Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good progress has been made towards preventing trespass in the Yellowknife area and on sustainable use of the resources of the Yellowknife block land transfer area. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is making good progress both in controlling unauthorized use and developing a plan and I want to recognize that.

A freeze on new leases was announced in December 2009, and legal and administrative action is underway to deal with squatters. Of 16 unauthorized occupancies in the Prosperous-Walsh Lake area, four sites have been voluntarily vacated, five sites...

Thanks, Ms. Bisaro. Just a comment there. Minister Lafferty.

Thank you to the Minister for those remarks. I guess if I can try and paraphrase both the text and the subtext here, we are not offering programs, courses that allow students to complete this in a reasonable time frame. Presumably, the South Slave program is an improvement and contributes to an improvement of that, but a student can grow pretty long in the tooth before they’re able to complete the program because of the lack of offerings. Would the Minister agree with that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I understand. So if you combine the Healthy Children Initiative and the Early Childhood Program, that accounts for a large part of the early childhood development figure mentioned on page 10-17 under program delivery details at the bottom. Thank you.

I’ll wait on questions on that for later. I just want to comment a little bit on the Aboriginal language and culture-based education and the official languages.

The Minister has again heard me and has made commitments to help tune up, I think, it’s the community Aboriginal Teacher Education Program. It has been where it’s impossible to complete the degree short of 10 years sort of thing with courses only being offered in Beaufort-Del, and I see now it’s going to be offered in the South Slave. Will this resolve the problem of students who want to get this program under their belt, having to do...

Thank you for that information. How much went to Food First Foundation?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Draft amendments to the Wildlife Act are not there yet. It has been a long road, and a pressing need to update the act into the legal reality of today is clear. The draft bill does go some distance towards recognizing Aboriginal and treaty rights but fails on our additional responsibility for bringing those without these rights into a cooperative management future.

As I have said repeatedly, whole management is the only approach that will work, but workable whole management requires that this bill also provides for wildlife users without Aboriginal and treaty rights to...

I just want to say I’m very pleased to see that modest increase. It’s more than doubling of the budget to date but, obviously, that budget to date I see as quite inadequate. I want to compliment the department on getting that commitment and allocation in there. Are these internal dollars or is the source of these dollars federal? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, our deputy minister is really just providing the justification for a course tune-up. They are not taking the course and making sure that practice in remote and rural communities is provided. The bottom line is this is a highly valuable course. The instructors that have probably more experience than our remote and rural communities has a nurse in charge, et cetera, than anybody in the room here in the House have spoken to me about the value of this course. I am happy to trust the professionals there.

Another issue I would like to just touch on briefly is this House has called...