EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Mr. Speaker, the course has proven to be a hit for the students; comments from the students are that it is most awesome course that they’ve taken that they need more courses like this. Parents are thankful for this course as well, and the teachers also are involved and having fun.
Mr. Speaker, the course would not have been possible without the support of Canadian North, Inukshuk Enterprises, the Iqaluktuutiak District Education Committee, Merle Norman Cosmetics out of Yellowknife, Green Row Suites, and of course the high school.
Mr. Speaker, it is important for all high school students to have a variety of courses that interest and excite them and encourage them to attend school.
It is courses like this that may spark some of them to pursue careers in esthetics after high school. It is a really big industry outside of Nunavut.
Mr. Speaker, one of the side benefits of this course is that the instructor arrived with a full range of Merrill Norman Spa services. During the after school hours, local residents were taking advantage in signing up for massages, facials, manicures, and pedicures. I’m not sure if anyone has signed up for any waxing jobs.
Who knows, this may prove to be a future business opportunity for some of the students who have an entrepreneurial attitude.
I would like the House to join me in congratulating the high school and business community for making this cosmetology course a reality for the Killiniq High School students.
It is another fine example where anything is possible when people work together to help our youth.
Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Peterson. (interpretation) Members’ Statements.
Speaker (interpretation): I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Jack Anawak and welcome him to the Legislative Assembly.
Question 352– 2(3): Arenas for the High Arctic (Barnabas)
In my member’s statement I talked about the need for arenas in the High Arctic.
I would like to ask my question, perhaps to the Premier or to the Finance Minister; I’m not too sure who I should direct my question to.
But in the smaller communities it’s very hard for economic opportunities and there are hardly any opportunities available in the smaller communities.
If they’re going to try and obtain an arena, the hamlet has to match up the funds.
If they’re going to be planning to build an arena, how do you provide some kind of support to the communities, especially when they want to build a capital project such as arenas or community halls?
Speaker (interpretation): Thank you, member.
I would like to ask Minister Picco if he can respond to the question. Minister Picco.
As the member is aware, the capital planning process is carried out through the auspices of the Department of Community and Government Services.
In the case where a selected hamlet is interested in having an arena put forward as a capital project, then that procedure is already outlined with the hamlets.
At the same time, there are some economies of scale when we look at the cost of the facility and the nature of the facility for a designated community.
So, hopefully, that helps answer the member’s questions.
Minister Picco and I have been working on this file for eight years but the Resolute Bay arena was in the capital plan, but now it seems to have disappeared because the smaller communities had their capital plans, but when they don’t have any funding to match it up do you take the plans out of the capital plans?
As I indicated earlier on the capital planning process, projects are brought forward and recognized through Community and Government Services.
Each hamlet has an opportunity to submit to the government at the time what their priorities are in the capital plan. The government’s challenge is to be able to evenly distribute the money that is available within the capital budget to a given community.
In this case, the community of Resolute Bay, I believe, has been requesting an arena for some period of time. And I remember just a few years when we did a capital planning tour with the member, and I was in Resolute Bay with him looking at the capital plan. That was a request of the community at that time.
Again, the capital planning process is prioritized and it’s based on the needs of the community, and again, it has to be faced and challenged with the dollars that are available through the capital planning process of the government.
I wonder if the government or the minister’s department can provide...at the time when I worked for the hamlet there used to be a corporate sponsor list that a community could request funding from.
I have not seen anything since.
Can the minister provide a list of the names of sponsor companies so that the hamlet can apply for funding from those sponsor companies? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I know the member has been in contact with the Department of National Defense on the opportunities for a training base and some other military infrastructure in the High Arctic. As the member is just mentioning, he is talking about the private sector and the opportunity to partner. I know that the Premier has been in a conversation also about the opportunities within the military to look at partnering for this type of infrastructure.
So there are different avenues that we can take. The member has been very proactive and very strong in trying to get the extra recreational facilities for the community, and I think everyone commends him on doing that.
I think there are opportunities of partnering not only with the private sector, but also with our federal partners through the Department of National Defense. And, that’s one avenue that he has to continue to follow up.
What I’ll do is that when Minister Brown comes back, and again she’s out of town because of a weather delay, early next week, I’ll tell her what the issue is with the member and then make sure that we facilitate a meeting between the member and the Minister responsible for Community and Government Services to ensure that the capital prioritization for the community is being brought forward.
I would like to thank the minister for the information, but I also represent the community of Grise Fiord.
