Bill Braden

Okay. That sort of takes care of my next question, Mr. Chairman, was who approved this decision. I think it was approved right here, so that will take care of that question.

---Interjection

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my colleague Mr. Villeneuve, the aspect of age and residency is not the only area of concern. There are aspects here…In fact, I have a recent example from a constituent arguing that she was consistently denied opportunities because she was overqualified for so many jobs. We have many areas of the policy that cause us difficulty. The Minister said a paper by this fall. I am wondering if he could outline any more detail about the process of this and how other committees or employees can take part in and have input into this review. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an area of interest to me on an annual basis to see how we’re doing with the provision of petroleum services to communities that do not have private sector infrastructure. This is the kind of thing that government should do to step in and make sure that services are supplied safely and adequately. There are a couple things, Mr. Chairman, in the business plan document that refer to this, and in a couple of paragraphs there is a discussion that after several years now of debate over whether or not to try to privatize or turn PPD over to some other agency, the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for Mr. Roland, as the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board Secretariat, the workforce of the Government of the Northwest Territories and, further, the affirmative action policy and our human rights policy, Mr. Speaker.

A constituent of mine has brought forward a scenario, whereby her age and her place of birth are apparent barriers to her getting an equal opportunity for a job in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, I took this situation to the government some time ago and I am wondering if the Minister could...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To the topic of the proposed new courthouse; this, too, has been something that has occupied a fair amount of the committee’s time. The expenditure of this amount of money on one facility, no matter what it is for or where it is going, is a very big piece of change for us.

Through this discussion, I have been more and more convinced of the need for this and the program that the department has laid out for bringing this project through. I saw efforts that the department had tried to do something collaboratively with the City of Yellowknife on an available piece of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. One more question in this area. The Minister mentioned some 66 people or so that has been an historic average over three years. Related to the capacity of the centre, is that number of remand clients…What is the percentage capacity that they would take up over the period of the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Hay River remand situation has received a lot of air time in the Assembly in the last few days, to the extent that a lot of the detail, I guess, has really gone over or under or around me. But I have tried to look at this in the sense of what are we doing, what kind of an impact are we having on the delivery of essential justice services to a community and to a region of the Northwest Territories? The arguments that the Minister has made, Mr. Chairman, in favour of the amount of money that could be saved, where the service could be relatively easily and...

Mr. Chairman, I move we report progress.

Thank you. The scenario there was better than I might have imagined. I can only say that I do look forward to the business plan. Related to that, Mr. Chairman, are the ample signals, the very clear and loud signals that we’re getting about the anticipated increase in crime and the need for policing caused by super-development, the huge developments that we’re on the cusp of. The proponents for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline at a workshop in Inuvik in December made no bones about it that with the level of activity, the number of workers concentrated over a relatively short period of time, that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So looking at the forecast for the coming fiscal year 2005-06, we are forecasting a deficit of $14,000, which is pretty good bookkeeping on almost $12 million in sales. I will give the department that. I am just wondering why there is a need to plan for a deficit. Can we not amend some prices in there to at least be able to forecast a break-even or a modest surplus here? How tight or fine-tuned can we get at this point? I am questioning why we should see a deficit there. Thank you.