovernment Council which comprises of course the GNWT and nine First Nations, as well as the Inuvialuit Government. To quote the advisory, they were meeting to cooperate and collaborate on matters related to lands and resource management. I'm wondering if the Minister can give us any more detail of the topics on the agenda? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for his responses. A practice, of course, is no less unjust for being national rather than territorial in scope. These records of non-conviction are opposed by, among others, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the John Howard Society, and most recently the Government of Ontario, which is taking steps to outlaw their use. The RCMP is a contracted provincial territorial police service in all jurisdictions except Ontario and Quebec. I am going to ask again, will the Minister of Justice consult with his provincial and territorial counterparts at the next meeting of Justice Ministers to seek an elimination of the use of records of non-conviction by the RCMP? Thank you.