There used to be available in the hamlet called…inaudible…and they had corporate sponsors that we can ask for money from, but I guess there is a sponsoring company that should be listed so we can ask them for part of the money to build recreation infrastructure in our communities.
Can the minister ask the Community and Government Services minister about what companies can sponsor the Hamlet Council of Grise Fiord to get some funding?
Hon. Ed. Picco: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can provide that information to Minister Brown early next week.
I think the member is moving in the right direction in that there are opportunities with large corporations throughout Canada that are interested in provided recreational opportunities and that may be inclusive of infrastructure. I believe that that is avenue that the member is being very proactive in moving forward on.
Speaker: Thank you, Minister. (interpretation) Orders of the Day.
Question 353 – 2(3): Budget Deficit (Tootoo)
My question is to the Minister of Finance; I would like him to answer it not the other Minister that answered the question.
Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, in the Minister’s fiscal update, he talked about our wonderful financial position that we are in.
He had indicated that instead of the originally budgeted deficit of $7.6 million, we are now forecasting an $8.7 million deficit for this fiscal year.
And he goes on, he says in addition there is a whole bunch of different supplementary appropriation that are going to be coming forward.
If I add those up, including the $8.7 million, is he indicating then we are actually looking at a $32.4 million accumulated deficit?
We have an $8.7 million deficit this year.
For this fiscal year it says $8.7 million, but then the following paragraph starts off with “In addition bringing forward supplementary appropriation bills for consideration,” there is roughly $8.7 million for the Department of Health, $17.5 million for maintenance funding, $7.5 million for supplementary funding capital.
Are those included in the $8.7 million or are they on top of that $8.7 million?
When I add those up that is where I get $32.4 million.
Could he clarify that Mr. Speaker?
Hon. David Simailak (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like I said that there is $2.5 million and $17.5 million. That is included, added to that deficit.
I don’t really want to talk about the supplementary bills that I mentioned because we have not discussed them as of yet.
In total we are going to be in a deficit of $8.7 million.
I am not asking the minister to go into detail about the supplementary appropriation but the fact that he did mention them in his fiscal update with the amounts and where they are going generally. And it says in his statement it talks about forecasting $8.7 million deficit for this fiscal year and then it says “in addition.”
So I just want a clarification again, for the record, that $8.7 million plus what they are bringing in the supplementary appropriation is what we are going to be looking at for a deficit or not.
Hon. David Simailak (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The $8.7 million is the deficit for this year for the government. That is the deficit that is predicted.
Again, there is another mixed message that is going out where it says $8.7 million and then it says in addition there is another $24 million that is on top of that, after that, it says it is going to be included in that and
I understand that with the reduction measures that the government is looking at the departments bringing forward to them to find some savings that that may change and that those are just projections.
Mr. Speaker, also in his statement they had indicated, as worrisome as overspending is today, our projections for the future are cause for even greater concern.
Can he give us an idea of what those projected deficits look like in the future?
Surely, again, recognizing the fact that they are just projections based on current spending levels and that, what kind of numbers did they have to look at in order to come up with a statement like that?
The projections that we have for our deficit are just estimates. We’re not really sure exactly what’s going to happen. Like we said before that we are requesting money from the federal government.
We have not heard from the federal government how much more money that we’ll be receiving.
But we are projecting that there’ll be more money that we would want to spend. I can’t really say for sure exactly how much in the deficit we’re going to be in future years.
Question 354 – 2(3): Hiring Weekend RCMP Dispatch for the Communities (Mapsalak)
Yesterday during our members’ statements I talked about the RCMP in the smaller communities not being present enough especially on the weekend when a person speaks to the RCMP and they receive a call from Iqaluit and especially for the unilingual people when they request the RCMP.
I wonder if the minister and his department could perhaps get an individual that can answer the telephones instead of getting a recording. Can the minister look into getting an individual that can answer the telephone in person at night during non-working hours on the weekend?
Yes, we have heard about the problem occurring and at times some people are not really informed as to what kinds of routes that they can take. So there are concerns that there’s no person answering the telephone on the weekend.
They can be shown how to get in touch with the RCMP.
I know that this is a concern not just in the smaller communities, but in the larger communities as well.
We have tried to keep an Inuktitut-speaking person on the answering machine, but if there are more problems we can rectify that.
Those kinds of things can be of great assistance to the smaller communities where a lot of people don’t have any jobs.
