Bob Bromley

I’m glad to hear there’s a coordinator being supplied. I wasn’t sure I heard a figure on the dollars that are being supplied. One of the major issues is the overlap with the Tlicho Agreement. I’m wondering how this has been handled and how it’s being handled in a final sense until such time as the Yellowknives Dene complete their land claim agreement, given that the Tlicho have already finished theirs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The agreement reached between the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and the GNWT for the management and preservation of the Bathurst caribou herd is momentous. We’ve come a long way since last year when confrontation, emergency, shock, and perhaps even fear were the words most associated with the Bathurst caribou management. Today the words are partnership, commitment and respect between government and aboriginal partners like the YKDFN.

The agreement provides a two-year interim management regime featuring joint harvesting monitoring, shared population monitoring that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have similar issues with this item. First of all, I’m concerned that it’s only five positions. As the Minister knows, the Members have called for a SWAT team, or certainly a comprehensive and focused effort with a good bump-up in number of people to deal with these arrears that are plaguing our people and our local housing offices. The five positions that are mentioned here, is that the same five positions that would have been transferred from Housing to ECE previously when the transfer took place five years ago? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just wondering a little detail on this. Basically my question is why the frequency of twice a year. Are all communities going to be done twice a year? Typically I would think these things would be done once a year or every three years. I’m looking for some justification for the twice a year. Perhaps that’s in how complete the surveys are done each year.

I know that there are still issues of employee satisfaction in the department and these are brought to my attention. I think that shows some progress if the net has dropped from 1,800 to 1,400, but it’s a pretty modest progress. Again, we’ve been dealing with this for much longer than the Minister had indicated. I guess I’ll leave it at that and just highlight my concerns that we need to show better progress than this. We need to demonstrate that things are in place to prevent further accumulations at the same time that we’re working to clear up this backlog.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the support of colleagues here. I think it’s clear that there is general and considerable concern about eliminating the collection of this information that’s needed as a basis for good decision and its absence would result in suspect data. We suffer from small numbers and the difficulty of statistics anyway, so we don’t need this added problem. Mr. Speaker, I just want to again ask the Cabinet if the Premier would allow a free vote and I request a recorded vote. Thank you.

WHEREAS the Government of Canada intends to eliminate the Statistics Canada long-form census questionnaire and replace it with a voluntary survey;

AND WHEREAS the long-form census is a critical source of information about the diversity, employment, income, education, and other characteristics of Canadians;

AND WHEREAS in the NWT, data from the Census of Population and the NWT Community Survey are used extensively by all levels of government and many businesses and agencies to monitor socio-economic conditions; to design, monitor and evaluate programs; and to plan policy initiatives and identify...

I appreciate that. This is a public process, but we need lots of public processes on this, as I mentioned. There’s a highly traumatized public awaiting some relief here.

In terms of next steps, I think this decision and this work between Cabinet and this side of the House is an additional step towards resolving some of these issues. We have made some agreement on the principles that are detailed in the report and this is important progress. But it’s not a simple measure. Even our next actions still require, as the Minister has profiled and this side of the House has profiled, some back and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Mr. Murray McMahon, who has a home out at Cassidy Point and spends a lot of time in the Weledeh riding. Thank you.

My second question is: Is there a destination determined yet for this equipment?