EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Mr. Chairman, I would like to tell the minister that all MLAs, and I’m sure all Nunavummiut, agree with me that Community and Government Services is a vital department to all residents of Nunavut. Therefore, it’s imperative that the minister and her officials continue to strive and work hard to improve the standard and quality of life for all residents. I know from working with many of the officials in your department over the years, even before I became an MLA, that I am very confident that they do work very hard every day to help residents out.
It’s certainly difficult when there’s a shortage of funding.
I know as a former Councillor in the Hamlet Council of Cambridge Bay that mayors and councils are on the frontlines everyday dealing with serious municipal issues and there always seems to be an issue, some are small issues and some are large, but there are countless issues.
I don’t think a lot of Nunavummiut realize how important mayors and councillors to our effective operations of our communities.
I am very pleased, reading through your business plan, to see that you continue to support the Nunavut Association of Municipalities, an organization that represents all of the communities and you have the Nunavut Community Investment Advisory Committee that works with your department to prioritize capital projects and other projects for the communities.
I am also pleased, in the past anyway, that your department has supported the Nunavut Municipal Exchange Program. I didn’t see anything in your business plan this year to assist that important program, so I will probably be asking some questions about that.
I was very happy earlier in this sitting when the Minister of Finance, in his budget speech, announced the Building Canada program that appears to be designed to help communities with their priority projects.
I know, from what the Minister of Finance said, that there will be some reconfiguration of the 2008-09 capital plan to allow some of the community priority projects to proceed as there are numerous projects.
I hope that the minister will consult with the MLAs and the mayors and councils in the months ahead to get that capital plan reconfigured so that we can have delivery of some of those projects in the next fiscal year.
I read a recent media report that almost half of the communities in Nunavut don’t have a senior administrative officer. So that was quite a revelation because I know the senior administrative officers are very key and integral positions in the management team of the hamlets.
If you don’t have a good SAO or an SAO at all, it could have some very serious consequences for the financial operations of the hamlets.
I have always maintained, over the years, that as the hamlet council goes, if they’re effective in the community, then the community will prosper, and if the hamlet council’s municipal operations is ineffective, then the community will suffer immensely as they try to recover from deficits and they can’t implement important programs in their communities for their residents.
So I’m hopeful that in the next couple of hours that the minister and her officials can give me some comfort that her department is continuing to work with hamlet councils to find solutions to overcoming the loss or absence of key hamlet personnel in hamlets across Nunavut.
In my riding, I have raised the issue a couple of times with the minister and that’s the issue of providing support to two communities of Bay Chimo and Bathurst Inlet.
I know we have debated whether they’re outpost camps or whether they’re communities but I would think that most of the people in my riding of Cambridge Bay, which includes those two communities, would argue that they are communities and they should be entitled to some help with some of their core needs down there.
So I’ll be interested to hear from the minister if she has made any progress in advancing their issues at the Cabinet level.
Another issue that’s important to my riding and in my hometown of Cambridge Bay is the issue of dust control. Last fall, I raised the issue of dust control in Cambridge Bay, but I know from my travels in Nunavut that dust control is an issue in all communities.
It’s not just an issue; it’s a serious health issue because elders, infants, and people with respiratory problems are affected.
The reason I asked the question and raised the issue last fall is because I wanted to give the minister a lot of lead time to work with the Nunavut Association of Municipalities and all mayors to develop a strategy or a plan to address the upcoming dust season which is only a few months away in most communities.
Related to that, in Cambridge Bay, an issue that I wasn’t aware of until last year when I did some investigation is the airport road.
I asked if some dust control could be put on the road to the airport and I understand from your officials that because of the dangers of dust control to airplanes, they couldn’t provide dust control on the road to the airport. In Cambridge Bay, a lot of our dust comes from that airport road because it’s right there.
So I’m probably going to ask your officials if they have arrived at some sort of solution where they can address the dust control right out to the airport proper so that it doesn’t continue to blow over the community of Cambridge Bay.
Thank you.  Chairman (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Peterson.
Welcome. As long as we don’t fall asleep, we will be fine.
I am very pleased to make general comments with regards to this department.
This is a very important department because we depend on this government in Arviat, especially since we experience problems all the time in our community. As my colleague spoke about his home community, my community can relate to his comments.
The Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality and having a good quality water control system are very important. Since I became a Member of the Legislative Assembly, I have heard in the past that and I know that your department is continually working on it, but we have never actually seen it materialize and I have never seen any capital estimates in the past. We do speak about this issue but it seems like it doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
When we are looking for areas of an alternative water reservoir, all of the engineers had identified what kinds of bodies of water are available around the community.