The Department of Justice, and the hamlet, or the Community and Government Services minister can probably find some funding, I’m sure that it won’t be very large and the people in the smaller communities can get employment; someone who could work at night on the weekend and to answer telephones.
I wonder if the minister can look at this seriously.
Department of Justice Minister, Mr. Premier.
Like I said to the member, we will look into this. Although we don’t have very much funding…but we can try to look at it to see what kinds of things that we can get.
I would like to be able to tell the members that if they can come and see the RCMP answering services here they can probably have a better understanding as to how it operates.
People know that there is not a person working, manning the telephone services in person, because it happened in my community of Repulse Bay even though they phoned the RCMP offices, or RCMP detachment. If there’s a person that is under the influence of drugs or alcohol and they want to report those individuals and they cannot, what they say is, “I’m sorry, but we can’t look after you right now because we don’t have enough RCMP.”
They shouldn’t be saying that we don’t have time to; we don’t have enough staff to look after you. They shouldn’t be saying that.
I wonder if the minister could inform the public in the near future about how there could be another way to man those telephones.
Minister for Justice, Mr. Premier.
Hon. Paul Okalik (interpretation): Yes, we try to help the smaller communities as well as the bigger communities because they never had RCMP officers before in their communities and we try to look after them, to make sure that they are in a safe community.
Like if there has been anything that went wrong in a community, such as an emergency, it’s a concern of ours as well and we would like to be informed so we could solve it.
Like I said before that, if any of the members would like to see the telephone systems that are being utilized at this time in Iqaluit, they could come and see it for themselves because if you take a look at it then you can learn better as to how it operates.
So I will be open to members and the public too, if they want to take a look at how the RCMP telephone number operates.
Question 355 – 2(3): Housing Allocation to the Communities (Peterson)
Mr. Speaker, the announcement earlier this year by the feds for $300 million for housing in Nunavut is much appreciated. This still falls short of what we require in Nunavut and the Government of Nunavut subsequently announced that they would build 725 houses with these funds.
My question for the minister: can the minister explain to the House the allocation methodology that the Nunavut Housing Corporation used to determine the community allocations?
Minister responsible for Nunavut Housing Corporation, Mr. Akesuk.
The Housing Corporation worked with the local housing authorities to decide where the houses were going to be built. They also looked at the size of the community, and the population.
As I mentioned, $300 million is far less than Nunavut needs to adequately address the critical housing shortage that we face.
I believe the numbers are well over 3,000 houses to meet the current needs.
My question for the minister: can the minister update the House on the current lobbying activities of the Nunavut Housing Corporation to convince the federal government that we need more housing desperately in Nunavut?
Minister responsible for the Nunavut Housing Corporation, Mr. Akesuk.
As a government, we are going to keep working with the organizations in the government to make sure that we get more housing for the people of Nunavut.
With this $300 million, we will keep lobbying the federal government and as you are well aware, the populations in each of the Nunavut communities are increasing constantly.
We’ll work with the federal government at every opportunity, and we will keep lobbying them to make sure that we get more housing.
Mr. Speaker, earlier this week I asked the Minister of Finance how the Government of Nunavut would finance the approximate $13 million needed to provide the operations and maintenance to operate the additional 725 new houses.
He replied that the Minister of Nunavut Housing Corporation saying that there are options that they have in place where the money will come from for the operations and maintenance.
My question for the minister; will the minister outline to the House where he will find the additional operations and maintenance to operate those 725 houses given the current immediate bleak financial situation that the Minister of Finance said we are in?
Minister responsible for the Nunavut Housing Corporation, Minister Akesuk.
Our staff and the Government of Nunavut will have to find out how they are going to get the operations and maintenance dollars.
And, if we’re going to build 725 houses we’ll have to show the federal government that if we’re going to be building additional houses that the Government of Nunavut will be able to provide the operations and maintenance dollars.
In the next three years, we will estimate how much it cost to operate and maintain those houses, where we would get the dollars, and we will definitely have to work with the federal government to make sure that we do have the operations and maintenance dollars for these new houses.
The Minister of Finance said earlier this week that the government has to start operating like we would operate our own houses as private citizens.
As a private citizen I wouldn’t build a house if I couldn’t pay for the monthly fuel bills, and didn’t have a job, and no additional sources of funding.
My question for the minister; would the minister tell the House if the Nunavut Housing Corporation would ever stop construction of public and social housing if they could not find the operations and maintenance to operate them?
