Bob McLeod

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Glen Abernethy will be absent from the House today and tomorrow due to a personal matter.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess we could look at it from a couple of angles. One is that, if the workload supports the fact that we need full-time positions, then we are prepared to look at it. Secondly, a lot of the service workers are only working half-time because that is their preference. A lot of them would prefer to stay at half-time, because, in some cases, if we change it, then we will probably have to find other people who are willing to work full-time. Certainly, though, we are prepared to look at it if the workload warrants it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We had committed to providing $80,000 a year for two years, with a commitment that we would match up to a further $175,000 if they raised the money. It hasn't been brought to my attention, but I do not believe that they have come back and asked for additional matching money yet at this point. I am hopeful that they will be able to come and ask for more money very shortly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a couple of Pages from Yellowknife South: Janica-Lei Silverio and Tyson Lafond. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Certainly not by EIA. All we do is provide administrative services to the Minister responsible for Women. I don't think there is a plan to review the Status of Women Act at this time. Perhaps through you, Mr. Chair, we can pass it over to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our plan is: we have been converting all of our services to online services as much as we can. We are continuing to move in that direction. We are also moving towards Single Window Service Centres. We have shared services arrangements. If the Member feels that we would be better served by having individual service officers in Yellowknife, we certainly can look at that, as well. Thank you.

No. We settled a Deline final agreement, as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We provided, though confidential letter, our response to his very question on the letter dated February 11th to the Member. Essentially, we said if we had additional resources, we would look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The $250,000 that was in my opening remarks, I was referring to contracted facilitators. One of the actions that I took in partnership with the federal Minister of CIRNA, where we hired two ministerial special representatives, one of the recommendations was that the government should take much more of a leadership role in facilitating discussions on self-government implementation. That is what this money is for, so that we can try to help facilitate these discussions to advance the finalization of self-government agreements. Thank you, Mr. Chair.