Our water reservoir is very nice, it’s not too far, and it’s accessible to deliver the water from there to our community, but it would cost more if it was further.
During the winter, when the ice has thickened, the water is no longer palatable. This reservoir was rebuilt and residents say that the water gets so murky that it’s not safe for drinking, especially for the elders who are unable to go out and get ice for drinking water. They have no choice but to drink that water.
To date, I have been told that our water is only good enough for washing; the salinity of it is quite strong and it becomes murky when the ice is thick.
Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit says that when there’s a lack of oxygen in the water, it become quite murky and the water is not circulating. The elders in my community say that that’s why there’s a lot of sickness occurring because they’re drinking water without any oxygen, so I believe that this has to be considered.
I keep getting concerns expressed to me about this issue time and again.
I am told by my constituents that we need to live healthy and that we depend on this water to live a healthy lifestyle, so we have continually let the department know about that.
My colleague from Cambridge Bay had experienced that problem, especially the children, because of the dust in and around the community from ATVs and trucks, especially with families walking along the street with their babies on their backs.
I believe that there’s a detrimental effect on the health of the people when there’s a lot of dust; their eyes turn red, it affects their mouth, and it affects their sinuses.
We have been told that there are a lot of problems with dust in the communities and this has to be rectified.
They say that there’s no funding for that and our municipalities have been trying to come up with solutions to deal with dust within the communities even using salt water. They would put salt on the roads to prevent the dust from becoming airborne and there’s also some equipment.
For the people walking on the roads wearing Kamiik, they fall down and their hands contact the sand and this is creating a lot of problems in our home community.
So therefore, the department or the government needs to think about it seriously instead of neglecting it.
The municipalities are not provided proper equipment to keep the dust down and they have to make their own equipment to keep the dust in control. For that reason, I believe your department needs to look into that.
The constituents believe that some people have to leave town for medical treatment because the dust gets into their eyes and because of those problems, some children are given prescription glasses in our community. If there was no dust flying around the community, there would be less eye problems with the children.
I believe that we need proper equipment for dust control because the parents tend to think about alternative ways to keep the dust down and they get hurt by doing so.
The elders are expecting something to be done on the dust control, especially the parents with children. There are a lot of parents with children in Arviat as you know.
There is a report on the population ages of our community and I believe that they should deal with the dust control as soon as possible so that the government doesn’t spend so much money on health treatment. In my constituency, they say that dust control is part of healthy living.
I just wanted to make those general comments.
I am very pleased to come back to the meeting and I send my greetings to Baker Lake. Although we are getting a bit homesick, we are nearly finished with the session.
I would like to thank the minister and her officials for appearing before the committee.
I would also like to say how proud I am because I know that her department is working on the most difficult and challenging issues.
All of the communities are actually involved in their daily operations and the communities make requests from her department on a daily basis, so there’s no other way but to work on that.
I would like to say how proud I am of the Mayor and Council of the Hamlet of Baker Lake and all of their staff because the community is growing and it’s getting quite difficult to maintain.
The hamlet’s equipment is quite old now but they still have to provide their services within the community. For instance, the hamlet service people have to work very hard on a daily basis to provide water delivery and pump the sewage out.
There’s a lot of support needed in the community, especially in Baker Lake, when all of the water is trucked in and all of the sewage is pumped out.
There are quite a few things that the community would like to see enhanced, especially when mining is developing in that community, and the department is working with the Municipality of Baker Lake.
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to congratulate the municipality, especially their youth committee. In the past, there used to be bingo games held every evening at the community hall, but the youth committee was able to take away three evenings per week for youth events, which has given the youth a place to gather for games and events.
Mr. Chairman, I urge the department to consider the needs of the larger communities.
We all understand that smaller communities have been neglected for many years, especially before Nunavut was created.
The largest centres have already received their infrastructure but the infrastructure is quite old now and their needs are still great.
The Municipality of Baker Lake is not in debt and they have a very good SAO and staff, but they want more assistance from the Department of Community and Government Services.
They cannot afford to pay capital funds, so they need to be provided with assistance.
The roads are running out of top gravel and every summer, the hamlet has an aggressive dust control program.
Spring clean-up is all done by volunteers and supported by the hamlet and businesses.
They say that every time somebody visits the community of Qamani’tuaq, they say it’s a very clean community because everybody volunteers to clean it up.
People tend to pick up litter when they’re out walking around and they see it on the ground.