I am not sure how to answer your question because we have never gone through that situation and we most definitely don’t…won’t want to do that.
Question 356 – 2(3): School Safety Plans (Kattuk)
Of course we won’t want to see the government coming to that situation, but I would like to direct my question to the Minister of Education.
When we are watching TV we see students getting massacred or an individual going on a shooting spree.
I would like to know if the students in Nunavut are in a safe environment and if we, if should there be such an incident are we protecting our children?
It has been, I guess it’s very disconcerting when you see the TV and see what’s happened there recently in Quebec and what we have seen over the past couple of years in the United States with school shootings.
Our schools are safe and we have several points put in place.
I don’t want to get into the, say some of these things in public, because then the public would find out, and if you were trying to do something you would know what was there in security ways.
So I can say a couple of quick things for the member, and for the public at large. Our schools are generally very safe. We actually have, as the member is aware, in every community now in every school, we have surveillance cameras in place which are monitored through, in most cases, through the principal’s offices in the school.
So that means someone approaching the school, in the school itself, can be seen on closed-circuit TV.
The doors in the school are locked and closed - you can access them from the inside, but not from the outside, in some regards. There are specific entrances, and so on, in place for the general public to be able to enter the school.
You know I have children in school and I feel very confident that our schools are very safe.
From time to time we do get bomb scares and so on in our schools and we have had a couple, for example, in Iqaluit last school season.
In case of an emergency or of such a situation are, do you have a close working relationship or are the RCMP ready to go there if such a situation would occur in the Nunavut communities?
In general, there are emergency response plans in place by the protection agency, in this case, the RCMP, if an issue arose at any given public institution, being a school or a government building or private institution or being a domestic house, for example, or a business, then the RCMP are trained to react to that incident, and to those incidents.
In this case when we are talking specifically about the school, those same plans would follow the generalized plan that is in place by a tactical squad, if necessary, what have you, with the RCMP.
Question 357 – 2(3): Nunavut Government Deficit Concern (Tootoo)
My question, again, is for the Minister of Finance.
My last supplementary question, what I’m trying to get at is if you look at that the statement that was made in his fiscal update, about as worrisome as our overspending is today our projections for the future are cause for even greater concern.
What I’m looking to get at from the minister, if he could inform the Members of this House and the public, you know, even though we know those are just projections, they must be pretty bad if they have a statement like that in there.
So, I’m just wondering if he could inform us of what numbers they were looking at.
What were they projecting the deficit to be? You’ve got an $8.7 million deficit this year, and what the projected accumulated deficits were, say over that amount. They’ve done it over the two, three, four years, for him to be able to include a statement like that in his fiscal update.
And thank you for your question.
I don’t have the numbers with me, but I can say that for the next three years we are looking at a larger deficit than the deficit of $8.7 million. We can work around the numbers and possibly reduce the deficit amount and very possibly there could be additional revenue coming into the government.
So this is anticipated.
I can’t really give you a concrete figure at this point, but what I said was that we are anticipating an additional deficit but we don’t have concrete numbers to go by.
As I said, I can appreciate that these are just projected numbers and they are projections in hopes of securing additional funding from the federal government through our Territorial Formula Financing Agreement.
But in order to go to the table with his federal colleagues we have to have some numbers and he said that it is more than $8.7 million that they’re looking at this year.
In his statement he said it’s important for the government to keep the people fully informed openly, honestly, and promptly.
So my question to the minister then is: would he be willing to provide what those accumulated deficit projections are, given the information they know today, and working on what we’re looking at changing? Would he provide that information to the members of the House?
As I stated earlier, and as you said you understood, these are estimates only.
If I can produce documents or numbers I will do so and I will direct my staff to compile the numbers.
The member stated that he understands that these are estimates and yes, they are estimated numbers.
We were looking at the monies that we get from the federal government and we’re also looking at other trends.
I don’t know if it’s going to stay the same but we would like to see a reduction in this deficit in the coming years.
I will direct my staff to do what they can.
I really believe that the government has come out with some strong directives here to try and curb that over spending, and I think one important thing within any organization is if people know the situation that we’re faced with, they’re probably better off being able to understand why and where we can make cuts.
Right now we don’t know; the picture is bad.
That doesn’t really tell us anything. If we’re asking people to pay more in taxes; asking our departmental staff to cut spending. I think they have a right to know that “If you don’t, this is what we’re looking at; what could happen”.