Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I ran out of time there as the Minister was wondering about how to define people who live in situations that I was trying to describe. I just thought I’d make the offer to work with him on that. Some of the things that come to mind is they get most of their food off the land from hunting and gathering. If they have children, the children are either home schooled or they have to leave home to go to school because schools are not accessible on a daily basis. The residents themselves rarely get into town and that sort of thing.

Again, I offer to help the Minister to help the...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for that information. I will look forward to that.

My last question is: Have we advanced any new conservation areas under the Territorial Parks Act in the last two or three years? Where are we headed with that? Thank you.

Would the Minister commit to doing an inventory of the number of people that live out on the land? I don’t recall suggesting that the compensation would need to be more than a trapper receives, although perhaps there would be consideration for that since trappers don’t typically live on the land these days. Thank you.

I guess a couple of things. It sounds like the statement now is incorrect and needs to be updated. The first line on page 92, “responsible for regional land use plan,” I guess that would now be Lands that’s doing that with the participation of ENR. Maybe the Minister could just review that.

Second, I think the responsibility of the Minister is with regard to conservation of lands. How can this government be pursuing something like the Slave Geological Province highway without doing the conservation and planning work beforehand? Thank you.

Thank you. I look forward to that. Will we see some policy gaps being identified, and if they have, will we be seeing some proposals to address them?

I’ll leave it at that, other than noting that it’s 11 months. Thank you.

Obviously, there’s a lot of planning and whatnot, preparation that takes place as things develop, and the short-term borrowing and warrants. Would that still cover off the cost of those sorts of expenditures?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just noticed our licences, rental and other fees, water use fees are the same as they were last year. The Minister has said those would be going up. I am just wondering the status of that. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for those comments and the commitment.

My last thing was just on the contaminated sites side of things. I recognize the statement that these liabilities increase and decrease based on the remediation of contaminated sites and the booking of new contaminated sites, and being a guy that’s always looking at prevention whenever I can, I’d say the biggest factor is the success or failure of preventing the development of new sites. I’m sure that’s part of the department’s overall goal, but again, other sections may deal with the prevention side. I just want to make sure that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have all heard the traditional African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child.” In Alaska they take this one step further and say, “Raising a graduate is everybody’s business.” They recognize it is the responsibility of the entire community to be involved in providing the elements necessary to ensure success for our students, and so must we as we embark on education renewal.

When a student is successful, the entire community benefits. Children first need a solid grounding in early childhood development to ensure the full capacity to realize the potential of...