For garbage services, all our garbage is delivered to the dump and yet, it all blows back into town throughout the year.
Also, I tabled a photo where caribou were drinking from the sewage lagoon and this is quite a concern for our community.
Another concern is the lease of land.
When one waits to build a house, it takes so long to lease the land. The process takes too long and sometimes it takes over a year to process the documents, so this is a concern of my constituents.
This morning, the cost of fuel was over $107 per barrel, so we’re quite concerned about that and it seems that the global demand is affecting the price.
Mr. Chairman, these are the concerns that we have but there are a lot of good things happening. That concludes my comments.
I would like to welcome the minister, her deputy, their Director of Finance, and her officials.
I would also like to welcome the people from Rankin Inlet who are in the Gallery.
First of all, I would like to thank the minister and her officials for handling the emergency situation in Rankin Inlet recently when the generators failed in our community.
Mr. Zebedee did an extremely good job and worked tirelessly during that emergency, sometimes even without sleep. We appreciate your department, the mayor and the council, and the employees who worked during that crisis and it alleviated a lot of issues with their management of the crisis.
Mr. Chairman, we had set up the Emergency Measures Act to have the communities ready to respond to an emergency.
The regulations will have to be drafted and I think we need to urgently complete those.
We now know that there are no extra generators available for any one of the communities. When we found out that there were none left, we finally found one from the Northwest Territories and it was flown in.
There are no extra backup generators in Winnipeg and Iqaluit either, so your department will have to work on this issue and be ready to respond to another local emergency.
You should prepare now during this period of no emergencies so that everything is on hand for the next emergency.
It’s pretty obvious that there isn’t even one backup generator available in the Keewatin region. Although that’s the case, there are a lot of things we have to be grateful for in Rankin Inlet.
There are also the mining companies and M&T Logistics, a private company who had a generator, and I would like to thank them personally for providing it as backup.
We now know that we definitely need to have backup generators solely for the Keewatin region and if it’s not in the Keewatin, then I would suggest that we put it in a supplementary appropriation.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to talk a bit about something else. CGS contracts quite a lot of services and goods. We do contract work for computers, shipping or airlines, medical travel, which are all contracted out by the government and CGS is involved.
There are millions and millions of dollars that are spent by this department for contracts. There are also contract regulations, for example, the Financial Administration Act, that have to be adhered to.
To date, we hear a lot of Nunavummiut businesses saying the government is not following the regulations, and because of that, we heard that there is sole sourcing and the latest was for the construction of houses in Coral Harbour.
It wasn’t tendered out and the lease was given to some individuals.
So there definitely has to be a review to find out why regulations are not being followed.
I’m not even mentioning the NNI Policy; there is a 10 percent preference made for local companies.
It seems like the government is not following their own regulations. If we look at the Nunavut Housing Corporation’s marshalling contract, logically thinking, you would assume that the facility would be near the harbour and it would be a great place to have Inuit workers.
However, we heard this winter that a firm in Ontario has now been contracted to do the marshalling and I’m almost certain that there is not going to be one Inuk working there.
We are creating 70 to 90 jobs for a small town in Ontario.
It’s not CGS’ responsibility but it is again with one of the government departments, and it’s very obvious that they are not following their own regulations and policies. I wanted to make that comment and I will be asking questions on it later.
I want to make a general comment. Nunavummiut need more consumer protection.
The goods and services up here are very expensive and we hear in Canada that there are toys with lead in them or other dangerous materials.
This winter, we heard that toys in China were now banned in Canada and I’m sure that some of them made it up here.
They could be a source of potential illness or accidents.
As I stated earlier, we have to ensure that we establish a Consumer Protection Act.
In today’s age, we don’t have dog teams anymore, so we need to find alternate modes of transportation, such as snowmobiles and so on.
In Nunavut, even if we purchase big ticket items, we can’t get any warranty service.
If you know what to do, you can go under warranty and it can be covered, but the regular Inuit can’t do that.
For example, if you have 25 Northern Stores, there is one dealer who deals with the warranties in Winnipeg.
There is nothing in Nunavut and I think you can set that up through your department under the Consumer Protection Act.
We see very old vehicles coming into some of our communities.
If they purchase this big ticket item, if it’s five years old and should this commodity break down, then the buyer is stuck.
For example, if you look at the Northern Store, or the Co-op, or some other retail outlet, if they’re going to be selling automobiles, they should be licensed and the big ticket items should be able to be brought back to that retail store and repaired under warranty.
We see vehicles that can’t be brought back for repairs, but here in Nunavut, we can set that up through the Consumer Protection Act.
Those are some of the comments that I wanted to make very briefly.
Another issue that I would like to bring up is that Community and Government Services should consider having a license or an agreement to make sure that if there is any damage, or spills, or anything, we would be protected, or if the double-sided barrels are used, your department should make sure that they get a license in order to store those products.  For example, in Rankin Inlet, we saw that the fuel is brought in and then it’s put in the barge, it gets iced in and that will be used by the camp mining company.
If they are going to be doing that, I think they should have a license.
There should be an agreement, if the product is safe, if there was a spill, if it’s just one or two. If the barge had an accident, it would spill to our harbour.
If you could provide them with license and if they are going to have proper storage, I would fully support that.
I’ll end my comments with that and I’ll be asking some questions on those issues.
We are on (interpretation ends) Branch Summary.
Total Operations and Maintenance, to be Voted. $7,836,000.
I send my regards to the residents of Kugaaruk and Repulse Bay if they’re watching us live.
First of all, I would like to ask a question on J-4. One of your priorities for 2008-09 is to continue the review of the Lotteries Regulations and the Conflict of Interest Act.
What problems has the department identified with these pieces of legislation and what amendments are you proposing to make to the Conflict of Interest Act, the Lotteries Act, and their regulations?
If I understood the question correctly, I think it touches on the proposed amendments, which includes a clarification of the silver section of this legislation to the Conflict of Interest Act.
Specific issues that are addressed include the tightening of wording and the intent around the issues of self declaring of potential conflict and the requirement of boards and municipal councils to develop a Code of Ethics by-law.
(interpretation) I hope that’s what the member was referring to.
I have another question on the regulations under the Lotteries Act.
What’s the status of that and are you looking at making any amendments to the legislation?
Thank you, Member, for raising that question.
During the last spring session in 2007, the concern of lottery gambling activity in Nunavut was brought up by Members of the Legislative Assembly.
I made a commitment to formally consult the communities to amend the regulations.
The department began consultations with the mayors’ leadership meetings that took place in November 2007 and thereafter. These results are being reviewed and a new survey is being developed for further consultation based on mayors’ concerns.
A formal public consultation is being planned for 2008-09. (interpretation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As that’s the case, the Lotteries Act is used all over Nunavut for fund-raising.
It’s very obvious that we do need to have a Lotteries Act because there’s a lot of fund-raising and there’s also entities without licences that are fund-raising.
Who is responsible for the Lotteries Act and who monitors whether the citizens are adhering to the Act and regulations?
I hope you understood me, Mr. Chairman.
I will have my Deputy Minister, Mr. Akeeagok, respond to that question.
Our department is responsible for issuing licences for bingos, Nevadas, raffles, and casino-like games.
We are responsible for issuing licences for non-profit charity organizations. We are the main agency that organizations approach for licenses.
The RCMP and other law enforcement agencies are responsible for those who break the regulations. We issue the licenses and if any law is broken, we look into it, or when it’s complete, they usually have to make a report to our department on the illegal activity.
I thank Mr. Akeeagok for his clear response.
I would like to pose a question based on what my colleague, Mr. Curley, touched a bit on with the Consumer Protection Act. He indicated that we have to be protected as consumers.
The Consumer Protection Act has been reviewed by your department. Are there other reasons for its delay? Is the review of the Act causing the delay of it being presented to the House?
In regard to those questions as for the reason for the delay is that we don’t have enough staff available. This was brought up by the members and by the Standing Committee Ajauqtiit after the session last fall. We had realized that we were a little behind in reviewing the Act.
We have been using the Act that we inherited from the NWT in 1999 and we know that we will have to give the Act more power.
We will definitely need more staff because we only have one and the other one is on maternity leave at this time. Currently, we only have one person who is responsible for the whole territory.
When did you realize that you didn’t have enough staff in your department and that you were falling behind? I would like to know when your department realized that there was a shortage of staff.
We realized it over a year ago.
At this time, they are working very hard and they are responsible for a very big mandate.
I would like my colleague to know that we will definitely work very hard on this issue.
Are you currently looking for more staff?
The department is dealing with this shortfall and will be putting out an RFP for one position. It should be open later on this month.
Can the minister indicate to the House how long this process will take for the filling of the positions and when new staff will be hired? When will the department catch up with their staffing levels?
Our staff will be working really hard to resolve these challenges and we’re looking at advertising it for six months or so.
I’ll just pose another question, just so you’ll know.